Come next year, Hyundai will be releasing the next Santa Fe and the Tucson. While nobody has a clue on how the cars will look like, there are hints of them getting some designs from Lexus.
This can be seen with the Hyundai Nuvis concept, which made its first appearance at the 2009 New York Auto show. The Nuvis is a hybrid crossover and it is built to offer fuel economy and a futuristic design.
In detail, the Nuvis is equipped with a 270-watt battery that returns 34mpg on city driving and 35mpg on highways. The Hybrid Blue Drive system is very similar to Toyota’s Hybrid Synergy Drive as its engine gets it workload reduced by the electric motor. Speaking of which, the engine is a 228hp Theta 2 2.4L inline 4-cylinder that is mated to a 30kW electric motor.
The Theta 2 system is something revolutionary for Hyundai. The Korean carmaker has fine tuned it to be as fuel efficient as possible. The fourth, fifth and six gear on its automatic transmission have been extended to return better gas mileage when on highways.
On an average hybrid, the battery pack can cause the vehicle to be overweight. This isn’t the case for the Nuvis as the lithium-polymer material helps reduce weight while being durable at the same time. The Nuvis only weigh 3400pounds.
Aside from the Nuvis specification, it is the design that is going to shape the future of Hyundai’s crossover. When viewing the concept, one can see that the front grille looks inspired by the Lexus NX. The front of the Nuvis concept resembles the Lexus design cues, and we could see it coming with the next Santa Fe and/or Tucson.
Then again, it is still too early to confirm anything. We will update you once Hyundai unveils both compact crossovers at the end of this year.
