2020 Hyundai Sonata Sedan Hybrid Reviewed - Best in Class?

This is the all-new 2020 Hyundai Sonata Hybrid. For this one, they pulled out all the stops to compete against the Honda Accord and Toyota Camry equivalents. Like the normal Sonata, this one features swooping lines and elegant details that in my opinion helps to elevate it above the competition. Of course, design does come down to personal taste, so feast your eyes and comment below if you love it or hate it. This design also serves a purpose, giving the Sonata a slippery 0.24 drag coefficient. Price as you see it here, $36,430 including destination. Under the hood is a hybrid powertrain that mates a 2L gas engine good for 150hp to an electric motor generator that adds 51 more. Altogether that is 192hp, because hybrid math is weird. It's mated to a single transmission choice, a 6-speed automatic. Power is right in the ballpark with the non-hybrid model's 2.5L engine option. But here you're looking at up to 51 miles to the gallon on the highway in limited trim, with 45 miles to the gallon in the city. This is better economy than the Honda Accord, and a couple less than the Toyota Camry. One feature exclusive to the Sonata Hybrid is the futuristic solar roof. This will help keep the battery charged. We'll talk more about it later. Stand behind the car and the proximity sensor will trigger a trunk release. This reveals 16 cubic feet of cargo space. Fold down the second row to fit even larger objects. You could easily fit a few golf bags back here. Under the floor is a spare and tools. In recent years, the Sonata has always had a great second row, and this new generation is no different. Lots of space for legs and your head, plus USB power and a fold-down armrest. In limited trim, you also get a privacy screen. In the 1980s, nobody would have guessed that Hyundai would eventually make interiors that would rival luxury brands. But here we are, and yet again the Sonata Hybrid delivers. Sure, it's not hand-carved wood from the nest of a hippogriff, but for the class, it's punching above its weight. The tech is just as impressive. Our Limited came standard with a full digital gauge cluster. This features lots of customizations with the flick of a switch. The seats are power-adjustable with memory, heating, and cooling. Dual-zone aircon is standard at this level, with high-quality dials and displays. The star here is the standard 10.25-inch widescreen display with integrated Bose Sound. It even includes some ambient sound demos. Not sure why somebody would want to hear snowshoes, but this is the world we live in now. Thanks Bose. The system is easy to navigate around with everything clearly marked. Mobile device users can charge with the wireless holder or plug into USB, which will also get them Apple CarPlay or Android Auto integration. I do like how Hyundai adds an extra panel to make better use of the widescreen. With this, you can flick through car info without disrupting CarPlay. The screen also provides a satellite surround view. So backing up, you kind of sound a little bit like a dump truck. Just a really polite one. The one thing that I'm really surprised nobody has capitalized on are downloadable sounds for your car. Why can't I choose to sound like, I don't know, a duck? Or better yet, do a tie-in with your favorite band. How about every single time I put it into drive, I get a, YAAAHHHHH! That is, that would be cool. I think people would pay, you know, a buck or two to be able to change out their audio tracks on their car. Why not? Post what you would want your car to sound like in the comments below. In terms of advanced safety, Hyundai pulled out all the stops, with blind spot sensors, collision mitigation forward and backward, as well as adaptive cruise control with lane detection, which we'll look at later. There are several drive modes. These configure the drivetrain for sportier or more economical response. It also changes up the gauge cluster, which is cool. You can configure these modes to your liking with the individual setting in the center screen. Now, let's shift this review into drive. So driving this car is pretty straightforward. I mean, yeah, it's a hybrid. It's not even a PHEV. You know, I have to say, when hybrids first came out, I wasn't really sold on them, but I can really see the benefits, not just economically, but also, you know, they are kind of fun to drive when they have things like sport modes and can output a decent amount of power. Even though I understand why somebody would get a hybrid, I think that at the end of the day, if you really want to be more, not just economical, but also ecological, it makes more sense to get a plug-in electric hybrid, one that has a battery pack, and you can legitimately run on battery power all the time, except for those times where you need to do long trips. I mean, most commutes are under 20 miles each way, like way under. So you don't need much range to meet those daily needs. And then when you combine it with a gas engine, you really get the best of both worlds. Going with a hybrid drivetrain here, yeah, you actually get pretty good performance and you get really good economy. I mean, this is 51 miles to the gallon on the freeway, which is amazing for a car of this size. But you do pay a lot of money for that. It will take a while to pay off the hybrid premium in gas alone. So do the math on that and see if it really makes sense. Because the new Sonata, even