Hyundai Europe CEO Michael Cole has the automaker chasing a sales level not seen since before the pandemic. He is "absolutely confident" the brand can surpass its European sales best of 562,386 set in 2019. Cole refuses to sacrifice margins to reach the goal by directing large volumes toward the short-term rental and fleet channels. He said Hyundai’s emphasis will continue to be on the higher margin private customer sales channel. He outlined Hyundai’s plans in an interview with Automotive News Europe Correspondent Andrea Malan.
How did 2023 start for the Hyundai brand in Europe?
First of all, in 2022 we did a much better job than most in managing our supply, so we were delivering cars much quicker. What you saw in the first six months of this year is that many carmakers' sales rebounded strongly because they were so badly affected in the first half of 2022. As a result, we at Hyundai have lost some market share, but we are not worried. If we compare 2023 with 2019, including both passenger cars and LCVs [light commercial vehicles], we had a 2.8 percent share then and now we are at 4.2 percent only with passenger cars. I'm very happy with that.