Hyundai wants the 2021 Tucson to be a game-changer

Hyundai is pulling out all the stops to make the next-generation Tucson a game-changer. The company pledged to deliver a smart, stylish, and well-built model that will stand out from its rivals on paper, in the metal, and from behind the driver’s seat.

“It’s very interesting visually, it’s going to appeal to a very broad audience, I think. Probably the biggest shift for the car is going to be style and design,” predicted Andrew Tuatahi, the South Korean company’s product planning manager, in an interview with Australian website Which Car.

He explained his team benchmarked the bigger, more expensive Santa Fe when they selected the materials that will be used to build the Tucson, so it should feel nicer than the current model. It will also benefit from the latest round of in-car technology, including entertainment-oriented features, and it will receive new safety equipment like an airbag mounted between the front passengers. 

Tuatahi didn’t reveal what the Tucson will look like, but spy shots show a more evocative design that follows the path blazed by recent additions to the Hyundai range, like the Palisade and the aforementioned Santa Fe. The grille is wider, shorter, and it underlines the headlights. It seemingly borrows styling cues from its bigger siblings without copying them. Hyundai wants to avoid the Russian doll approach to styling at all costs to give each nameplate its own design identity.

While technical specifications remain under wraps, Hyundai will almost certainly make an electrified powertrain available on the Tucson. It likely won’t be fully electric; a hybrid is a safer bet. Non-electrified options will return, and we might even see a sportier model spiked by Hyundai’s go-fast N division. Rivals like Ford and Volkswagen have shown there’s an appetite for hotter crossovers.

The next Hyundai Tucson is scheduled to make its debut in 2020, meaning it won’t arrive on our shores until the 2021 model year. Additional information about the model will emerge in the coming months. When it lands, it will compete in the same hot compact crossover segment as the perennially popular Toyota RAV4.