2021 Hyundai Tucson Hybrid - As good as any German rival ! [Road Test and Review]

hey guys and welcome to petrol ped now then would you believe it is now seven weeks since i collected the hyundai tucson self-charging hybrid behind me from hendy's in pool i honestly can't believe that time has gone that quickly i've just been so busy with so many things on i haven't had the opportunity to film my first review of the car so in this video i'm gonna combine two things a review of the car and my general impressions from seven weeks of ownership and best part of 2 000 miles of driving [Music] now then before we get looking at the car obvious statement time that is a self charging hybrid so no need for one of these or even just the three pin granny charger unlike the kia sorrento plug-in hybrid that i had before the tucson and one of the things i want to explore in this video is that difference between the two types of hybrid plug-in hybrid self-charging hybrid seems obvious but plenty to talk about now let me show you around some of my favorite features of the tucson now first thing i want to say about this car is i think it's a really good looking car and no offense hyundai but it's miles better looking than the car it replaced which let's face it wasn't really a looker but i like this car because it's interesting and different and quirky so i'm going to talk you around the outside some of my favorite features there's a couple of things i'm not so keen on as well then we'll jump inside and have a look at the interior which again is a massive step change for hyundai in terms of quality and fit out we'll have a chat about practicality and then we'll take it for a drive up my favorite bit of road around here and we'll talk about what it's like to drive and the experiences i've had in it in the couple of thousand miles i've done first up though is the front end because i think the front end is cool and why is it cool look at that grill i love it because you can't actually tell where the headlights are they are basically in these four pieces down here and they just meld into the front grille now i must admit one of the challenges with having cars in the summer time is i haven't actually driven this car in the dark so i can't tell you what these headlights are like in terms of enabling you to see at night time it was the same for the kia sorento someone asked what are the headlights like on the sorrento or simply i don't know because i didn't drive it at night time you've also got some more auxiliary lights down here but just the front end of the car it's just different i've not seen another car like it it's not the easiest front end to keep clean you get lots of squashed bugs and flies and these kind of grill is a little bit complicated to keep clean but i like it it's different it's quirky very cool let's head around the side of the car there's something around the side i love and something i'm really not that keen on now i do like the side profile of the new tucson i like the aggressive lines around the front and rear wheels i love these creases in the body work it it's an interesting kind of thing i can i can imagine it's not for everybody and i really love the rear quarter as we come up here these details around the lights so side profile wise i think it's spot on the bit i'm not so keen on interestingly it's the same kind of body styling as my mini is these black or kind of dark gray plastics on the sills and around the wheel arches because they are a nightmare to keep clean this is a new car and i'm already struggling to keep them clean i did however on my travels see an n line specification tucson with these in the body color which looked really smart actually and i think if i was opting for one of these i would be very tempted with doing that the side profile wise love it really like the wheel design as well take a wander around the back because things get even better at the back of the car so i like the front i'm really keen on the side profile but for me my favorite view of the new tucson is this rear view i just think it's on the money um as i've mentioned i love this kind of little bit of brushed aluminium detailing here but i love the rear tail lights the way this hyundai badge is into the kind of rear glass i love the little exhaust exit there it just it just looks smart and neat and new and fresh i like it a lot but the big question is how big is the boot and can you get two dogs in it ah yes i think we can hello you two so yes safe to say you can get two dogs in the back of this in fact we were on holiday last week we got four schnauzers in this boot so there's loads and loads of room in here for pups and there's plenty of room in here i haven't tried to get my bike in but i'm pretty confident i'll be able to get my bike in i'd probably need to take the front wheel off again that's just because i've got a rather large frame size and a very high saddle but yeah loads and loads of room would you two girls like to go and play go on so yes loads of room there's also a really nice underfloor storage area as well you can drop the seats down they split three different ways it's just a super practical little car this but how much legroom is there in the back for the human occupants we've seen that pups will fit let's see if i will so first up compared with the sorrento clearly the tucson's a