It’s no secret that Hyundai and Kia are working on an all-electric ute, but luxury brand Genesis just revealed it too examined the possibility of a luxury load-lugger, only to rule it out.
Luc Donckerwolke, who is Chief Creative Officer for both Hyundai Motor Group as a whole and the Genesis brand in particular, admitted he studied a ute for the luxury division.
“We have done EV pick-ups for Genesis,” he said. “We’ve done a lot of things that nobody asked us to do but we’ve experimented. We have decided today we’re not going to make a Genesis EV pick-up.”
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Donckerwolke, who is Belgian but spent part of his childhood in northern Africa and Peru, admitted he has an affinity for utes because of this and he led the internal study over a possible Genesis spin-off of the upcoming electric Hyundai pick-up.
“Oh, we’ve done a lot of things,” he said. “Yeah. So, one thing is what somebody is telling you to do, the other thing is what we would like to experiment with. And we’re doing a lot of things just to be able to be ready. You never know. And I love pick-ups. I have a Shelby Raptor, the only one in Europe. It took me one year to put it on the road. And basically I love pick-ups. It’s been part of my life in Africa and South America, and I still love them.
“But you have to be careful. We have Hyundai, we have Kia and we have Genesis. So that is where we believe that, for Genesis, not yet.”
However, while he doesn’t believe the time is right for Genesis to jump into the ute market, he’s confident that Hyundai will be able to succeed. In particular with its electric pick-up, which Donckerwolke believes has benefitted from lessons learned from the mixed response to electric utes from American brands, such as the Ford F-150 Lightning, Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Hummer
“Once again it’s a different field,” he said. “We’ve all noticed the difference, the problems of some of the big three coming with EV pick-ups that were not really, let’s say, not having a long-lasting success. Because it’s the type of customer, you know, one thing, the customers on the coasts are different than the Midwest, for instance, if I’m only talking about America. Most of the customers of pick-ups are quite traditional. So you will always have a certain success in San Francisco, LA, and mostly small, more fashionable [cities] but then the real pick-up user in Colorado, he wants [something else].”
But when pressed for detail, Donckwerwolke wouldn’t give any more detail on Hyundai’s ute plans, as he was focused on promoting Genesis.
“Today I have this badge (Genesis) so I will not talk about that.”