Green light for Eco-Hyundais?

Hyundai just possibly stole the limelight from Mercedes-Benz, Citroen, Peugeot and Toyota at last week’s Frankfurt motor show. The Korean maker displayed a broad range of eco-sensitive cars, broad enough to make the other car companies green -- with envy.

In fact, Hyundai had more low-cost, green cars and concepts than the company had floor space to show them all. The Elantra LPI Hybrid on the floor for the Tuesday opening was mysteriously whisked away the very next day -- its place taken by an i20 with LPG.

So, by our count, there was the aforementioned Elantra LPI Hybrid, which we know is being tested in Australia currently. There was the i20 LPG model, which is not a hybrid, but it will run on our favourite alternate fuel and just might be a sensible, low-cost model the company could introduce here also -- as a vanguard for the entire i20 range.

Then there was the i10 Electric (pictured in blue), a battery/electric vehicle; plus the i30 BlueDrive powered by an 85kW 1.6-litre diesel developing 255Nm. For Hyundai, the i10 sparky is a toe in the water, says the company's global PR Director, Oles Roman Gadacz.

"This is such a big paradigm shift that we feel a lot more testing needs to be done of the electric powertrain," he told the Carsales Network.

"The battery is the big weakness in the chain and we, as a company are rather conservative. We leave it to others like Nissan and Mitsubishi to go where angels fear to tread. But we realise that electrification of the powertrain is a happening thing, it's a part of the future, but we're slow-pedalling on that.

"The i10 Electric is something that's going into fleet testing, with government agencies and utility companies. There's a lot of things we don't know about these cars, about the usage patterns, about the form of infrastructure that's needed. So we're putting them into a very controlled environment and we're going to study very carefully how they behave through four-season testing.

"I don't suppose we would see a pure electric car on sale for at least another two or three years."

Gadacz confirmed that the i20 LPG car on the stand was a conventional car that just happened to run on LPG, not an LPI hybrid model, although he did say that Hyundai had toyed with a prototype LPG hybrid Getz in the past.

"It never went into production... and there are no current plans to put an i20 [LPG] hybrid into production," he said.

Gadacz was also quite confident that the Elantra LPI Hybrid can cope with Australia's unique blend of LPG.

"It'll work," he said. "These cars are calibrated to run on varying mixes."

The cars are based on production models, but Hyundai also had the Blue-Will plug-in Hybrid concept, which debuted at the Seoul motor show earlier this year, and the iX Metro mild hybrid crossover SUV making its world premiere in Frankfurt.

The former is powered by a 1.6-litre direct-injection petrol engine developing 112kW of power and an electric motor producing 100kW. Both drive sources run through a Continuously Variable Transmission, just as Toyota's Prius does. And like the current Prius, the Blue Will features a solar cell-powered cooling fan for the interior.

Yet another thing in common with the Prius (the Plug-In model specifically, when that arrives), is the Blue Will's lithium-ion batteries. These batteries can be recharged for the car to run in electric-only mode around town. Electric-only range for this vehicle is 64km and the company also claims an effective fuel consumption of 2.2L/100km.

The concept, codenamed HND-4, is a testbed for all sorts of technological advances, not just fuel efficiency. For example, it employs recycled PET and bioplastics for interior and exterior parts.

The iX Metro is a mild hybrid based around a small-capacity (1.0-litre) turbodiesel engine driving through a six-speed dual-clutch transmission. Hyundai makes the claim that it will emit just 80g/km of CO2 and use 3.3L/100km of fuel. The engine develops 92kW and the electric motor's 5kW bolsters the total power output. It's not a car designed to run on electric power alone.

What electric motive power there is, complements the performance from the internal combustion engine, allowing Hyundai to opt for a smaller-displacement engine that will use less fuel most of the time.

According to Gadacz, the iX Metro is a foretaste of an SUV to slot in underneath the new ix35.

"This [iX Metro] is maybe something that could be our future ix25 -- something smaller than the Tucson, something that would be acceptable in American and European environments in terms of CO2 acceptability.

"It's packed to the gills with future technologies; it's very much on our list for future production."

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