In an attempt to break into a market controlled by regional auto giants with well-established hybrid petrol-electric vehicle technologies, South Korea’s Hyundai Motor announced that it would launch the most affordable tiny electric car in Japan.
The Hyundai Inster’s debut in Japan comes after international companies like Tesla have tried to break into a market where EV adoption has been sluggish. Hyundai will address the issue with the Inster by adopting a strategy similar to China’s top EV manufacturer BYD’s low-price approach.
The entry-level model’s pricing of 2.85 million yen ($18,000) will be the lowest in the nation for a small electric vehicle, falling short of the 3.63 million yen BYD set for the Dolphin in 2023.
Hyundai announced at a press conference during the Tokyo Auto Salon auto show that Inster, which had its European premiere last year after launching in South Korea as Casper Electric, will be available for Japanese consumers to order.
Nissan Motor’s Sakura, the most popular EV in Japan, is marketed for 2.60 million yen and falls under the ultra-compact, limited-power “kei car” category.
However, an industry count revealed that even Sakura had fewer than 23,000 sales last year, down over 40% from 2023. This underscored the lack of popularity of EVs in the Japanese passenger car market, which has about 4 million vehicle sales annually.
After withdrawing from the Japanese passenger car market in 2009 due to low sales in a nation dominated by Toyota, Honda, and other Japanese auto giants, Hyundai, which together with Kia makes up the third-largest auto group in the world, returned in 2022 with exclusively electric and fuel cell vehicles.