Hyundai Tucson Hybrid hopes boosted

The chances of the Hyundai Tucson Hybrid being launched in Australia to rival the top-selling Toyota RAV4 are growing as a campaign to begin production in Korea shows signs of success.

Currently the 2021 Hyundai Tucson Hybrid is only built in Europe, effectively negating a profitable business case for Australia.

But Hyundai Australia admits the chances of Korean assembly and a 2022 local launch are legitimate.

“It’s proving quite challenging and something we are still working on,” said Hyundai Australia product boss Andrew Tuitahi.

“I think I can see some light at the end of the tunnel, so hopefully we can make an announcement about the viability of that car soon.”

Hyundai is hungrily eyeing the significant sales Toyota accrues from the petrol-electric version of its RAV4 mid-size SUV.

Year to date, the RAV4  has sold 22,704 examples to be the segment leader, with the hybrid accounting for around 60 per cent of those sales.

The Tucson, which landed in its radically-styled fourth generation only in May, sits fifth in the category on 7491 sales.

However, monthly numbers are trending upwards and the Tucson has also just been named carsales’ Best Mid-Size SUV for 2021.

The current Australian Tucson line-up comprises seven models spanning 2.0-litre petrol front-wheel drive, 1.6-litre turbo-petrol all-wheel drive and 2.0-litre turbo-diesel AWD variants.

Pricing ranges from $34,500 to $52,000, plus on-road costs.

The hybrid is powered by a 170kW/350Nm 1.6-litre four-cylinder turbo-petrol engine and a 44.2kW electric motor supported by a 1.49kWh lithium-ion polymer battery.

The RAV4 Hybrid is available in two forms – a 160kW 2.5-litre petrol-electric hybrid powertrain in 2WD guise, with a slight boost to 163kW for AWD variants.

“Tucson [hybrid] is still under study and is very challenging for us,” Tuitahi said. “The opportunity we have to take the car right now is to source it from Europe.

“That’s the only factory we have that makes the car in right-hand drive.

“But there are many challenges on that front. It’s a shorter wheelbase for one, so if you option the hybrid you get a  smaller car. We’ve [also] got import duty, exchange rate challenges and almost triple the freight costs.

“So it just doesn’t stack up as a business model. So the task we are working on at the moment is how we can get that car built in a Korean factory.”

There is also a plug-in hybrid version of the Tucson but plans for that are nowhere near as advanced as the regular series/parallel hybrid, Tuitahi said.

While Hyundai Australia continues to work on the Tucson, the larger Hyundai Santa Fe Hybrid is definitely on its way, albeit delayed until early 2022. 

“We were hoping to have it for start of production Q3 this year but had a  couple of delays with the model year on that car, so we will see that come through right at the end of the year,” he said.

“Cars will be arriving in early 2022.”

The Santa Fe Hybrid will bolster one of the strongest local electrified line-ups that already includes the IONIQ range of hybrid, plug-in hybrid and EV models, the Kona electric, the all-new IONIQ 5 that launches in the final quarter of 2021 and the Nexo fuel-cell electric vehicle.