Hyundai: Clean up your act and make the right move for everyone, everywhere.

Hyundai is dragging its feet on the transition to electric vehicles. The company is also failing to clean up its supply chain and phase out its use of coal based steel, one of the dirtiest fossil fuels driving the climate crisis.

Cars are mostly made of steel, and steel alone accounts for 11% of global CO₂ emissions, more than aviation and shipping combined. Cleaner alternatives exist, but Hyundai is failing to make the switch – locking in pollution for decades to come.

From Mexico to Vietnam, Hyundai has a troubling track record of working with unscrupulous suppliers and failing to hold them to account, even in the face of allegations of the displacement of tens of thousands of people, poisoned air and water, and even the murder of Indigenous leaders and environmental defenders.

Hyundai has a responsibility to ensure its suppliers respect human rights and the environment, but instead, the company looks the other way. 

Hyundai is pouring billions into new manufacturing plants in countries like the United States. But instead of bringing good jobs and benefits to workers and neighbors, Hyundai, together with its subsidiaries and subcontractors, have faced allegations of child labor, dangerous working conditions and worker deaths, union-busting, and exploitative prison labor. Despite repeat requests from workers and local communities, Hyundai is refusing to engage with unions or residents to address these abuses. 

Hyundai has the chance to show the world what real climate leadership looks like, by ending the use of polluting coal in its supply chain, with steel as the top priority, while accelerating progress towards 100% EV sales. Hyundai can ensure that its clean vehicles of the future are not manufactured with the dirty fossil fuels of the past.

Hyundai’s global supply chain touches the lives and livelihoods of thousands of people across the globe. Hyundai must work to guarantee that suppliers across its global value chain respect human rights and protect the environment – and hold them to account if they don’t.

Hyundai’s electric future depends on the workers and communities building it. The company must ensure that its EV investments truly benefit the workers and communities that are building this future – through good jobs, fair wages, community benefits and responsible environmental practices.