South Korea’s top conglomerates Hyundai Motor Group and SK Group expanded partnership to establish a comprehensive battery process from production, lease and recycling to accelerate proliferation of electric vehicles.

The country’s largest automaker Hyundai Motor Co. and one of the three battery majors SK Innovation Co. have begun discussions on a collabo business concept dubbed ‘battery as a service (BaaS)’ solutions for repair, rental, recharge, reuse and recycling.

The two reportedly are planning to sign a memorandum of understanding for the BaaS cooperation around mid-August to make details on the plan.

The partnership is expected to bring a whole new change to the way of buying an electric vehicle. When battery rental or leasing program is launched, car makers will be able to save manufacturing costs and lower car prices for customers.

The partnership between the two family business empires has strengthened recently after the symbolic get-together of the two chiefs early this month. The cooperation started with the launch of Hyundai Motor’s first EV BlueOn equipped with SK Innovation’s lithium-polymer battery pack in 2010.

Hyundai Motor Group since then has applied SK batteries to many of its plug-in hybrids and all-electrics like Kia Motors’ Niro and Soul EV. SK Innovation was picked as the first supplier for Hyundai Motor’s upcoming electric models built on its proprietary EV-dedicated platform dubbed electric-global modular platform (E-GMP).

By Park Yun-gu and Lee Ha-yeon

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