After Kia outlined a timeline for factory deployment, Hyundai Motor presented its robotics strategy to overseas investors in Boston.
Labor unions are raising concerns that humanoid robots could affect working hours, wages and future production volume.
Atlas, Boston Dynamics’ humanoid robot, appeared on the CES 2026 stage alongside Hyundai Motor Group Executive Chair Chung Euisun.
[Insight Korea = Kim Dong-su]
Hyundai Motor Group’s blueprint for introducing the humanoid robot Atlas is becoming more concrete. After Kia disclosed a deployment timeline for U.S. factories at investor relations events in Singapore and Hong Kong, Hyundai Motor also held an investor presentation in Boston focused on its robotics strategy.
According to industry sources and official investor presentation materials, Hyundai Motor held an IR event for overseas institutional investors on the 18th local time at the Westin Boston Seaport District in the United States, with robotics strategy as the main theme. Hyundai Motor Group is understood to be planning to secure internal demand for more than 25,000 Atlas units, mainly for assembly and parts sequencing work at Hyundai Motor and Kia manufacturing plants, and to deploy the robots in stages.
Hyundai Follows Kia in Presenting Atlas Blueprint Overseas
Following Kia, Hyundai Motor has recently presented its Atlas deployment blueprint through an overseas investor relations event. However, management and labor at the two companies are showing different views on the introduction of Atlas.
Hyundai Motor Group has previously said it plans to establish an Atlas production system in the United States with annual capacity of 30,000 units by 2028. The structure would allow the group to fill more than 80 percent of production capacity with its own internal demand. The group also plans to begin operating a U.S.-based production facility for humanoid joint actuators in 2028, with annual capacity of more than 350,000 units.
Kia also recently gave overseas institutional investors a detailed timeline for deploying Atlas in its factories. Kia President Song Ho-sung explained that Atlas will first be placed at Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant America, or HMGMA, in 2028, with application expanding to Kia’s Georgia plant about a year later.
The first one to two years are expected to focus on deployment at U.S. production bases, with the goal of accumulating work data and verifying safety. Processes with high labor intensity or heavy worker burden are likely to be reviewed first.
Kia believes that once Atlas proves useful in specific processes, it could be expanded to other global production sites. Since the basic structure and process layout of vehicle plants do not differ greatly by country, Kia sees few major obstacles to transferring operational experience accumulated at U.S. plants to other factories.
Atlas Could Become a Long-Term Labor Issue
As the deployment of Atlas at production sites becomes more visible, tensions between labor and management are also expected to grow. Hyundai Motor and Kia unions believe that the introduction of humanoid robots could affect working hours and wage systems, and are calling for safeguards. The Hyundai Motor branch of the Korean Metal Workers’ Union is calling for a full monthly wage system, while the Kia Motors branch is demanding the abolition of the hourly wage system. Both are pushing robotics transition as a major issue in this year’s negotiations.
Hyundai Motor Group, by contrast, says it does not view humanoids simply as a means of replacing workers. Hyundai Motor CEO José Muñoz said at the Semafor World Economy event in April that “robots support dangerous and repetitive tasks rather than replacing humans.” Hyundai Motor is also drawing a line for now on the possibility of deploying Atlas in South Korea.
The reason Hyundai Motor and Kia unions are reacting sensitively is that Atlas, unlike conventional industrial robots, could expand its use across broader production sites. While fixed-equipment automation has generally remained limited to specific processes, humanoids, with mobility and versatility, could spread into areas such as assembly, transport and inspection. From the unions’ perspective, even without an immediate plan to deploy Atlas domestically, expanded automation at overseas factories could eventually lead to reduced production volumes at Korean production bases such as Ulsan, Hwaseong and Gwangmyeong.
Experts say labor-management conflict over humanoid robot adoption is unlikely to be settled solely through this year’s wage and collective bargaining talks. Even if the timing of domestic deployment has not been confirmed, discussions over employment and wage systems linked to robot adoption are likely to remain a long-term issue.
Moon Hak-hoon, professor of future electric vehicles at Osan University, said, “Even if Hyundai Motor Group introduces humanoids in South Korea, it is likely to deploy them gradually while taking into account natural workforce reductions such as retirements.”
“Replacing the workforce entirely is realistically difficult,” he said.
He added, “Humanoid-related issues are likely to become a hot potato in this year’s negotiations. Like the demand for a four-day workweek, it could become a long-term issue that unions raise repeatedly every year.”
- This article was translated by ChatGPT. (이 기사는 챗GPT가 번역했습니다.)
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