Hyundai Motor Group has appointed over the past few days two ex-Tesla engineers to work on its autonomous projects.
The South Korean automaker said Friday it appointed Milan Kovac, a former Tesla executive, as a group adviser and outside director at robotics subsidiary Boston Dynamics.
Kovac joined Tesla in 2016 and became the director of Optimus and Autopilot Engineering in 2022.
He was VP of Engineering and the head of the Optimus program by the time he exited the company in mid-2025.
Leaving Tesla
In June 2025, Kovac wrote on X that he was leaving Tesla.
“This week, I’ve had to make the most difficult decision of my life and will be moving out of my position. I’ve been far away from home for too long, and will need to spend more time with family abroad,” he wrote.
The executive said he wanted “to make it clear that this is the only reason, and has absolutely nothing to do with anything else.”
Kovac thanked CEO Elon Musk in the post, adding, “Elon, you’ve taught me to discern signal from noise, hardcore resilience, and many fundamental principles of engineering. I am forever grateful. Tesla will win, I guarantee you that.”
Hours later, the engineer clarified on the replies of the post, “(Seems like I was somewhat confusing: I’ll have to travel back and forth more often, but there’s no way I leave this beautiful country anytime soon 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸)”
Boston Dynamics
In a statement published by Hyundai, the company says it is “strengthening its technology leadership and driving a paradigm shift in the industry by appointing a global expert as an advisor, leveraging the convergence of AI and robotics.”
Kovac will contribute to strategic discussions across the company’s portfolio of robotics platforms, which includes Spot, Stretch, Orbit and Atlas.
The Atlas humanoid was unveiled last week during CES 2026 in Las Vegas.
The company aims to build a factory capable of manufacturing 30,000 robot units annually by 2028.
The robot is designed for commercial deployment in industrial settings, with production scheduled to begin “immediately” as the company seeks to rival Tesla‘s humanoid Optimus.
Robotics Push
Tesla aims to scale ‘Optimus’ manufacturing to around 4 million units per year by the end of 2027, with a long-term vision of building a massive 10 million-unit-per-year line at its factory in Giga Texas.
In China, XPeng released its first-generation ‘IRON’ humanoid robot, with “more than 60 joints and 200 degrees of freedom” and technology shared from the brand’s EV models.
The Guangzhou-based company recently unveiled the Next-Gen ‘IRON.’ Production is scheduled for later this year.
42dot
Earlier this week, Hyundai appointed former Nvidia VP and Tesla’s first computer vision engineer, Park Min-woo, to lead its autonomous driving and software-defined vehicle programs.
Park, who will be CEO of 42dot, will “contribute to the company leading the next generation of intelligent mobility and becoming a global innovation standard,” he stated.
He spent more than eight years at Nvidia, where he most recently served as Vice-President responsible for bridging Nvidia Research and autonomous vehicle development.
Before joining Nvidia, Park was an engineer at Tesla between 2015 and 2017. He described himself as “the first official computer vision engineer at Tesla.”
His work contributed to the development of Tesla Vision, the camera-based perception system underlying the company’s driver assistance technology.
