Hyundai has made some tremendous improvements over the past few years, but the Korean automaker might be trying to climb the mountain a little too fast. Hyundai will soon launch its Lexus -targeting Genesis sedan, but it already has its sights set on dethroning another Toyota vehicle by 2010.
According to Autocar, Hyundai is confident that its upcoming hybrid — set to launch in 2010 — will be superior to Toyota’s bread-and-butter Prius. Hyundai CEO Dr. Kim Dong-Jin even went so far as to call the Prius “quite old-tech†and claimed that Hyundai’s offering will be “more advanced than the Prius.”
Pretty strong words from a company that has yet to produce a hybrid, especially when one considers Toyota has been in the business since the 1990s.
But Toyota isn’t one to back down and Hyundai will have to deal with an all-new Prius — with an updated hybrid system — come 2010.
Dong-Jin also revealed in the same report that Hyundai plans to market its first fuel cell vehicles in limited quantities by 2011.
