AUTONEWS

HYUNDAI: RENAULT KWID WILL HAVE A KOREAN COMPETITOR

The success of the Renault Kwid after its launch in India triggered the alarm in several manufacturers and Hyundai does not seem willing to sit idly by. The small model of Renault has bet on a crossover style exterior design to try to win customers and this small crossover formula will be the one that Hyundai will try to follow with a new model that is already in the plans of the company.In a recent interview, YK Koo, CEO of Hyundai Motor in India, said that the Korean company is considering a new crossover of reduced dimensions.Hyundai will launch next year QXI, a small offroad based on the Carlino prototype that the Korean manufacturer presented at the Salon of New Delhi 2016, an SUV that will have a body with a length below 4 meters. But this new model that will arrive to compete with the Renault Kwid will be even smaller, with a length closer to 3.67 meters of the model of the French brand.In this way, the Hyundai crossover family will be enriched with this micro SUV that will accompany the QXI, Crete and Tucson. Anyway, the project is still in its early stages, as the Korean manufacturer is currently studying its feasibility and if the project gets green light, the small crossover will not arrive before 2021, probably by the time the next generation is ready of the current Renault Kwid.Sources close to the company say the viability of this new model of Hyundai is closely linked to the success of a model that Maruti Suzuki is about to launch in India, a small corossover based on the Future S Concept that the Japanese manufacturer will put on the streets in 2019, a model that debuted as a prototype in the last Hall of New Delhi.



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