2022 Hyundai Tucson Limited AWD: Test Drive Review

Hey my good friends, Sam Haymart with Test Driven TV. Today we're test driving the 2022 Hyundai Tucson Limited All-Wheel Drive. Now this is all new for this year, all new design inside and out, so there's a lot to talk about. So I'm going to show it to you inside and out, we're going to take it for a good test drive out here in the desert, and then I'm going to tell you what I really think. Because the Hyundai Tucson is the best selling vehicle for the brand, they've really taken a lot of care to make sure that they redesign it often, and when they do, they really bring a lot to the table. And so in the 2022 Tucson, this has the latest iteration of Hyundai's parametric dynamic design language, which means a lot of origami-like creases and shapes. Now the price on this one, this being a limited all-wheel drive, is $37,000 and some change. This is pretty much fully loaded, comes with almost everything that you can get on the Tucson. Looking at the front, look at this grille, this is almost out of a sci-fi movie. And it's black chrome, I really like the finishes on it, I really like the detailing that's going on here. And what's really cool is when you start this thing up and drive it, the daytime running lights light up from invisibly behind almost. They're hidden during the day, and it just really creates a nice signature look during the daytime when you see this thing driving around. Coming around to the corner, this one has 19-inch wheels, and like most SUVs, this has black plastic cladding around the wheel wells, and as you come down the side, this has some folding mirrors with some beautiful inset lighting for the turn signals and some nice trim elements. From this angle, the light really hits this in a way that I want to point out in the camera view. The way these three-dimensional surfaces really work together with the parametric dynamics design language really shows up with this metallic blue paint here. In the front door, in the rear door, it really just creates drama and shadow lines that it just makes me smile. I like to see car companies really go the extra mile to give us something for our money when it comes to styling. And we can say that as we look at the roofline. A nice satin chrome piece comes down into the rear three-quarter and creates a nice little wing type of look back there that blends in with the spoiler. And look at that spoiler for a minute. Another detail I want to point out here is they've actually hidden the wiper blade up underneath the spoiler. It's completely hidden, giving this rear a nice clean look. Coming down to the taillights, LED taillights, now that lights up all the way across at night. And if you look closely in those taillights, you'll see that they've actually duplicated the triangular shapes from the front there into the taillights, keeping some cohesiveness going on with this design. Now this is, of course, a power liftgate and this has Hyundai's feature where if it's locked and you walk up to it with the key fob in your pocket, it will automatically open the gate for you, which is great if you've got arms full of groceries or something like that. Down in the lower fascia, more detailing there. You can see some beautiful three-dimensional diamond scale that's built into some of the recesses that gives this thing just an extra visual punch. I love it. I hope you like interiors because we're going to be talking about this for just a few minutes because there's a lot going on here, both design-wise as well as all of the different features that I think are notable here. The all-new Tucson, in my opinion, has one of the most beautiful interiors I have ever seen from Hyundai. There's a flowing set of lines that goes from door to door all the way across this dash. And then you have this waterfall design in the center stack. Everything just sort of flows downward. As I sit here, I've got very comfortable leather seats in the Limited. They're power adjustable, of course, both heated and ventilated. Nonetheless, these seats are very comfortable, very supportive. I spent a lot of time sitting in this vehicle. I even took a road trip in it this week. Well done, Hyundai. Holding onto the steering wheel, a very unique design in the steering wheel in addition to the rest of the interior. It does have paddle shifters on it and controls for all of your electronics. Ahead of it in this trim grade is a 10 1⁄4-inch digital display. Very well done. You can change that up with different themes, and it also changes up when you do different drive modes. And I like the fact that it's very customizable to whatever information sets you want to have on there. Center stack, very well laid out, infotainment screen, controls across the bottom, and then HVAC just below that. Down low in the center console are all the USB and the charging ports that you could want. There's a Qi wireless charger down there on this trim grade as well. And then as we get to the middle of the console, more buttons and controls for the seats and other things, cupholders off to the side. And one of my least favorite things about this interior, I'd say, is the push-button gear selector. I always prefer a lever, much more intuitive, and a few other buttons and controls here. Inside this console, a very nice storage area. This is about the size of two Kleenex boxes, I'd say, if they were one large one. A lot of space in there, a lot of depth. And there's also storage down here on the side of the console that goes along with generous storage in the map pockets. We have a lot of options here. Because we're in the Limited, one of the things that really makes this interior feel light and airy aside of the color is