Hyundai Motor and Kia received awards in three institutional sector categories, including the presidential award, the Minister's award, and the Order of Industrial Service Merit, Dongtap, at the '2025 Korea Technology Awards' held March 3 at COEX (located in Gangnam-gu, Seoul).
The 'Korea Technology Awards,' hosted annually by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, is an event that recognizes and awards companies and technologists who have made significant contributions to technology development and commercialization in order to widely publicize outstanding industrial technology achievements and encourage technological innovation.
Hyundai Motor and Kia received the highest honor, the 'Korea Technology Awards presidential award,' for "Innovative manufacturing technology for automotive steel parts to reduce carbon emissions."
The Hyundai Motor and Kia basic materials research center developed an innovative parts manufacturing technology that can greatly reduce or omit the "heat treatment process," which was previously essential in the manufacturing process of special steel parts. The heat treatment process, used to secure part durability by heating steel and then rapidly cooling it to increase hardness, is essential to parts manufacturing but has been cited as a stage that emits a large amount of carbon. Hyundai Motor and Kia applied a newly developed "uniform hardening" technique to greatly shorten heat treatment time compared with conventional methods, and additionally developed a new process that can increase part strength through special machining and forming, replacing the heat treatment process while securing the same level of part properties as before.
Hyundai Motor and Kia expect that if this technology is expanded across all mass-production areas in the future, it could reduce carbon emissions in chassis parts manufacturing processes by up to 70%.
The wearable robot X-ble Shoulder, released this year by Hyundai Motor and Kia, received the 'Korea Technology Awards Minister's award.' When the X-ble Shoulder is used for "overhead work" at industrial sites, it assists workers' shoulder strength to reduce musculoskeletal strain and work fatigue.
In addition, Oh Jong-han, executive director and head of vehicle control development at Hyundai Motor and Kia, received the 'Order of Industrial Service Merit, Dongtap.' Oh developed motor-driven vehicle motion control technology (E-VMC, Electric Vehicle Motion Control), which greatly improved driving performance and emergency avoidance performance of EVs, and also secured technology to prevent EV vehicle control errors, earning recognition for contributions to improving the safety of drivers and pedestrians.
Hyundai Motor and Kia will showcase the three technologies that won at the '2025 Korea Technology Awards' at the '2025 Korea Tech Festival' held at COEX from March 3 to 5. The booth will display related parts along with videos explaining each technology. In particular, the X-ble Shoulder exhibition area will operate a program where visitors can try it hands-on.
Hong Seung-hyun, executive director and head of the Hyundai Motor and Kia basic materials research center, said the presidential award at the Korea Technology Awards was the result of cooperation among group companies, parts suppliers and material companies to reduce carbon emissions, and said the company will concentrate its efforts on developing mobility technologies that can drastically reduce carbon emissions while maintaining excellent performance.
Meanwhile, Hyundai Motor and Kia previously won the presidential award at the '2024 Korea Technology Awards' for a two-stage motor system for electric vehicles and high-speed motor technology. This technology is an EV motor drive technology that delivers powerful output and high efficiency simultaneously, and it has been expanded to Hyundai Motor and Kia electric vehicles starting with the EV6 GT.
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