The new Hyundai Sonata Hybrid will get you as much as 54 mpg highway and can go 686 miles without refueling, all while offering large, comfortable seats for five adults in a sedan, not—brace yourself—a crossover.
Hyundai has competition from both the Toyota Camry Hybrid and the Honda Accord Hybrid, as well as the semi-funky Honda Insight and whatever’s left on dealer lots of the Ford Fusion Hybrid and Chevy Volt. But mostly it is Camry and Accord that Hyundai’s aiming for because those are the big sellers in the midsize sedan category. There’s a lot of choice out there for buyers.
Don’t expect to be making a big eco-statement with your new Sonata Hybrid, though. It doesn’t look a lot different from the regular gasoline-powered Sonata.
“It’s styled to give people a reason to buy the car, with the same sensuous sportiness as the gasoline car,” said Jerome Gregeois, director of product planning. “It doesn’t make a green vehicle statement.”
That’s OK since the regular gasoline-powered Sonata has been generally well-received in the styling department, with that lined, sloping snout and near-fastback-looking rear. The Sonata Hybrid does have a unique grille hiding aerodynamically optimizing aero flaps in front, while a unique rear spoiler finishes off the airflow in back. Combined with undertray panels to keep the air moving beneath, the 2020 Sonata Hybrid returns a remarkable 0.24 coefficient of drag. It wasn’t all that long ago such a figure was reserved for NASA science experiments and spears. Yet here you have a lovely midsize sedan with room inside and comfort to burn, if not too much gas.
But let’s get to the meat of the matter, the Sonata Hybrid powertrain: The gasoline portion is a 2.0-liter four with direct injection and continuously variable valve timing that allows a partial Atkinson cycle to take better advantage of its electric motor. The gas engine makes 150 hp at 6,000 rpm and 139 lb-ft of torque at 5,000 revs. To that is bolted a 39-kW electric motor adding its own 51 hp and 151 lb-ft of torque to the equation. Together those units produce 192 combined hp (remember, you can’t just add the outputs of both power sources in a hybrid—physics is not that simple). Power and torque are routed through a six-speed automatic with shift-by-wire technology and Hyundai’s latest Active Shift Control for what is promised to be faster, more consistent shifts. Furthermore, a smart mode selects shifting calibration based on the driver’s behavior behind the wheel.
And if that wasn’t enough efficiency, you can order your Sonata Hybrid with a 205-watt Solar Roof. Now, you might have thought those things were mere gimmicks, since 205 watts isn’t really much in the greater electrical scheme of things. But consider, if you live in a halfway-decently sunny clime like, say, LA, those 205 watts of electric juice add up to 309 kWh per year, taking you an extra 1,236 miles per annum all thanks to the sun’s power. But you can only get the Solar Roof on the top-of-the-line Sonata Hybrid Limited trim level, unless you know somebody at the factory.
Fortunately, the Sonata Limited model was what I was given to drive around LA for a week. I was immediately smitten with the car’s large interior, an elbow-roomy 104.4 cubic feet of passenger volume. The seats are wide and flat with none of those nagging side bolsters some carmakers insert to create a false sense of performance at the cost of comfort. No, these seats are wide and flat like your magnificent buttocks. Yay!
The entire interior is directly carried over from the gasoline-powered 2020 Sonata, by the way, which is just fine with me. Why reinvent the wheel? Or in this case the big, roomy den-like interior? Thus comfortably accommodated, I set out.
Since LA—and the rest of the world—was in full lock-down mode and driving was supposed to be only for things like buying groceries and going to the doctor, my time behind the wheel was limited (get it?). I only managed about 50 or 60 miles, doing a radio show in Hollywood and going to Trader Joe’s. At the end of those miles the on-board trip computer said I had gotten 39.8 mpg, well below the hoped-for 50-plus. But I might have been driving at a rate the California Highway Patrol calls “fast.” The EPA says my Limited trim level is supposed to get 47 mpg combined, which, like the Sonata Hybrid’s cD, would have been astounding only a few years ago, especially for a five-seat sedan weighing 3,505 pounds. The midlevel Sonata Hybrid SEL trim gets 47 combined and the base Blue trim is the one that hits 52 combined EPA miles per gallon, 54 highway.
I don’t know why, but I did take the Sonata Hybrid Limited on some twisty roads, just to be able to tell you how it did. It was safe and stable, of course, and “understeered at the limit” because of its low-rolling resistance tires, but remember that it is biased toward efficiency over performance and isn’t supposed to be a sports sedan, as you and everyone else might have guessed. More importantly, the Sonata Hybrid was quiet and even somewhat luxurious inside, with an interior in which I would happily commute every day, or even carpool.
How does it stack up against its main hybrid sedan competitors Camry and Accord? Camry gets a bigger gas engine and a much bigger electric motor for a 16-peak-hp advantage over the Sonata Hybrid. Accord, too, betters the Sonata in output with 10 hp more. But the Sonata Hybrid Blue trim bests Camry by a single mpg in the lighter-weight base trims while both beat the Accord by several mpg. In upper trim levels it’s almost a wash for fuel efficiency.
The 2020 Sonata has more front-seat head- and legroom than its two main rivals and pretty much covers them in rear-seat roominess. Since engineers were able to reposition the 1.6-kWh hybrid battery under the seat, where it sits next to the gas tank, the new Sonata Hybrid gains 2.5 cubic feet of trunk space over the previous model.
All three hybrids have an impressive list of safety features too lengthy to compare here. Suffice it to say that it’s getting harder and harder to kill yourself in a car nowadays, though you may be irritated to death by all those warning beeps.
I can’t say how close the pricing will be since the Sonata Hybrid’s MSRP won’t be released until the model is in showrooms in early June. But it’s tough to beat Hyundai’s warranty: a five-year/60,000-mile basic warranty and a 10-year/100,000-mile powertrain warranty. So keep that in mind when cross-shopping everything.
Since, overall, Hyundai sells about a third as many Sonatas as Toyota does Camrys, and almost the same ratio of Honda Accords, Hyundai has some catching up to do. It is doing that by offering a large, comfortable and highly efficient hybrid to the mix of hybrid alternatives on the market. Along with its fantastic warranty, you really have to check out the Hyundai alternative in green transportation.
2020 Hyundai Sonata Hybrid Specs
Base Price: N/A
Powertrain: 2.0-liter gasoline four, 39-kW electric motor, six-speed automatic, FWD
Output: 192 combined hp
Curb Weight: 3,325 lb
Fuel Economy (EPA City/Highway/Combined): 50/54/52 mpg (Blue trim)
Pros: It’s large, comfortable, quiet and efficient
Cons: Goes for efficient comfort over any hope of liveliness
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