A high-ranking Hyundai official has promised the Korean brand’s upcoming N-badged halo car will be “affordable but credible”.
Speaking to Autocar, Klaus Köster, director of high performance vehicles at Hyundai’s European technical centre, said the firm was working on finding the right balance with its upcoming halo car, which the publication speculated would not arrive before 2022.
“Our challenge is to make the product affordable but also credible in the way we define any Hyundai N car. It cannot only be capable of just a handful of laps of a track before losing power – but also cannot be pitched at a price of hundreds of thousands of euros. The people who buy those kinds of cars are not Hyundai customers … not yet, at any rate,” he said.
Köster added the automaker would “only ever respond to customer demand”.
“We will only ever deliver something fully resolved, with a driving experience we’re really happy with. So we must be careful that, whatever we do, we create a car that N-brand customers will buy,” he told the British publication.
GyooHeon Choi, vice president of Hyundai’s high performance vehicle and motorsport division, added the brand was contemplating a petrol-electric powertrain with all-wheel drive.
“A halo car remains in our plans. It won’t come for a while yet but we know we have to make one. We are now looking at some alternative powertrains and some different options on what kinds of vehicle we might deliver and when,” said Choi.
“We’re developing more powerful combustion engines for future cars, but also more powerful electric powertrains; experimental performance fuel cells, too. Conventional four-wheel drive is an option for the [halo] car, but it is very old technology. I would prefer to think about a front-engined hybridised platform with a rear-mounted electric motor; it’s an appealing direction for us.”
