Simon Loasby: “We have to challenge sacred cows sometimes”
By Car Design News2025-03-25T10:00:00
Simon Loasby, head of design at Hyundai, describes the pressure of being a South Korean born brand and the challenges behind utilising AI securely
Hyundai design is moving at such a pace that we seem to have ‘monthly’ design reviews every two weeks at the moment. At a recent presentation, our teams presented 35 full-size interior and exterior models, virtual and physical, across multiple projects over four hours. Every one of our design studios had content in that presentation: Japan, India, America, China, Europe and Korea and all studios had at least one person physically present. This is our way of harnessing the grey matter from across the whole organisation and making it work for us.
That said, and I hope my Korean friends don’t mind me saying this, but Korea is quite an isolated place. If you draw a radius of 100km from our design studio in Namyang and count how many design studios you find, it’s not many.