HL Mando, the Tier 1 auto-parts arm of South Korea's HL Group, said on June 9 that General Motors has named it a 2025 Supplier of the Year in the brake control category — the sixth consecutive year it has won since 2020, and its 12th such award overall. For anyone tracking how Korean parts makers have embedded themselves in the U.S. auto supply chain, the durable streak is the story: GM hands the award to a sliver of its supplier base, and HL Mando keeps landing it on the strength of one increasingly important product.
GM announced this year's winners at its 34th annual Supplier of the Year ceremony, held in May in Austin, Texas. The award goes to a small fraction of GM's roughly 20,000 global suppliers; this year 103 companies from 14 countries were honored. GM evaluates suppliers on performance in areas including safety, innovation, and resilience, along with alignment to the automaker's values.
HL Mando was cited for its responsiveness and consistent quality management, and specifically for its Motor on Caliper (MoC) brake system. The company produces the MoC at a rate of 7.4 million units a year at its Alabama plant alone, a cornerstone of its North American supply chain that also feeds other automakers in the region.
How a Motor on Caliper Brake Replaces the Cable Handbrake
The reason the MoC keeps getting singled out is worth understanding, because it marks a shift in how a basic vehicle function is built. A traditional parking brake is mechanical: pulling a lever or pressing a pedal tugs a steel cable that clamps the rear brakes, and those cables are prone to seizing over time. An electronic parking brake replaces that with a motor and electronic control. The Motor on Caliper design — known in the industry as the caliper-integrated type — mounts the electric motor and a reduction-gear assembly directly onto the rear brake caliper.
When the driver presses a button, an electronic control unit signals the motor, whose torque is geared down and converted by a spindle into linear force that drives a nut against the brake piston, clamping the pads to hold the car. The cable disappears entirely, leaving one electrical connection and one hydraulic connection at the caliper. That integration is why the caliper-integrated design has become the dominant electronic parking brake architecture — it accounted for roughly 48 percent of the electronic parking brake market in 2024 and is the fastest-growing type, because it cuts weight, simplifies installation, and removes the seized-cable failure mode.
Why the Award Tracks the Shift to Software-Defined Vehicles
HL Mando describes itself as a software-defined-vehicle company, and the MoC sits on the path the whole industry is taking toward brake-by-wire — controlling braking electronically rather than through a purely mechanical or hydraulic link. That trajectory matters most for electric vehicles, where electronic braking can be blended with regenerative braking to recover kinetic energy into the battery and distribute braking force precisely to each wheel.
HL Mando is already a named player in the global brake-by-wire market alongside Bosch, Continental, ZF, and Brembo, and its own roadmap extends to a dry electro-mechanical brake that uses no hydraulic fluid at all. Seen that way, the repeat brake-control award is less a one-off accolade than a marker that GM is leaning on a supplier whose core product is moving in the same direction as its electric and software-defined vehicle programs.
A Localization Push That Began in 1996
The streak caps a long localization effort. HL Mando entered North America in 1996, establishing an R&D center in Michigan before opening its Alabama manufacturing plant, and won its first GM Supplier of the Year award in 2003. The company's Georgia plant was separately recognized this year with GM's 2025 Supplier Quality Excellence Award.
Jason (Jae-hyuk) Kim, who heads HL Mando's Americas region, credited the company's North American base strategy and said it would deepen cooperation with GM around the speed, resilience, innovation, and agility the automaker prioritizes.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a Motor on Caliper brake?
A Motor on Caliper (MoC) is a type of electronic parking brake that mounts an electric motor and reduction gears directly onto the rear brake caliper. It integrates the parking-brake function into the caliper itself, eliminating the traditional steel cable.
How does an electric parking brake work?
When the driver presses a button, an electronic control unit signals an electric motor at the wheel. The motor's torque is geared down and converted into linear force that clamps the brake pads to hold the vehicle, replacing the manual lever or pedal of a conventional handbrake.
What is GM's Supplier of the Year award?
It is an annual recognition General Motors gives to a small fraction of its roughly 20,000 global suppliers, evaluated on performance in areas such as safety, innovation, and resilience. This year GM honored 103 companies from 14 countries.
Why does the shift to brake-by-wire matter for electric vehicles?
Brake-by-wire controls braking electronically rather than through a purely mechanical link, which lets it blend friction braking with regenerative braking. That recovers kinetic energy into the battery and allows more precise braking force at each wheel, improving efficiency and stability.
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