that big panoramic moonroof. Now you can open the cover all the way and get all the light you'd want, and the glass panel in the front does actually lift up. So you do have some versatility in how you use it. Your rear seat passengers are going to be very comfortable, I think, because there's plenty of room back here. Now I'm about 5'8". These seats up front are set for my height, and as you can see, I've got a lot of space up front. You could have somebody much taller than I am sitting up front, and I doubt that I'm going to be in a situation where my knees are up against that seat. Very well done. And the seating height is also pretty good, too. I'm not sitting down in a hole. I feel like I have a very natural seating position. Now your outboard passengers have a pretty flat seat, though there is a little bit of a dish here. It's not the most in class, it's not the least in class. Features do include a fold-down armrest with cup holders in the center console up front. There are vents, and there are USB ports down at the bottom. Nice netted mat pockets on the backs of the seats. As you'd expect, these do fold down in a 60-40 split, and a very cool feature there at the back, you can actually pull a lever and these seats go down on their own. You can also do it from the side on the doors, but if you're at the back and suddenly decide, oh, I want to put these seats down, they go right down, and the cargo floor is actually reasonably flat back there. Underneath that floor, a spare tire, something I always give points for on an SUV, because if you're actually out there adventuring in the wild, like we did today, and you cut a tire open on a rock, well, if you have a fix-it-flat kit and your tire's cut open, you're going to be calling a tow truck, so I always love it when they actually give us a tire. I'm very impressed with this interior overall. I love the quality in here, it's very well done, and honestly, whenever you see a flowing design where you have lines that flow into the doors, it's very hard to do. Not all car companies can do it. Sometimes you have those door panels and the dash, they don't line up, and then the whole thing's wasted, but Hyundai has mastered it here with tight tolerances. Really, the only thing I have to complain about in this interior is this push-button gear selector, which just isn't as good as a lever. This interior gets four and a half out of five stars. The infotainment system here is a very ubiquitous item now in the Hyundai Kia world. The 10.25-inch Bose Audio high-end screen, and this is a variation of it that does not have any knobs or buttons on it. It has touch-sensitive controls across the bottom in addition to that which you'd use on the touchscreen. There's also controls on the steering wheel, but for the most part, you're using the controls over here on the center stack. It is fully featured with a 360-degree camera. The audio from the Bose back-end sounds absolutely great, and it has this beautiful feature that I just love, which is the sounds of nature, and so if you don't really want to listen to the radio, the news, music, whatever, you can turn this on and listen to background sounds, ambient sounds that are just kind of zen and relaxing. I love it. I turn this on in the traffic, and it just chills me out. I think this is the best feature of this interior. The reality, though, is that when you start using this, this is missing a few features that you find with some of the other cars out there. It, for instance, does have Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, but not wireless yet like a lot of other automakers are going to, and the other thing is, is this always goes to a home screen, which I find very annoying. Whenever you get out of the car, you come back, it's not where you left it. If you like to have your station presets showing all the time, whether you have a map, whatever the case, whenever you come back, it sends you to this home screen, which is just very annoying to me. I just, I don't like it. I don't like it. I wish, if I'm going to spend close to $40,000 for a car, I want it to stay where I put it. Period. So that said, this is a system that has some of the best features in the business. It's got beautiful graphics. The visibility could be a little bit better, and the way the menus work and the way it operates could be improved slightly, but overall, very good. The system gets four and a half out of five stars. All right, my friends, now it's time for us to take a drive, and my favorite question I always like to ask is, how does it go? It's only come to a complete stop. Nobody around, and go. Sounds good, and 60. Now this thing does something rather interesting, and you might have noticed it there, and it's done it every time I've tried this full acceleration thing, is when you step on it from a start, it always seems to start out in second gear, and only when you fully floor it, you get rolling for a minute, and then it drops down a gear after you started. It happens every time, no matter what drive mode you're in, so a little curiosity there that I haven't quite been able to get my finger on, but that aside, what this has under the hood is a 2.5 liter gasoline engine, naturally aspirated. It has 187 horsepower, 178 pound-feet of torque, and here, made it to an eight-speed automatic transmission, and this one also has all-wheel drive. As far as power goes, I would call it adequate. Some of the competition does have more power, Toyota RAV4, for instance, same size engine, 203 horsepower, and some of the others do as well, so I would call it adequate, and maybe just a little bit lower than some of the competitors. It is refined, it does have a nice sound, it has a good