in non-hybrid trim, is still a really nice car. You don't have to get the hybrid. One of the biggest hurdles for hybrid car makers are the brakes. And as we've seen with the most recent Toyotas, they have gotten really good at making brakes that not only regenerate power, but also stop like you expect them to, consistently, with a fair amount of feedback. These brakes, yeah, they're not really that. These are touchy. And they will go from regeneration to full-on very quickly. So you can get used to it after driving for a while, but if you transfer from another vehicle into this one, you're going to be slamming on the brakes all the time. And I really think that they should focus on that for the next version of this car because it's still not there yet. Now I'm still in sport mode. Power comes on pretty quick. Now I have paddle shifters because this is a limited. Eh, they're fairly responsive. But the car just overall is just too soft to really, you know, drive in a way that you're going to really need paddle shifters. I mean, there's everything else isn't really up to the par of paddle shift territory. Now the one upside, of course, is if you are going down a very steep, like say a mountain or something, and you want to use some engine braking, you can do that with paddle shifters. But I don't think they're valuable from a sporty driving perspective. They just don't really add that much to the whole experience. I wonder, will it release on redline when I'm in sport mode? Let's see just how aggressive it is. So I'm going to shift down to, I'm in third. It does eventually shift. Okay. It basically hits redline and shifts, which is kind of what you would expect. And let's try a zero to 60. Three, and I'm in sport mode. Three, two, one, go. Little wheel spin, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60. Now this is loaded with a bunch of safety stuff and they even have their fairly innovative right and left view cameras integrated into the gauge cluster. I think it's clever, but the problem I have with it, and yes, I do have a problem with it, is that it's a little laggy. You know, like it'll, it's being in video production, I cannot look at something that is changing between two frames a second and 30 frames per second. And it's all over the board. It is an inconsistent display. Clearly they don't have enough processing power dedicated just to that function. If it was smoother, I think I would like it better, but as it is, I really don't like it. I much prefer just to have traditional blind spot ID systems, preferably on the side mirror, the insides of the side mirrors, like the way Audi does it. I think that looks great. This is of course loaded with safety goodness. We have collision mitigation that has been going off like mad, especially when I'm filming with it. It also has their camera based blind spot system. And then it of course also has adaptive cruise control with a special little cherry on top. And that cherry on top, I got to hit all the buttons, is lane centering. So I'll let the system, we'll go ahead and hit that, get back into safety screen. Okay, there we go. Now in cruise control, I have the green steering wheel, so I can now let go and it'll drive itself. Let's just go ahead and speed it up a little bit. Now the really cool thing about this system, you know, most cars it's 10, 15 seconds. I will insert a time at the bottom of this video as to how long it officially is, because it just kind of wants to do it all day. They are very secure in their technology and I see no reason for them not to be because it actually works pretty good. See that guy was braking way up there and it like slowed me down. Oh, now it's telling me to put my hands on the wheel. I'm really impressed with this car. It has a really good adaptive cruise control system. It's super comfortable. It's got lots of features and for the price, it looks stunning. I haven't even talked yet about it has a solar panel roof, which very few cars have that. I think they're more common in Japan. I know the Prius in Japan had it. I can't think off the top of my head of any car in the U.S. that has had it. More than just a gimmick, Hyundai says that that will get you an extra 2 miles in a day just because it's recharging with the sun, not having to use gas and regeneration. And I think that's actually kind of cool. I love that forward thinking. So when it comes down to it, the two biggest issues with this vehicle are the touchy brakes and the slightly confused transmission. I mean, it does an OK job, but it really does. It's kind of not picking the right gear sometimes. If you try to do a multi-point turn, it just doesn't respond. And those things, I really hope that they can refine down the road because, you know, once they nail all these key things, this car is going to be unstoppable. For Driving Sports TV, I'm Ryan Douthit. Thanks for watching. Be sure to subscribe, leave a comment, tell us what hybrid would you buy? Would you get this or would you get, I don't know, the Honda Accord hybrid or maybe a Camry hybrid? Post a comment below. We'll see you again next week right here. A quick heads up that next week, our video is going to drop on Wednesday, not Tuesday, because we are going to be under embargo for the all new RAV4 Prime. Yes, we are going to take the Prime and we're going to go off-roading with it if everything goes according to plan. So be sure to subscribe and we'll see you again.