- GM will launch a Hyundai-based electric van in the U.S. to sit below Chevrolet’s larger BrightDrop vans.
- The GM-Hyundai partnership has an annual production goal of 800,000 units.
- The first fruit of this collaboration will debut in 2028.
General Motors and Hyundai have officially expanded their partnership on new vehicle development. Four out of the five resulting vehicles will be for Central and South America, but one will be sold in North America. Here’s what we expect.
It’s a smaller electric van that will sit below Chevrolet’s BrightDrop lineup and feature a Hyundai platform. It will likely be built around the same underpinnings as the upcoming fully electric version of the Staria minivan. The Staria will get a two-door, single-cab commercial vehicle variant with a box rear end called the ST1.
That should give you an idea of what GM is going to start with before it begins heavily restyling the Hyundai to resemble its own vehicles. According to Shilpan Amin, GM’s senior VP and chief procurement and supply chain officer, “Each company will sell these vehicles under their own brands, with unique interior and exterior designs. But no matter the badge, everything we build together will carry the stamp of both GM and Hyundai’s engineering, manufacturing, and innovative spirit.”
GM didn’t reveal when the Hyundai-based electric van would debut, only saying the first of the five jointly developed vehicles would debut in 2028 and that the partnership had an annual production target of 800,000 units.
Aside from the obvious reasons behind this team-up (reducing costs, launching models faster, taking advantage of both companies’ logistics chains), they are also “exploring future propulsion technologies, including fuel cells.” GM hasn’t dabbled in hydrogen fuel cells, but Hyundai has, and it even offers production FCEVs such as the Nexo, which, in its second generation, is really trying to make the Pontiac Aztek look pretty.
It’s therefore not out of the question to see a GM vehicle powered by Hyundai fuel cells. It may make more sense now for GM to pursue the FCEV path, given the Trump administration’s pushback against electric vehicles and their resource-heavy big batteries.
Hyundai is rumored to be working on its own version of a General Motors electric pickup, which isn’t expected to be available on the U.S. market (presumably because it would compete with the GM product on which it’s based). A November 2024 report by Korean business magazine Pulse stated that the pickup would be destined for sale in Latin American countries, meaning it’s likely one of the four other vehicles now officially mentioned in a GM blog post.
