Hyundai Santa Fe PHEV confirmed for Australia

Hyundai Australia has confirmed it wants the Santa Fe EREV – the Korean car-maker’s first extended-range electric vehicle outside China. But the wait for right-hand drive supply means Australian buyers are unlikely to see it before 2028.

Revealed at Hyundai’s 2026 CEO Investor Day, the Santa Fe EREV promises a combined driving range of almost 1000km and goes on sale in North America in the first half of 2027.

Hyundai Australia’s PR general manager Bill Thomas left little doubt about the local operation’s appetite for the EREV or PHEV technology.

“Yes we’re keen to take it as soon as we can get it,” he told carsales.

That enthusiasm is easy to understand. An EREV uses its petrol engine solely as a generator to top up the battery, never sending drive to the wheels.

This makes it behave like a full EV without the range anxiety – handy in a country where the drive between capital cities is measured in days, not hours.

Hyundai says the Santa Fe EREV will travel approximately 966km between stops using dual electric motors and a new generation of in-house battery cells, which the company claims deliver more than double the output of its previous high-nickel cells while cutting charging time by 40 per cent.

What Hyundai won’t do is put a date on an Australian launch.

“No timelines are confirmed at this time,” a Hyundai spokesperson told carsales.

The hold-up is geography. Production is locked in at Hyundai Motor Manufacturing Alabama in the United States, a plant that builds left-hand drive vehicles for North America.

Any right-hand drive version would need to be sourced from Korea or Europe, and neither has been publicly confirmed at this stage.

Factor in the usual lag between a North American launch and right-hand drive production, and 2028 shapes as the realistic earliest window for Australian showrooms.

In the meantime the Santa Fe is sold here with petrol and hybrid power. There is also plenty riding on the technology beyond this one SUV, with a luxury Genesis EREV claiming 1030km already confirmed and Hyundai’s newly announced body-on-frame ute widely tipped to use a version of the same set-up.

Join the conversation at our Facebook page
Or email us at editor@carsales.com.au