Due to increasingly strict restrictions related to gas emissions, the automotive industry is turning to electrification, which will have the greatest impact on diesel engines. Those restrictions forced Hyundai to make a decision to suspend diesel engine production.

Following the Dieselgate affair, in which Volkswagen was in the spotlight, the cessation of diesel engine production was accelerated. Data show that hybrids and electric cars are more popular than diesel. Thus, the South Korean company Hyundai has suspended the production of diesel engines, but will continue to improve the diesel engines produced so far.

Hyundai plans to produce hybrids and plug-in hybrids in the coming years, leaving room for the survival of gasoline engines that engineers manage to make more efficient to meet new regulations.

From 2025, the Euro 7 standard begins to be applied, leading to the inevitable era of electric cars as well as large investments in new platforms.

Hyundai has announced that it will have 23 fully electric models by 2025, which was announced with the Ioniq 5 model.

It has long been rumored that Hyundai will launch its first high-performance crossover. At the end of 2020, Hyundai announced the arrival of the Kona N.

Initially, Hyundai did not claim that the SUV would carry their logo. However, that has also changed and the car is currently in the testing phase.

The Kona N will be powered by a 2.0-liter four-cylinder turbo gasoline engine with eight-speed N dual-clutch automatic transmissions. The power of the engine is not known yet.

The engine performance is predicted to be the same as that used by the Veloster N. It is a 2.0-liter turbocharged inline-four engine that produces 275 hp and 260 lb-ft of torque. Unlike the Veloster N, the Kona N will not have a six-speed manual transmission as standard.

So far Hyundai has only confirmed the Kona N for the European market and hasn’t said anything about U.S. plans for this model.