smaller car so the legroom in here is a little bit less but it's still it's still pretty impressive to be honest and this seats a long way back now you can sit three passengers in this rear compartment however i'd really say there are two main seats this middle seat is more of an emergency seat and the seat belt actually in the roof i've never seen one of these before there are two clips in the middle and you basically clip it in like that or like yeah like that definitely luckily there's instructions but i've never seen that before so yeah i think two adults uh definitely in comfort three if it was an emergency journey you've got a little kind of drinks holder and arm rest you've got air conditioning you've got a couple of usb chargers it's super comfy in here if it gets too sunny you even got to pull up sunblind and this full-length panoramic roof gives you lots and lots of light but for me the interior of this car we need to get in the front because that's where it starts to get really interesting now then i'm going to say something a little bit controversial here hyundai interiors of the past weren't that great they were filled with kind of cheap end materials lots of scratchy plastics the ergonomics weren't necessarily that great and the technology wasn't particularly great either and they certainly weren't somewhere where i'd sit and go this is a really nice interior i'd like to do lots and lots of miles that my friends that is the past this interior is right up there for me it's it's got lots of premium materials in it these seats look great they're very very comfortable the steering wheel has a beautiful leather covering and it just feels nice in the hand the dash looks great it's got it's not it's not horrible scratchy plastics it's got this lovely kind of speaker material running around the top lots of gloss black trim a bit of a magnet for fingerprints but on the whole it's just a really really nice place now this is the the top spec tucson so it's got lots and lots of toys in it let me just fire the car up and all of the displays will come to life and you get lots of bings and bongs which are a little bit annoying um one of the things um so you've got everything driven by this this uh touch screen there now you do have apple carplay and android auto sadly you need a wire so i've just been plugging in my iphone and then you fire up apple carplay and away you go and i drive everything through that pretty much um so there are some well they're real buttons but they're not they're kind of the flat haptic type buttons along here uh i've got a range of buttons down here now really nicely these seats are both heated and cooled so they've got vented cooled seats it's really quite amusing mrs petroped doesn't like them at all and then the one thing i'm not a big fan of um is the controls to put the car into its different driving gears so ford reverse and neutral i would much rather have some kind of gear stick or gear lever rather than just these buttons i'm not a big fan at all you kind of almost have to get into the habit of when you select a gear you just need to make sure you check the dash to make sure it's in that gear before you move off because it's quite easy to either not be in the gear you want be in neutral when you think you're in a drive gear it also sometimes has a bit of a div because you'll put it in drive and if the parking brake isn't off it won't move and you move the parking brake to the off position and it still doesn't move and it's just it just confuses itself sometimes it's a self-charging hybrid so you'll hear the engines just fired up and we'll talk more about that when we get out and about driving but all in all as a cabin it's a really really super place to be it's got all the toys that i would want and i like it a great deal so i think we get some cameras set up and we take it for a bit of a drive because the drivetrain in this car this plug-in hybrid a relatively small petrol engine and an electrical hybrid system and apologies for that because that that is a merlin engine in a spitfire literally flying over the house [Music] i think you probably enjoyed the merlin more than the sound of this ticking over let's get some cameras set up go for a drive [Music] now then when you start driving this car the very first thing you need to do is push the button on the steering wheel to turn off the lane departure assistance because it's really annoying i understand why lots of modern-day cars have it as a safety feature however i just just you should be able to turn it off completely off um because every time you start the car and you have to get in it and turn it it just becomes an annoyance and honestly if if you're driving a car and you have to have the car warn you when you're leaving your lane and pull you back in again my question whether you should be driving at all anyway let's put that to one side a minor gripe of mine it's not just this car that does that by the way it's most modern cars and that you get in interesting the polestar 2 that i drove a couple of months ago you could turn that off in the main um settings and then it literally stayed off which is much much better so let's start talking through this car first things first it's a self-charging hybrid so there's no plugging in you just get in it and drive it like a normal car which i know for many