"What I felt when I saw the Chinese cars at the Paris Motor Show was despair. I thought that before long, every carmaker in Europe would collapse."
Lee Jae-kyu, executive vice president for vehicle development at Hyundai Motor (005380) and Kia (000270), delivered that warning about the state of the auto market in encouraging remarks ahead of the awards ceremony for the 2026 Idea Festival, held on the 19th at the companies' Namyang Research and Development Center in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi Province.
"The weather today is so clear and bright, but the truth is my heart feels very heavy and dark, and I find myself thinking these are difficult times," Lee said at the outset.
"I went to the Paris Motor Show last week, and the existing European cars were presented with mediocre design and technology, while the Chinese companies' cars had good design and were about $10,000 cheaper," Lee said. "What I felt there was despair."
Twenty Chinese automakers took part in the Paris Motor Show, held from the 12th to the 18th, showcasing advanced technology including electric vehicles and autonomous driving. As if mocking the perception that they merely sell cheap cars, the Chinese companies displayed technology on par with Europe's traditional powerhouses. Design, long cited as their weak point, no longer lags behind either, and the companies are credited with raising the overall completeness of their vehicles beyond price competitiveness alone.
Lee made the remarks at an in-house competition in which Hyundai Motor and Kia employees develop their own ideas and build prototypes. Six teams reached the finals of this year's contest, the 17th edition, and demonstrated their products. After reviewing all the entries, Lee, who had voiced alarm about Chinese cars, encouraged employees' willingness to take on challenges, saying, "I thought we still have hope."
The grand prize went to team MSV2, which developed a "tri-fold luggage board" that expands a car's trunk space. Previously, using the space beneath the trunk floor required lifting the luggage board, and that space was built into a fixed frame, limiting how it could be used. The winning entry is designed so that simply pushing the floor panel folds it into three sections that secure to the back of the rear seats, allowing owners to load items such as strollers that do not fold or tall potted plants.
The grand prize team receives 10 million won and a chance to attend CES in Las Vegas next year.
The top excellence awards went to team T4B, which presented "Eye Bridge," a system to help visually impaired people walk, and team Comfort Drive, which created "Motion Sickness Zero," a technology to reduce car sickness. Eye Bridge uses vision sensors to recognize obstacles and distances in real time and delivers guidance such as "Turn right and proceed" through bone-conduction earphones. Motion Sickness Zero moves interior lighting and other elements in line with the direction and degree of a vehicle's acceleration, narrowing the gap between the motion the eyes see and the motion the body feels.
Excellence awards also went to "Hero Recorder," which uses AI to edit a truck driver's day into a one-minute video; "Neulbom," which detects a child's condition and surrounding hazards in car seats and strollers; and "Fin Print Seat," which adjusts seat size and shape to fit the growth of infants and toddlers as well as adult occupants.