The door of the Hyundai IONIQ 6 N closes with a reassuring, engineered thump. In the crisp dawn air above Seoul, Manfred Harrer, President and Head of Hyundai Motor Group’s R&D division, exhales, a slow plume rising against the waking city. “What many people don’t realize about Seoul,” he says, “is that just minutes from the center you have incredible roads — and world-class coffee. It’s the perfect environment to think through technical challenges.”
For anyone who has fought for a seat in a bustling Seoul café or navigated its equally caffeinated traffic, the idea of taking a morning drive to grab a coffee and clear the mind might seem counterintuitive. But Harrer is a man of detail. His morning ritual reflects it.
His chosen coffee shop sits high in the hills above the picturesque Seongbuk-gu district, a stone’s throw from the panoramic Bugaksan-ro Skyway. The road climbs and falls in tight, rhythmic switchbacks, offering sharp elevation changes and sweeping views across the city. By the time Harrer sips his first flat white, the day is already in motion, and the drive has delivered its insights.
With a to-do list as expansive as his, efficiency matters. “It would be easy in my position to let driving slip down the list of priorities,” he admits. “But I take every chance to get behind the wheel, whether it’s first thing in the morning, during lunch, or on the weekend. Even a short drive can reveal a lot. Is the seating position right? Does the ride comfort meet our own exacting standards? Every detail matters.”
Accelerating the Group’s Transition into the Electrification Era
That Harrer gravitates so quickly towards discussing first principles is no surprise. With a PhD in vehicle dynamics and more than 25 years of experience across chassis development, electronic systems, software integration and ADAS, this is his territory.
Yet he describes his current role — overseeing the Group’s global vehicle development efforts — as the most exciting of his career. Not simply because of scale, though he leads more than 12,000 engineers at the Group’s Namyang R&D Center not far from Seoul, but because of timing.
“The industry is going through the biggest transformation ever,” he says. "The shift from combustion to electrification, from hardware-defined to software-defined vehicles. And now AI, accelerating the development cycle and sharpening precision. The pace of progress will only accelerate.”
Layer on the Group’s strategy of tailoring products to individual markets, alongside the development of new hybrid and hybrid-adjacent technologies, including Extended Range EVs (EREVs), and the scale of the challenge comes into focus.
