Hyundai appoints former Tesla vice president as adviser in bid to strengthen robotics development

Hyundai Motor Group announced on Friday that it appointed Milan Kovac, a global expert in AI and autonomous driving and a former vice president at Tesla, as an adviser.

Milan Kovac, an expert in AI and autonomous driving and a former vice president at Tesla, is seen with Tesla employees in this photo uploaded to his social media account [SCREEN CAPTURE]

Hyundai Motor Group announced on Friday that it appointed Milan Kovac, an expert in AI and autonomous driving and a former vice president at Tesla, as an adviser and plans to name him as an outside director of the company's U.S. subsidiary Boston Dynamics.

Kovac was known both inside and outside Tesla as “Musk’s man” during his time at the company, as he oversaw the development of the Autopilot autonomous driving system and the humanoid robot Optimus.

The second-generation Autopilot, a project he led from 2019 to 2022 and is now succeeded by the fourth-generation system, became an industry benchmark for autonomous driving technology in the global automotive sector.

Its defining feature was enabling autonomous driving using only proprietary semiconductors and camera-based vision analysis technology, without relying on chips or other technologies from semiconductor makers such as Nvidia.

Starting in 2022, Kovac also served as director of engineering for Optimus, applying vision-based end-to-end learning — a method in which AI learns at all stages from input to output — to humanoid development. After the successful test operation of the robot at factories, he was promoted to vice president in 2024.

“The transition to build & lead the Optimus group early 2022, when we had nothing but a couple Kuka arms arranged upside-down, was of another level for me,” Kovac wrote on X, formerly Twitter, in June last year, when announcing his resignation.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk also commented on the post, thanking Kovac for his contributions to Tesla over the past 10 years and saying that it was “an honor” to work with him.

Hyundai Motor Group Executive Chair Euisun Chung shows Boston Dynamics' quadruped robot Spot during a press conference in Las Vegas on Jan. 5, 2021. [NEWS1]

Kovac was born in Belgium and majored in electrical engineering at HELB-INRACI. He worked at Sony and SoftKinetic before joining Tesla in 2016, where he spent 10 years. He stated that he wanted to spend more time with his family when he left Tesla.

Hyundai Motor Group expects Kovac’s recruitment to accelerate the commercialization of Boston Dynamics' robotics innovations, including the quadrupedrobot Spot, the logistics robot Stretch and the humanoid Atlas.

“Boston Dynamics is an iconic company that has inspired a generation of technologists and is an integral part of America's robotics ecosystem,” Kovac said.

Kovac said that with Hyundai Motor Group’s strong industrial foundation, it is uniquely positioned to lead the robotics sector, adding that he looks forward to this journey of innovation.

Hyundai Motor Group has been bringing in global talent this year to strengthen its technological leadership. On Tuesday, it appointed Dr. Park Min-woo — who previously led vision-based autonomous driving at Tesla and Nvidia — as head of the Advanced Vehicle Platform (AVP) Division and CEO of 42dot, the Hyundai-owned mobility software arm.

Milan Kovac [HYUNDAI MOTOR GROUP]

“Rather than merely catching up and competing with rivals, we must build undeniable competitiveness based on creativity,” Chung said in his New Year’s message on Jan. 3.

With Tesla having unveiled a mass-production version of Optimus at CES this year, Hyundai Motor Group is expected to accelerate the development and mass production of physical AI and intelligent robots.

“Hyundai Motor Group has a competitive edge in that it possesses an industrial ecosystem where AI robotics technologies can be applied in real-world areas such as mobility, manufacturing, logistics and services,” an industry source said.

“The newly appointed adviser, Kovac, is a globally recognized innovator and leader in AI and robotics,” a Hyundai Motor Group spokesperson said. “Hyundai Motor Group and Boston Dynamics will further accelerate innovation and global competitiveness through AI-robotics convergence.”

This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom. BY KO SUK-HYUN [lim.jeongwon@joongang.co.kr]