demeanor. Around town, it works pretty well with this transmission, only under full acceleration did I notice some of that strange behavior there. It does have auto start-stop, which I'm not very fond of, if you watch my videos. It does have a switch to turn it off, but you do have to turn it off every time you get in the car, and here in the summer, I have to, because it's a very aggressive system. It'll turn it off no matter how hot it is outside, and leave me with warm air out of my vents when it's 105 degrees outside. Don't like that, don't like it. And so, when I factor that in with the fuel efficiency, this is rated at 24 city, 29 highway, and 26 mpg combined. In my week with it, I actually only achieved 23, so quite a bit below, and yes, maybe it is because I had the auto start-stop turned on, but Hyundai does allow its buyers to buy their way out of this system in some of their other models. You only have to get auto start-stop in the base model, you get up into the limited like this, you don't have to have it, but they don't do that for a Tucson customer. This is a powertrain that I think can use a little bit of work. I give it 4 out of 5 stars. Now to ride, drive, and handling. This is a vehicle that comes with a McPherson strut front suspension, electric power steering, and a multi-link rear suspension. With all-wheel drive, in this particular configuration, this is rated at 2,000 pounds per towing, if your trailer has trailer brakes on it, a little bit less if it doesn't. And so, what I found, especially up here on my favorite windy mountain road, is that this has a nice, stable chassis. It actually handles pretty well. Not only can you throw it into a curve and feel confident with it, but it's predictable in the way that it behaves. It's refined in the way it behaves, and it has a very quiet, supple ride. And so it's got all the hallmarks of a good, refined chassis that's solid and well-sorted. Around town and the city, I did find that it also performed very well over some of the for things like the speed humps and speed bumps in my neighborhood. But the real question, in my opinion, when it comes to an SUV is, how does it handle off the pavement? This is the place I absolutely love to test drive an SUV or a crossover, and that is the Desert Washboard Road. And that's because this is a great way to see how well put together this thing is, how well-tuned is the chassis to isolate the passengers from that rough surface. And this is actually a little rougher than normal, because here in Arizona this summer we've had a lot of rain. That water runs across the road, and it creates little gullies and ditches. And they haven't come out here and smoothed it out yet. So we're actually getting a good test today. And what I've got to tell you is I'm pretty impressed. A lot of this rough surface and the vibrating rib washboard repetitive surface, that isn't really coming through here in a way that makes this thing feel like a POS. So it doesn't feel like one. This feels very solid and very well put together. Oh, it got some rough ones here. And I'm not getting any rattling in the suspension or any looseness in the steering that I have in other vehicles. The interior trim isn't rattling and shaking. I'm not getting any sensations here that everything isn't bolted tight together. And the isolation over this rough surface, very rubberized. It's very good. I'm very impressed. And so I got to tell you, with the on-road manners, as well as these off-road manners, this is a chassis that's five out of five. Whoa, hold on. Rust up. That was a wash I just had to drive through. Where was I? Yeah. Five out of five stars. All right, my friends, now it's time to talk about value, because that's really one of the most important things, especially if you're comparing this to other vehicles in its class. And so we may have already talked about some, but I see the closest competitors here is the Toyota RAV4, the Nissan Rogue, also the Kia Sorento, which is built by the same parent company, same engines, same chassis, but completely different styling inside and out. And then you've also got the Honda CR-V, a few others as well, but those are the closest ones that come to mind. And so when I look at the price here, just under $40,000, that's a lot of clams here, but you're going to spend that much on the competition if you go fully loaded with them, with the all-wheel drive. And so what I see here is a vehicle that at this price has a lot of features in it, some that some of the competitors don't even offer. Leather seats, for example, also that big panoramic moonroof. So I do see a lot of value here that we don't always get in all of the competitors. We do have one of the longest warranties in the business, 10 years, 100,000 miles powertrain, plus a very generous bumper-to-bumper warranty. So I'm very impressed overall. I did notice on the quality, a few rattles and squeaks here and there, and some paint gas, a run in the paint, and also a couple other little details that told me the paint quality is not as good as it could be, but very minor things. I put the value here at four and a half out of five stars. When you put that in with everything we've already talked about, we're just at four and a half out of five stars for the review. Very good. Now, if you're interested in the Tucson Hybrid, I'd suggest you see our video here on the Kia Sorento Hybrid. As I mentioned, same engine, same chassis. It's going to drive virtually identical. Obviously, styling is different, but if you're just curious about how it drives and performs, you can see that video. Also, click down there, subscribe to our YouTube channel, and stay included on everything we do. Either way, stay tuned.