The Blue-Will plug-in hybrid concept car displayed in Sydney should silence those last remaining dinosaurs that don’t believe Korean giant Hyundai now dominates the global automotive landscape. Where once Hyundai studied the Europeans and North Americans, now it’s the reverse.
A product of the company’s Namyang, Korea, Design Centre, the Blue-Will announces Hyundai’s plug-in hybrid technology and has already become a test-bed for advanced technology such as roof-mounted solar panels and drive-by-wire steering.
Blue-Will certainly looks radical, but in a nutshell it’s four-seat sedan.
Power comes from an all-aluminium, direct-injection, 114kw, 1.6-litre petrol engine with parallel hybrid drive 100kw electric motor. Batteries are lithium polymer and can be charged from household sources, but there is also a thermal generator which converts hot exhaust gases into electricity.
The electric-only range is 64.4 kms on a single charge.
Hyundai’s proprietary parallel hybrid drive architecture enables power to be sourced from the petrol engine, the electric motor or both.
Hyundai calls this system BlueDrive and it will be launched in production form shortly when the Hyundai Sonata BlueDrive goes on-sale in North America.
