Hyundai News:Hyundai Wants To Cut Their Product Design Cycle By Half

[William Maley]

Automakers know they have to stay on top of changing trends to be competitive or they'll end up behind the pack. That is currently the case with Hyundai as they are playing catch up to meet the growing demand for crossovers. But the company is readying an ambitious plan that will see their product design cycles cut in half.

Luc Donckerwolke, senior vice president of design for Hyundai and Genesis tells Automotive News that he wants to cut the time that it takes from designing to production from about three years today to as little as a year and a half. 

"As life cycles get shorter, they will get drastically shorter. I have no doubt design can be shortened by half," said Donckerwolke.

To help with this plan, Hyundai has opened a new 330,000 square feet design studio at the company's Namyang R&D Center. The new studio is more than double the size of the old one and will allow designers for both Hyundai and Genesis to work on 25 projects at the same time. According to Donckerwolke, the studio is responsible for about 65 projects. The new studio is said to shave off 30 percent of the typical design cycle.

While Hyundai and Genesis will share the building, designers for the two brands will be separated to keep influence from one another to a minimum. 

Source: Automotive News (Subscription Required)

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[Drew Dowdell]

They need to poach designers from Honda. Apparently they have the process down to the shortest in the business.

[David]

With EV's, I can truly see this happening as the complexity of ICE goes away, the skateboard concept allows one to really make radical changes to the body fast, build it, then bolt it to the Skate board and plug in the power / communication connections.

[Drew Dowdell]

2 minutes ago, dfelt said:

With EV's, I can truly see this happening as the complexity of ICE goes away, the skateboard concept allows one to really make radical changes to the body fast, build it, then bolt it to the Skate board and plug in the power / communication connections.

This is true even in an EV with a regenerator.  Eventually, the regenerators are going to get smaller and of different configuration. It will just be something that sits on the skateboard.

[David]

11 minutes ago, Drew Dowdell said:

This is true even in an EV with a regenerator.  Eventually, the regenerators are going to get smaller and of different configuration. It will just be something that sits on the skateboard.

One of my favorite pictures is the BOLT Skateboard.

[Drew Dowdell]

It's funny that you used that particular concept for the article picture @William Maley since it looks like a bunch of Hyundai designers snuck into the Peugeot / Citroen design studios after a party one night. 

[daves87rs]

I still to be convinced that this is a good thing. Rushing is not always a good thing....

[David]

On 8/15/2017 at 8:26 PM, daves87rs said:

I still to be convinced that this is a good thing. Rushing is not always a good thing....

Be interesting to see how many lawsuits they get hit with on product built on this super short design cycle.

[daves87rs]

9 hours ago, dfelt said:

Be interesting to see how many lawsuits they get hit with on product built on this super short design cycle.

 

One of many problems I believe......