Hyundai's Muñoz pitches car-funded robotics path against Tesla's robot bet

Hyundai plans 30,000 Boston Dynamics robots annually in 2028, Atlas included

The Roadster’s postponement in Texas on Thursday came on the same day Hyundai Motor rolled out a redesigned Tucson SUV in New York, more than 1,600 miles to the northeast, a coincidence that sharpened the strategic contrast between Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk and his Hyundai counterpart, Muñoz, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Both executives are betting that robotics — humanoid robots and robotaxis — will define the next phase of automaking. They differ sharply on how to get there.

Even Musk seems disenchanted with the traditional carmaking business, Tim Higgins reported for The Wall Street Journal. In Musk’s version of the future, new cars will be mostly driven by computers and humanoid robots will outnumber people. Tesla, Higgins reported, has effectively turned its back on human-driven cars. The company earlier this year stopped production of its full-size sedan and SUV to make room for a humanoid-robot assembly line. The most recent new vehicle to debut from Tesla, the Cybercab, does not have a steering wheel and is part of the company’s nascent robotaxi fleet. Musk has suggested the Cybercab could go on sale by year’s end, but the timing of a broader production ramp is unclear.

Muñoz, who rose to Hyundai’s CEO role in 2025, is pursuing a parallel but distinct path. In an interview Thursday, he told Higgins that the company’s robotics plans are “very real” — echoing a familiar line other automakers have used to cast themselves as tech companies when investor enthusiasm was high. “We are becoming a technology company,” Muñoz told an audience of journalists and influencers at the New York event. Muñoz emphasized the strength Hyundai draws from vertical integration with its umbrella company, Hyundai Motor Group, which includes affiliates in steel, logistics, finance, and robot-maker Boston Dynamics.

Under Muñoz, Hyundai has bucked the broader industry’s retreat. While other U.S. automakers have shelved or delayed EV plans after demand fell and government incentives lapsed, Hyundai’s redesign rate has run above the industry average and the company has picked up U.S. market share, Higgins reported. In 2025, Hyundai and affiliate Kia provided some of the most serious competition to Tesla in all-electric categories in the U.S.

Hyundai’s robotics commitments include production of robotaxis for Alphabet’s Waymo, set to begin in the coming weeks. The automaker is also working on autonomous-vehicle technology through its joint venture Motional. Higgins reported that Muñoz has said Hyundai aims to build 30,000 Boston Dynamics robots annually — including the Atlas humanoid — in 2028 at what he described as the “world’s first large-scale commercial robotics manufacturing facility.”

The financial logic of the two bets diverges. “The strategy is simple to say and hard to do: maximize the profit of the car business today through product efficiency and localization, then fund the future,” Muñoz told investors in August, Higgins reported. Musk’s approach, Higgins noted, used the original Tesla Roadster, which began production in 2008, and the Starlink satellite-internet business to fund a broader pivot toward robotics and rockets.

Each approach carries a distinct risk. Tesla faces a timing problem: Musk is “often wrong on such things,” Higgins observed, pointing to the Roadster’s repeated postponements. The Roadster, first shown almost a decade ago, was originally expected in 2020. If the robot vision does not materialize as planned, Tesla’s vehicle pipeline is thin. Hyundai, meanwhile, must keep its moneymaking car business healthy enough to sustain the robotics bet; several other automakers have abandoned robot-car plans in recent years when financial pressures mounted.

The two executives share more than a robotics focus. Both worked on space rockets before entering the auto industry. Musk led SpaceX before taking over as Tesla CEO; Muñoz, a nuclear engineer by training, worked on European space rockets before a chance encounter with a car dealer — who later became his wife — redirected his career. Muñoz went on to work for Toyota, Nissan and eventually Hyundai, where the lessons of the space program stayed with him. “Everything is perfectly calculated, so you cannot just say, ‘You need more time, you’re going to launch it later,’ so you need to finish on time,” Muñoz said. Or, as he put it: “The timing is the timing.”

The wider U.S. auto industry, meanwhile, is operating through what independent analyst John Murphy has called a “product drought” — the slowest release of new vehicles since at least the 1970s, Higgins reported. Automakers made large EV investments aimed at catching Tesla, then watched demand fall as U.S. politics soured on the technology and government incentives evaporated. Hyundai has more than 100 new or refreshed vehicles planned globally by 2030, a pace that runs counter to the broader industry freeze.