people you could almost think of this as like a gateway drug if you like to full ev going from a pure internal combustion engine car so kind of that halfway house that stepping stone to being a pure eevee you don't need to charge it up you don't get range anxiety worst case scenario is if you run out of petrol you go to the petrol station and you fill the car up what you can't do however although as it happens it's currently running on pure ev as an electric vehicle now the engine's kicked in the transition between the electric and the engine is is super super smooth there's no button in here there's no mode where i can force it to being an electric car so i guess the for me the first downside if you compare it to the plug-in hybrid sorrento is that had a pure ev range of sort of 25 to 30 miles in the real world you plug it in that means you could drive to the local shops and back as an electric vehicle and never actually use the petrol engine in this car that's not the case um you can't really if you like choose when it's going to go ev i've now come into a 30 limit i came this way on purpose and the car is now running as a pure electric car the battery state charge shows me just over half of my battery pack and i'm running as an eevee i'm being you know no polar bears being killed at the moment but the second i push that throttle a little bit harder or want to accelerate a little bit more the car will make that decision for me and it will change me into running as a petrol and electric combination or just petrol on its own depending what i'm doing so yeah safe to say you'll be in ev mode for town driving creeping traffic driving away from your home in the morning but as soon as you want to push on a little bit then you're going to drop into hybrid mode and the car is reasonably pokey but i need to kind of get this out there right away this is not a car that you would buy if you were interested in lots of spirited driving it's really not what it's intended to do it's not that it isn't nippy that you can't you know overtake stuff and make progress it's just it's not a car that you would drive if you were wanting a car purely for the enjoyment of driving which is kind of one of my primary reasons for buying a car however what it is really really good at is dispatching miles in comfort it's really really good at that the only challenge with pushing on dispatching mars in comfort is if you want to do a lot of aggressive accelerating and that kind of thing for me the little engine up front the little 1.6 petrol engine is found wanting a little bit especially on these uphill gradients the car kind of doesn't really know and it's can you hear that hangs onto the gears a lot you can change them with the paddles if you want to just to put the engine out of its misery a little bit but it does often sound like the car's really struggling in terms of pulling the the car along when you want to when you want to push on a little bit especially if there's an uphill gradient hello i'm not going to be keeping up with him but you can go to the paddles you can play with the gearbox but [Music] you're not going to be having as much fun as the guy in that ferrari that's for sure but that's not to say it's not a fun car to drive down a twisty road it's got very good road manners again if i'm comparing to the sorrento it's just that little bit smaller size for me and tracy it's certainly the size we would prefer the sorrento was a huge car big 7c suv this this is that next size down suv it's just got that little bit smaller footprint you can place it more easily on the road it's just easier in town driving it's easier when you get to a car park and you want to park it in a car park space so all in all it's an easier car to live with brakes are pretty good clearly when you put your foot on the brakes you're um recharging the on-board battery so self-charging hybrid the name suggests what it does so in eco mode you've got a display on the dash that's showing you what what cycle the car is in whether you're powering the car using the engine whether you're recharging the batteries which is typically on liftoff and on braking when you're coasting downhill that type of thing and the battery typically stays in a state sort of half charge maybe a little bit more than half charge i don't think i've ever seen it at full charge actually i can only imagine that would happen if you went down a really really long hill and you're on the brakes all the time but if you wanted to make a bit more progress to have a bit more fun there is a dynamic mode so i can just move this little button here there's a dramatic change in colors on the instrument binacle and i'm now in sport mode everything's turned red and it should be just that little bit more pokey it doesn't really make a great deal of difference if i'm honest it doesn't feel it doesn't feel that more sprightly i've driven this car for much of the time i've had it in um in eco mode because that's all i've been doing um but it's not a sports car guys but it's a brilliant car for dispatching miles that's for sure so what about fuel economy plug-in hybrids the manufacturers of plug-in hybrids quote mpg figures up in the triple figures you know 150 200 miles to the gallon but they're calculated on one of these um wltp cycles that includes lots of different styles of driving and in normal