Hyundai Tucson Elite N Line Hybrid long term review

It was a simple and obvious ploy, really. When the sharply styled Hyundai Tucson’s MY25 update arrived in the middle of 2024, diesels were gone and a new turbo hybrid powertrain had lobbed up and down the lineup.

Why? Because it’s a formula that’s worked so very very well for Toyota RAV4, habitually the biggest-selling passenger car in Oz of late. And that’s precisely what Hyundai wants to ape with its own midsize SUV contender.

It’s not an exact facsimile: Tucson can be had as a naturally aspirated 2.0L front-driver, a turbo 1.6 in either front- or all-wheel drive, or turbo 1.6 hybrid in FWD and AWD.

Add base, mid-spec Elite and flagship Premium guises, and you’re spoilt for choice. And you can have any of the five available powertrains in the Elite trim. With or without sporty N Line accoutrement. Gotta love choice.

So which variant did Chasing Cars go for? And what are we planning on doing with it?

Navigate this long-term Hyundai Tucson Elite N Line Hybrid review

• Month 1: Taking delivery of the Tucson
• Month 2: What’s Olek’s is mine

Month 2: What’s Olek’s is mine

After a false start, it was Take Two with our long-term Tucson and some clear initial impressions sink in during the first real month of Dep Ed Dupriez’ custodianship.

Why long termers? Well, our usual week-long press car loans allow Chasing Cars to assess the right rig for you. But with long-termers – as brief as three months, as lengthy as six – we’re out to see if the car is right for us. It gets personal.

By the end of the tenure, a real-world ownership simulation, we’ll ultimately decide if we’d like to keep the vehicle indefinitely (hypothetically speaking), or we’re glad to be rid of it.

Ari is a chance for a personal hybrid SUV trifecta. My old Lexus RX 350h Luxury long-termer ‘Chief’ was a keeper. Ditto the Honda CR-V e-HEV RS I called ‘Fred’. Now it’s Ari’s turn in the Dupriez stable, even if it almost wasn’t…

Olek Novak. Remember him? The former Chasing Cars staffer was the original custodian of this very Tucson before young Novak pulled stumps to pursue a career path rumoured to centre on non-automotive, adult-oriented media. Whatever the truth, as Novak’s manager, I got to keep his stuff… At least, that is, the nice stuff.

First impressions of Olek’s hand-me-down came thick and fast.

My, what a (mostly) slick power this Smartstream G1.6 T-GDi Hybrid system is.

The gut feel is that it smokes Toyota’s natural aspiration-based powertrain in RAV4 for noise and refinement, particularly when passing the drive baton back and forth between internal combustion and electric drive, or a combination of both.

We’ll see when (hopefully) a RAV4 Cruiser fronts up for a one-on-one comparison.

What’s absent from our specification is the HTRAC active on-demand all-wheel drive. It’s a real shame, this, because hybrid AWD makes the Tucson more closely aligned to its Toyota nemesis than the Kia alternative offered by Hyundai’s corporate cousin, because the Sportage challenger is front-drive only.

Other initial impressions? The Tucson looks great, especially in what’s ostensibly $2500 optional N Line garb: larger 19-inch wheels, no gaudy grey plastic wheel arches. It’s a handsome jigger, even in plain old white paintwork.

I’m initially less jazzed with the cabin. Again, it packed high impact at launch, and it certainly liberally robs the slickness – and EV-ness at that – from electric stablemates such as the Ioniq stuff. In an ICE-based platform, the electro-varnish feels like a bit of a ruse…

At low speed, with its ominous whirling noise during low-speed fully-electric maneuvering, it certainly sounds like a pukka EV.

But even in the early days of settling into the rather excellent N Line sport bucket seats, I’m not convinced the Tucson is punching above its weight in the premium stakes.

Despite the swanky dual 12.3-inch screens, the hip rotary transmission selector and other flashiness, the material choice and execution just about meets reasonable expectations for a $57K on-road proposition, though it doesn’t really exceed them.

But it’s really the ‘driver annoyance systems’, and specifically the tiresome rigmorale of switching them all off every single time Ari restarts, that gets my goat from day one.

Yes, car scribes bang on about this stuff incessantly. And will continue to do so until these ‘issues’ are fixed or corrected. That said, I quickly learnt that, in my household, I’m far more patient and diligent dealing with these electro whims than my better half is.

