Long-Range Luxury Electrical Car Coming From Hyundai In 2021
This electrified car story about Hyundai was very first published on Gas2.
A lot of people were clucking their tongues earlier this week when Hyundai announced it will bring a fresh fuel cell–powered SUV to market next year. The as yet unnamed vehicle makes use of more efficient 4th generation fuel cell technology with more power and lighter weight than the unit used in the current Tucson FCEV. But what about an electrical car from Hyundai?
2017 Hyundai Genesis Sedan
Fear not, electrical car paramours. Now Hyundai says it will have eight all-electric car models on sale in the next few years and will bring an electrified version of its fresh Kona SUV to market in 2018. It also says an as yet unnamed luxury electrical sedan with more than three hundred miles of range will be ready by 2021. The sedan will be marketed as part of the Genesis premium brand lineup. No sketches or photos of the proposed car have been released yet.
Hyundai is placing bets across the entire automotive spectrum. Together with Kia, it offers the Ioniq/Niro twins in three versions — an advanced hybrid, a plug-in hybrid, and a fully electrical car. The Ioniq is a five door hatchback sedan while the Niro is an SUV. The Kona is also a petite crossover SUV. It is designed to go head to head with the cars that are smack dab in the middle of the best segment of the automotive market today, cars like the Honda CR-V, Toyota RAV4, Subaru Forester, and Mazda CX-5, among others – cars that are often known as “lovely utes” or “soft roaders.”
How the Kona electrical will differ from the Kia Niro electrified is unclear. Both cars show up to have similar dimensions and appearance. No matter, Hyundai isn’t frightened. Clever styling, excellent reliability, a long warranty, and favorable quality ratings from Consumer Reports and JD Power have combined to make Hyundai/Kia the 5th largest car company in the world. Hyundai says it will have eight fully electrical cars on the road within a few years.
The premium Genesis electrical sedan is obviously being groomed to take on the Tesla Model S – a tall order for any manufacturer. It will be the very first car from the South Korean automaker built from the ground up to be electrified and nothing but electrified. Its current specifications match up well against the Model S, but Tesla will certainly have moved the goalposts by the time two thousand twenty one gets here.
Whether any manufacturer will be able to get out ahead of the Silicon Valley juggernaut is something we will have to wait to find out, but Hyundai is casting a broad enough net that it should have something for every taste and budget, a claim Tesla will not be able to make for fairly some time to come.