No hybrid on horizon for Hyundai Palisade

HYUNDAI’S comprehensively revised Palisade large SUV has now arrived in Australia, but there’s one thing missing from the big three-row wagon’s spec sheet that could have otherwise helped it secure a greater chunk of segment sales: an electrified powertrain.

“We’re evaluating hybrids for every model in the range,” said Hyundai Motor Company Australia [HMCA’s] head of product and future business, Andrew Tuitahi.

“There’s definitely an opportunity there, and when the option presents itself to us, we’ll bring hybrids to market”.

However the option has yet to present itself – the Palisade in its current form was never engineered for any great degree of electrification.

Asked if the Palisade could eventually be offered with a hybrid or even a fully-electric powertrain, Tuitahi was clear: “Not in this generation – that’s all I can say for now”.

The Palisade is currently built in South Korea for a range of global markets, principally North America (the hulking SUV is named for the glamorous Pacific Palisades neighbourhood in Los Angeles), with Australia being the only right-hand drive destination for the car.

Curiously, despite considerable uptake of hybrids and EVs in the state of California, a hybrid variant of the Palisade is not available anywhere. 

In Australia, the range is offered with a 2.2-litre turbo-diesel or 3.8-litre naturally-aspirated petrol V6, both of which are expected to soldier on in Australia until the Palisade’s replacement.

Before it retires, though, two new additions to the HMCA line-up will give the company some electrified options in the large SUV space.

The first will be the long-awaited Santa Fe hybrid, which was originally slated to have arrived in local showrooms by now but has been set back by production delays. Now set to launch before the end of this year, the Santa Fe hybrid will give HMCA a direct rival to Toyota’s popular Kluger hybrid.

Following the Santa Fe hybrid, and potentially arriving before the end of 2023, will be a more electron-centric offering. 

“Ioniq 7 will be our first large SUV electric vehicle”, confirmed Hyundai PR manager Guido Schenken, referring to the high-riding three-row all-electric SUV that will be built atop the same E-GMP pure-EV platform as the Ioniq 5 and recently-revealed Ioniq 6, and will be a platform partner to Kia’s upcoming EV9. 

When it was revealed in concept form last year as the “Seven”, Hyundai’s purely-electric large SUV was showcased as a rolling living room with an abundance of cabin space, no B-pillars, no steering wheel, suicide doors and rotating armchairs for allow passengers to face each other as the car drove itself. 

Most of those features are unlikely to translate to the production car (expect a steering wheel, at the very least), but the Seven concept’s notional single-charge range of 480km gives a good idea of where the Ioniq 7 will sit when it comes to battery performance.

The production-spec Ioniq 7 remains under wraps, but preview images have shown a shadowy silhouette of the car that suggest the general form and many of its more obvious features, like its headlamp graphic, will be faithful to the concept car. 

And with the incoming Santa Fe providing a partially-electrified large SUV to complement the all-electric Ioniq 7, one can understand while HMCA isn’t really sweating the absence of an electron-enhanced Palisade. It arguably won’t need one.