The two auto giants are teaming up to take on China and others with lower-priced cars. Hyundai and GM will launch five new co-developed vehicles, including a compact SUV, car, and pickup, a midsize pickup, and even an EV. However, the tie-up will involve much more.
What vehicles are Hyundai and GM co-developing?
Combined, GM and Hyundai build more vehicles than any automaker globally. After announcing a partnership last September, we are now learning what to expect from the collaboration.
Hyundai and GM will combine resources to launch five new vehicles, advanced platforms, and an electric vehicle.
The new co-developed vehicles will include a compact SUV, a car, a pickup truck, a midsize pickup, and an electric van.
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GM is leading the development of a midsize pickup truck platform, while Hyundai is focusing on the SUV and electric van. Although they will share the same underpinnings, the vehicles will feature distinct designs inside and out to differentiate the brands.
Development is already underway on the four compact models set to launch in Central and South America, which will begin to roll out in 2028. These include a smaller SUV, a car, a pickup truck, and a midsize pickup.
2025 Chevrolet BrightDrop 400 (Source: GM)
The commercial electric van will be made in the US, starting as early as 2028. According to GM, it will be a “smaller sibling to Chevrolet’s BrightDrop vans.”
Hyundai and GM are also teaming up on logistics and sourcing materials, which will enable them to “reduce costs, streamline manufacturing, and launch new models faster.”
2025 Hyundai IONIQ 5 at a Tesla Supercharger (Source: Hyundai)
The automakers expect sales of the co-developed vehicles to reach over 800,000 annually once production is fully scaled.
GM’s CEO Mary Barra said last year that “GM and Hyundai have complementary strengths and talented teams. Our goal is to unlock the scale and creativity of both companies to deliver even more competitive vehicles to customers faster and more efficiently.”
The partnership is already off to a “fantastic start,” GM said in a statement. We’ll likely learn more soon as more details unfold.
Electrek’s Take
Will we see more GM and Hyundai co-developed vehicles in the US? GM’s other partnership with Honda has been a big success, with the Honda Prologue and Chevy Equinox currently outselling nearly every other EV in America outside of Tesla.
The tie-up makes sense on a global scale as GM and Hyundai look to counter lower-cost vehicles from Chinese brands like BYD, which are quickly gaining market share overseas.
Will Hyundai use its dedicated E-GMP.S platform, used for Kia’s new PBV electric vans, for its US model? Either way, the new partnership should help both brands compete on a global scale. Check back soon for more info.
What kind of GM and Hyundai co-developed vehicle would you buy? An SUV? pickup? EV? Let us know in the comments below.
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Elon wants the US military to start buying Tesla Cybertrucks – and now they are! The Air Force has ordered two Cybertruck testers for target practice to determine how easy they are to blow up, while Jo makes up a whole new conspiracy theory on today’s explosive episode of Quick Charge!
Today’s episode is brought to you by retrospec—makers of sleek, powerful e-bikes and outdoor gear built for everyday adventure. Electrek listeners can get 10% off their next ride until August 14 with the exclusive code ELECTREK10 only at retrospec.com.
An it doesn’t stop there. We’ve also got exciting new home battery backup and V2X options for Tesla owners, and one Texas EV driver that decided to conquer the Texas floodwaters by harnessing the awesome combined powers of electrons and stupidity (it’s pretty awesome).
New episodes of Quick Charge are recorded, usually, Monday through Thursday (most weeks, anyway). We’ll be posting bonus audio content from time to time as well, so be sure to follow and subscribe so you don’t miss a minute of Electrek’s high-voltage daily news.
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Tesla’s Dojo supercomputer project is reportedly over. Bloomberg reports that CEO Elon Musk is killing the project after a mass exodus of talent from the Dojo team to a competing startup.
Dojo was the name of Tesla’s in-house AI chip development to create supercomputers to train its AI models for self-driving.
Tesla hired a bunch of top chip architects and tried to develop better AI accelerator chips to rely less on companies like NVIDIA, AMD, and others.
For the last few years, Peter Bannon, who worked with Keller for years, has been leading Tesla’s chip-making programs, but he is now reportedly also leaving the automaker.
Bloomberg reports that Musk has “ordered the effort to be shut down.”:
Peter Bannon, who was heading up Dojo, is leaving and Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk has ordered the effort to be shut down, according to the people, who asked not to be identified discussing internal matters. The team has lost about 20 workers recently to newly formed DensityAI, and remaining Dojo workers are being reassigned to other data center and compute projects within Tesla, the people said.
DensityAI is a new startup currently in stealth mode, founded by several former Tesla employees, including Venkataramanan.
It reportedly plans to build chips for AI data centers and robots, much like the Dojo program.
The company recently hired 20 former Tesla employees who worked on Dojo.
While the program appeared to be lagging behind for years as Tesla increasingly bought more compute power from NVIDIA, Musk has been claiming progress.
The CEO said in June:
Tesla Dojo AI training computer making progress. We start bringing Dojo 2 online later this year. It takes three major iterations for a new technology to be great. Dojo 2 is good, but Dojo 3 will be great.
During Tesla’s quarterly conference call in late July, the CEO claimed that Dojo 2 will be “operating at scale sometime next year.”
Electrek’s Take
It’s unclear whether the report is accurate or if it’s an extrapolation from the talent exodus to Elon killing Dojo, or if Elon was lying just a few weeks ago.
Alternatively, this development may be so recent that Elon went from being confident in Dojo a few weeks ago to disbanding the team working on it now.
Either way, I think it’s clear that the project has been lagging, and Tesla has been extremely dependent on chip suppliers rather than making its own.
I think Dojo being likely dead is not a big loss for Tesla.
When it comes to chip making, developing its own inference compute for onboard “AI computers” was always the more important project.
Jack Dorsey, co-founder and chief executive officer of Twitter Inc. and Square Inc., listens during the Bitcoin 2021 conference in Miami, Florida, on Friday, June 4, 2021.
Eva Marie Uzcategui | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Block shares jumped in extended trading on Thursday after the fintech company increased its forecast for the year.
Here is how the company did, compared to analysts’ consensus estimates from LSEG.
Earnings per share: 62cents adjusted vs. 69 cents expected
Block doesn’t report a revenue figure, but said gross profit rose 14% from a year earlier to $2.54 billion, beatinganalysts’ estimates of $2.46 billion for the quarter. Gross payment volume increased 10% to $64.25 billion.
Block raised its guidance for full-year gross profit to $10.17 billion, representing 14% growth from a year earlier. In its prior earnings report, Block said gross profit for the year would come in at $9.96 billion.
The company expects full-year adjusted operating income of $2.03 billion, or a 20% margin. For the third quarter, the company expects gross profit to grow 16% from a year ago to $2.6 billion, with an operating margin of 18%.
Square payment volume in the quarter grew 10% from a year earlier.
Block faces growing competition from rivals such as Toast and Fiserv‘s Clover, though its Square business still gained share during the quarter in areas such as retail and food and beverage.
Block shares were down 10% this year as of Thursday’s close, while the Nasdaq is up 10%. Last month, Block was added to the S&P 500.