Start-up. Wait. Star button. ‘Off’ in the media screen submenu. Main menu button. CarPlay button. Spotify button. And then hold the lane departure button (on the wheel) down for four seconds to turn <that second> system off, too. Call it eight or 10 or 12 seconds. At every start-up.

If your phone dropped out of reception – such as the underground carpark both at home and at work – the phone doesn’t re-pair without digging into more submenus once reception returns. It won’t reboot the connection by itself. And it sometimes boots up the wrong phone if multiple devices are hooked on Bluetooth.

It will be interesting to see how far and hard the clumsy driver annoyance systems want to push my personal buttons as the kilometres start to relentlessly roll under Ari’s tyres in the months to come.

Month 1: Taking delivery of the Tucson

What is it? The newest member of the Chasing Cars long-termer garage sits smack bang in the middle of the Tucson grade hierarchy. Our White Cream finished example is (exhaustively) called the Hyundai Tucson Elite N Line 1.6T HEV 2WD…but at least we know what we’re getting into from the label on the tin.

What’s a Tucson? It’s Hyundai’s volume-selling midsize SUV, named after the town in Arizona, USA. It’s a running theme for the South Korean brand whose portfolio also includes the Santa Fe (New Mexico), the Palisade (California), the Santa Cruz (also California) and the Kona (Hawaii).

Google reveals an ‘I-30’ highway running through Texas, which is a long bow to draw, and Venue is (sadly) the name of an inactive township in regional Arkansas, perhaps purely coincidentally…

We were going to nickname our Tucson ‘Olek’, in homage to the now inactive Chasing Cars staff member Olek Novak who’s shuffled off to greener pastures. Until Novak exited stage left, this was his long-termer, but what was his is now ours, with a nickname Ari…a tip of the Stetson to geographical origins as outlined above.

How much is it? At the time of acquisition, Ari lobbed into the Chasing Cars garage at $52,600 list, or $57,606 on road in NSW.

There are nine different configurations of Elite available in the Tucson stable depending on powertrain and N-Line fitment, ranging from $44,100 (2.0L FWD) to $55,100 (HEV AWD N Line), while the range itself starts from $39,100 at its cheapest to $61,100 for the all-you-can eat Premium HEV AWD N Line).

Options? Given there are so many off-the-rack variants offered, extra splurges are limited to premium ($595) or matte effect ($1000) paintwork and two-tone interior trim ($295) for Premium grade examples without N Line.

Worth a look is to bundle in the five-year/50,000km servicing pack ($1990) up front at the time of purchase.

What’s the spec of our car? Mid-grade Elite takes the 12.3-inch media, 18-inch wheels and LED exterior light fitout of the base Tucson and adds niceties such as leather appointment, powered driver’s seat, front seat heating, a powered tailgate and rain sensing wipers.

Stump for the N Line option and the driver’s screen graduates from 4.4-inch to 12.3 inches, while elsewhere it scores 19-inch wheels, suede-leather appointments, extra body colour-coding, and projector LED headlights.

The 1.6-litre turbocharged four-pot petrol in the Tucson lineup outputs 172kW and 264Nm. Stumping for the ‘HEV’ hybrid system adds a further 37kW and another 264Nm via a single electric motor.

Combined total system outputs are 172kW and 367Nm regardless of whether it’s front- or all-wheel drive, backed by a six-speed automatic transmission either way.

How long is it sticking around for? Six months and (hopefully) for 10,000kms.

What are we going to do with it? The usual Aussie family business for an unorthodox Aussie family unit. With three offspring spread up and down the east coast – Brissie and Gold Coast in Queensland, Bendigo in regional Victoria – there’s almost 2000 kilometres of scope for fulsome family catch-ups. There’s a lot of road tripping due.

Between long highway stints, it’ll mostly be daily urban duties. Given Ari is front-driver rather than the slightly pricier Tucson Elite alternative, there’s not much contextual call for anything tougher than mild soft-roading.

Given Hyundai’s main game is to take on Toyota RAV4, we’re pulling strings to line up a 2WD Cruiser to see how the updated Korean challenger takes on Australia’s best selling passenger car on level pegging.

Initial performance figures? We’ve yet to let Ari rip down the Chasing Cars test track but, consumption wise, Hyundai claims 5.3L/100km combined, with a RAV4-challenging 3.6L urban figure and a fairly lazy 6.5L for the open road.

Interesting, they’re the same claims be it the as-tested front-driven or (60kg heavier) all-wheel-driven format. Hmm…