Starting this year, Hyundai Motor will apply a model-by-model revenue "scorecard" to its domestic sales front lines. As a result, sales efforts are expected to shift from the Casper, a representative compact car, and the Nexo hydrogen car, which symbolizes the group's future technology, to pricier and more profitable models such as Genesis. In a landscape of U.S. tariff and intensifying competition, the pragmatic management of Hyundai Motor President José Muñoz—who argues that maximizing efficiency matters more than simple sales volume—is shifting into high gear.
According to the industry on the 30th, Hyundai Motor's domestic business division has introduced a model-by-model revenue scorecard called the "mix index" starting this year. It grades the revenue contribution of most vehicles currently sold in Korea on a scale from 0 to 4. Hyundai Motor is said to plan to base each sales division's performance evaluation on this scorecard. The idea is to prioritize margin over simple unit sales.
The scorecard shows that the large sedan G90 and the midsize luxury SUV GV80 from Hyundai Motor's premium brand Genesis received the top score of 4. As the "highest value-added" vehicles with the largest per-unit margins, the scorecard specifies that they should be the primary focus in the field.
They are followed by the midsize sedan G80 (3.71), the compact SUV GV70 (3.63), the second-generation Palisade (LX3) hybrid (HEV) (3.32), and the Palisade LX3 (3.01), which all earned relatively high scores.
By contrast, the second-generation Nexo, a hydrogen midsize SUV that represents Hyundai Motor Group's hydrogen technology and sustainable future vision, received the lowest score of 0. The Nexo's official price ranges from 76 million to 83 million won—about twice that of the comparable Santa Fe (36 million to 47 million won)—but its production cost is that much higher. With sales growth hampered by issues such as hydrogen infrastructure, Hyundai Motor concluded that the model does not help revenue.
Hyundai Motor's representative compact Casper (0.43), the Avante compact sedan, which has reached cumulative global sales of 10 million units (0.94), and the Ioniq 5 compact electric SUV (0.97) also posted scores in the 0 range, effectively excluding them from strategic models.
Electric vehicles, with their high battery procurement expense, also did not escape low scores. The G80 EV (1.77), Kona EV (0.74), and GV70 EV (1.9) are representative. Hybrids are a different story. The Avante HEV (1.27), Grandeur HEV (2.6), Kona HEV (1.61), and Tucson HEV (1.26) were set about 0.3 to 0.6 points higher than their gasoline models.
The industry sees Muñoz as putting the pedal down on a "profit-first" management stance. At his first shareholders meeting after taking office last March, Muñoz said, "We will expand market share with a region-optimized strategy and improve profitability." In Korea, that has meant increasing the sales mix of Genesis, the high-performance N brand, and large commercial vehicles; in the United States, the focus has been on Genesis and HEVs. He has also been known to consistently push for expense optimization across Hyundai Motor.
A key backdrop is fiercer competition in the domestic market. Last year, imported car sales topped 300,000 units, and Tesla sharply cut prices on popular models, among other developments that have gradually chipped away at Hyundai Motor's home-market share. "To defend share immediately, you would have to aggressively raise sales through price cuts," an auto industry official said. "Rather than joining a meaningless price war, the plan is to focus on fundamentals."
The urgency of shoring up profitability also strengthens Muñoz's stance. Hyundai Motor's consolidated operating profit last year was 11.4679 trillion won, down 19.5% from a year earlier. That was below the market consensus (-12.6%). Profitability plunged as it spent 4.11 trillion won just to pay U.S. tariff. This year's target operating margin is 6.3% to 7.3%, and with U.S. tariff and global competition now constants, it must be higher than last year's 6.2%.
There are also concerns that this approach could narrow consumer choice. "To score well, sales activity may end up focusing on high-profit vehicles rather than mass-market models like the Avante and the compact Casper," an auto industry official said. "If these popular models are neglected, Hyundai Motor's image as a 'people's car' brand could weaken and customers could defect."