conditions i don't think i've ever had a plug-in hybrid car that's got anywhere near the manufacturer's stated mpg the sorrento i had whoa can you actually see me ferrari corner again the sorrento i had you know i was getting early 40s in that on a long journey on short trips into town and back you could get into the into three figures because you were running predominantly on the electric engine on the electric motor you could force the car into that this one you can't force the car into ev but in terms of fuel economy it's it's healthy i've been averaging kind of 42 43 44 miles to the gallon irrespective of the kind of driving i've been doing whether that's on a long motorway cruise type journey or on a short journey to the shops i don't think that's too bad to be honest range-wise you can get you know 400 miles to a tank of fuel you don't have to worry about charging it up when you get to your destination you don't have to worry about range anxiety and i like that i like that a lot so what do i think of the tucson self-charging hybrid it's a very very impressive car and and i always use mrs petroped as a benchmark when she first got in the car a bit of a brand snob i guess i'm not sure and then again very similar to when we had the sorrento after she'd been driving it for about an hour i said come on and tell me what do you think when which is a really really good car i mean it's it feels solidly built this one has a squeaky sunroof which is a little bit annoying that's the only thing and the other thing it has is the the the sun shade that covers the sunroof is super super sensitive you have to hardly touch it otherwise you open the sunroof and that's really really annoying so you know let's get the small annoying things out the way first of all in terms of living with the car it's just a brilliant car for what i use 60 to 70 of the time when i need to do lots of miles to get to a location or to go and you know visit friends it's brilliant you can sit in here you can connect your phone you've got access to all your apps and streaming of music and podcasts it's super super comfortable you've got nice heated and vented seats and it gives you you know 43 44 miles to the gallon it's it's good fuel economy when you get to a tight and twisty road i wouldn't suggest it's by any means disappointing it's just not exciting and there's a big difference between those two but i guess this is a family bus right you you buy this car um to to move things and stuff around in terms of money from 28 to 38 000 pounds depending on the spec of tucson you choose for me that's that's good good money i think i think that's a really really good value proposition for people and you need to look past the badge and i think hyundai with things like the i30n the new i20 n which i'm very much looking forward to driving at some point in the near future you know they're changing people's perceptions of them i guess much like skoda did 30 years ago and i think now they are on people's radar for a good car a good option as a car you know five year warranty good pricing sensible pricing the thing i like about them as well they come with everything on them you know there's very little options lists when you buy a hyundai they're just they're just basically loaded and that's one of the ways that they get their pricing down if you have the small amounts of variance in the manufacturing process so there aren't like 101 different model ranges it means you get economies of scale it means you can make things cheaper and that means you can pass that on to the end purchaser so it's a really smart clever idea it also means that availability of models is easier so if you go into a hyundai dealership and say i want a tucson self-charging hybrid they're all pretty much the kind of same so they can get access to them much much more quickly so yeah i like it very much massive thanks to hindi hyundai of pool i've been practicing saying that one um for the car i mean we're in the process of just working out what my next uh hindi ambassador car is going to be but i should be getting that within the next couple of weeks i think so my time with the tucson is coming to an end very very shortly and i've enjoyed it very much i'd love to know what you think of this car um i know a few of you have reached out said when are you going to do the review pet because i've got one on order or i'm thinking of buying one well if you are thinking of buying one or you are thinking of going and having a look at one i would strongly recommend you do because they're a really really good car anyway hope you enjoyed that if you have done so please give me a thumbs up comments below are always welcome and if you haven't done so already please subscribe to petrified for i'll see you next film plenty drive safe [Music] you

Channel: Petrol Ped

Views: 246,499

Keywords: Petrol Ped, Vlogger, YouTuber, Cars, Supercars, Performance Cars, Motorsport, hyundai, hyundai tucson, hyundai tucson 2021, hyundai tucson 2022, tucson 2021, tucson self charging hybrid, hyundai tucson review, hyundai tucson vs kia sorento, hyundai tucson vs kia sorento 2021, self charging hybrid cars, self charging hybrid cars uk, self charging hybrid vs plug in hybrid, self charging hybrid suv

Id: SHo1-R_BDjE

Length: 23min 31sec (1411 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 30 2021