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A Hyundai Kona electric car parked in a garage in Montreal, Canada exploded on July 26, local time, causing the garage door to crack into the street and the roof of the garage to explode. The owner said the car was not in a state of charging at that time.

According to the investigation, this is the first fire and explosion of the car in the world, which belongs to Hyundai Motor Canada. Hyundai Motor Canada, the Canadian Department of Transport and the Montreal Fire Department are investigating.

Hyundai Motor also officially responded to the explosion of Kona pure electric on Aug. 6, saying that the explosion of Kona pure electric is a single product case and there is no batch problem.

The Kona electric car, a pure electric SUV owned by Hyundai, went on sale in March last year, followed by markets in Europe and the United States. According to data, more than 23000 cars have been sold worldwide as of June this year.

Hyundai also said it would launch its ENCINO pure electric model in China this year. The core components of the model "use a different supplier than the KONA pure electric model, and the accident will not affect the launch of ENCINO in China". At present, the production of pure electric version of ENCINO is in progress in an orderly manner.

The development of modern automobile in the past two years is not satisfactory, and the pure electric explosion of Kona has caused a certain impact. On July 22nd, Hyundai released its first-half results. In the second quarter of this year, Hyundai sold 1104916 vehicles worldwide, down 7.3 per cent from a year earlier. In the first half of this year, Hyundai sold 2126293 vehicles worldwide, down 5.1 per cent from a year earlier. Hyundai said the decline in sales in overseas markets was mainly due to weaker demand.

In the Chinese market, Hyundai's sales boosted slightly, with sales in China reaching 351387 in the first half of 2019, up 4 per cent from a year earlier. Previously, Hyundai's sales fell to 820000 in 2017 and 790000 in 2018, after four consecutive years of sales from 2013 to 2016.

Hyundai has expanded its production capacity because of its previous good sales performance. At present, Hyundai Motor has a total of five vehicle production plants, including the first, second and third plants in Shunyi, Beijing, as well as factories in Cangzhou and Chongqing, Hebei Province. However, due to the decline in Hyundai car sales in the past two years and idle factory capacity, Hyundai said it decided to close the No. 1 factory in Shunyi, Beijing.

In addition, Hyundai plans to transform its Chongqing plant into an electric car factory, where Festa electric cars will account for half of the production capacity in the future. At the same time, the second factory in Beijing will also increase the production of Sonata PGEV and lead PHEV. It is reported that Hyundai hopes to use new energy vehicles to boost capacity utilization.

At the seminar in November 2017, Hyundai said it would promote the layout of new energy vehicles, and this year, Hyundai plans to launch four new energy products, including the Onchino EV, the Festa EV and the lead PHEV.

The development of new energy vehicles has become a way for many enterprises to develop upward, and for modern cars, promoting the development of new energy vehicles to improve capacity utilization and sales has become the current development decision, and for new energy vehicles, this fixed cake, whether traditional car companies, joint venture car enterprises, independent car enterprises or new car-building forces, all try their best to make a breakthrough and strive to get the biggest piece of the cake. It will take time to test whether Hyundai's strategy in promoting new energy can be effective.

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