Hyundai Motor Co. President Jose Muñoz Is the 2025 MotorTrend Person of the Year
The automotive conglomerate’s impressive performance with an ongoing upward trajectory cement Muñoz on top of our Power List.
Ranked 15th on our list last year, Jose Muñoz steps into the history books as the first non-Korean to lead the conglomerate that includes the Hyundai, Kia, and Genesis brands. It is a surprising advancement but one that is well deserved. Muñoz has been a driving force, leading Hyundai through years of record growth in North American sales, market share, revenue, and profitability.
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Muñoz has had an interesting career. The Spanish native and U.S. citizen has a Ph.D. in nuclear engineering as well as an executive MBA. He spent 15 years at Nissan, where he was positioned to take over as CEO after the arrest and ouster of the company’s former CEO, Carlos Ghosn.
Muñoz joined his present employer in 2019 as president and global chief operating officer of Hyundai as well as president and CEO of Hyundai and Genesis in North America. His duties expanded as he added Europe, India, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia Pacific to the regions under his purview.
He first broke the cultural ceiling when he became a board member in 2023 and shattered it when, effective January 1, 2025, he succeeded president and CEO Jaehoon Chang, who was promoted to vice chair of Hyundai, Automotive Division. Muñoz is now in charge of the company’s global business.
Hyundai has come a long way since it entered the U.S. market in 1986 with the Excel, a subcompact car improving on the Pony, which the manufacturer began exporting to Canada in 1984 but didn't sell in the U.S. because it didn’t meet emissions standards. The Hyundai brand, known initially for value and affordability, has matured and is now associated with quality, good value, and enough cachet and gravitas to warrant adding the Genesis luxury division. We’ve been so impressed with the group’s contemporary offerings in recent times that we named the Genesis GV70 the 2022 MotorTrend SUV of the Year and the Hyundai Ioniq 5 our 2023 SUV of the Year.
Under Muñoz, Hyundai’s North American sales have seen constant growth, hitting 801,200 units in 2023 and 836,802 in 2024. Global sales of all three brands totaled 7.23 million in 2024. And there is more to come with new models like the Ioniq 9 EV and a new plant ramping up.
Indeed, Hyundai broke ground on its first U.S. plant in 2002 in Montgomery, Alabama. The latest: a $12.6 billion investment that includes the Metaplant America in Georgia, with a $6.7 billion assembly plant and two joint-venture battery factories with LG Energy Solution and SK On. Hyundai began building electric vehicles at the new facility in October.
Much of Hyundai’s success is attributed to the automaker’s multipowertrain product strategy, which created the world’s most diverse and fulsome portfolio. When other automakers pulled back on EV plans, Hyundai stayed the course. Hyundai Motor Group was America’s second bestselling electric vehicle automaker in 2024 even though its models were not eligible for U.S. tax credits, placing it at a cost disadvantage versus competitors.
The world’s third-largest car company has big plans. It aims to offer 21 EV models by 2030, with annual global EV sales of 2 million. The number of hybrids will double to 14, including some for Genesis. All models will get a second generation of Hyundai’s existing hybrid system, and the group is also developing extended-range hybrid systems that use an internal combustion engine as a generator to recharge the electric motor powering the vehicle. The goal is to increase global hybrid sales to 1.33 million vehicles in 2028, a huge jump from 510,000 now. The hike will be even greater in North America, where hybrid sales are expected to more than triple to 690,000 in 2028, up from about 170,000.
Muñoz has managed successful growth to date, and with expanded responsibilities he will continue to oversee the corporation’s broader mobility vision, including multiple modes and forms of transportation and propulsion, from regular cars to motorsports to flying taxis, propelled by conventional powertrains, electric motors, and hydrogen.
He must also focus on managing the conglomerate to continue growing and strengthening the brands’ global status. This includes continuing the grand experiment of selling cars on Amazon, using his experience in the U.S. to deal with challenges posed by the new Trump administration, and getting the Hyundai Supernal SA-2 flying car off the ground. Already, though, Muñoz has more than earned his top spot on our Power List, and he shows no signs of slowing down or making major missteps.
Alisa Priddle joined MotorTrend in 2016 as the Detroit Editor. A Canadian, she received her Bachelor of Journalism degree from Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, and has been a reporter for 40 years, most of it covering the auto industry because there is no more fascinating arena to cover. It has it all: the vehicles, the people, the plants, the competition, the drama. Alisa has had a wonderfully varied work history as a reporter for four daily newspapers including the Detroit Free Press where she was auto editor, and the Detroit News where she covered the GM and Chrysler bankruptcies, as well as auto trade publication Wards, and two enthusiast magazines: Car & Driver and now MotorTrend. At MotorTrend Alisa is a judge for the MotorTrend Car, Truck, SUV and Person of the Year. She loves seeing a new model for the first time, driving it for the first time, and grilling executives for the stories behind them. In her spare time, she loves to swim, boat, sauna, and then jump into a cold lake or pile of snow.
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