2002 Hyundai Sonada 5 Speed on 2040-cars

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Genesis bringing an EV concept and G90 to New York Auto Show

It's official, the entire Hyundai Group has plans for the New York Auto Show. During the Hyundai Sonata press launch in South Korea, design head Luc Donckerwolke told Roadshow "You'll have an electric show car for Genesis." This year will be the charm for Genesis and EVs, after showing the GV80 SUV concept and its hydrogen fuel cell powertrain in 2017, and the electric Essentia coupe concept last year. We will also see the production version of the U.S. market Genesis G90 and its mongo grille. The premium brand's debuts will join the new Sonata sedan and Venue crossover, and an as-yet-unnamed Kia show car expected to be our version of the SP Signature concept potentially called Tusker. Hyundai-Kia isn't getting its electric razzle dazzle ready for New York alone. Auto Express reports the group is working on a new electric car platform to serve the carmaker the same way Volkswagen's MEB architecture serves the German group's brands. At the moment, the only four EVs in the South Korean automaker's range are the Hyundai Kona and Ioniq, and the Kia e-Niro and Soul. They are all built on ICE platforms, the Kona and e-Niro still proving popular enough for this year's planned UK-market production to sell out already. According to a "company insider," the dedicated EV platform is around two years away and will focus on B- and C-segment cars. That's the same year that Genesis is expected to have its EV ready, but unless the luxury arm has plans to dip its grille into C-segment waters, Genesis likely has other EV platform plans. By 2025, Hyundai and Kia have said they'll have 14 EVs in the combined lineup as part of 38 electrified offerings. Whatever's on the way could prove far more radical than today's offerings. Donckerwolke told Auto Express that in order to attract the future EV buyers that aren't necessarily car people, "[You] have to ask whether you want science fiction or whether you want to conform. We can create something that doesn't appeal to someone in the traditional sense." If the head designer gets his way, 3D-printing will help whip up those attractions. Last year's Essentia concept showed off 3D-printed carbon fiber ornament, but the potential goes much further.

2014 Hyundai Equus

A Lesson In How To Out-Lexus The LS
I think that the new BMW 4 Series is an attractive coupe. The design is a little bit on the wrong side of "fussy" I'll grant you, and I don't particularly care for the look of the scalloped, black-bordered vents on the fender sides - functional though they may be. But for the most part, I find the coupe to be pretty pleasing to look at.
You all, by and large, do not care for the 4 Series. (For the sake of constructing my intellectual argument, I'm going to make the ridiculous statistical assumption that the 140 or so comments on our 4 Series First Drive provide a representative opinion of our readership as a whole.) In the first 24 hours after we published our review of the car, you felt moved to comment that it was "ugly," "REALLY ugly" and "a disappointment" among other, less reprintable statements of ardor.

Hyundai spotted testing Prius-style hybrid

The Toyota Prius has become an automotive icon – maybe less so among actual automotive enthusiasts than with the public at large – to the extent that most anyone on the street would recognize its five-door hatchback form and immediately identify it as a hybrid. Little wonder that Honda tried to emulate it with the second-gen Insight, but while that didn't work out so well for Honda, it looks like Hyundai is preparing to go down the same road with a dedicated hybrid of its own. Our paparazzi on the ground in the Arctic Circle have spotted this protoytpe and tell us what we're looking at is a new Prius-fighter from the Korean automaker. Snapped up high on a transporter truck, you can see the orange high-voltage cables underneath and a label with the letters AE HEV – the latter standing, of course, for Hybrid Electric Vehicle. We wouldn't be surprised if the AE stood for Advanced Experimental or Alternative Energy or something of the sort. Tipped to be based on the same platform as the next-generation Elantra, the new Hyundai hybrid is said to pack a 1.6-liter inline-four working in parallel with an electric motor juiced by a lithium-ion battery pack. It's expected to begin production in the second half of 2016, with a plug-in and possibly other variants to follow a year to a year and a half after its initial launch.