Chrysler 300 vs Hyundai Nexo

What's the difference?

You may be sensing an increasing level of hype around hybrid and full battery-electric vehicles. In fact, it feels like the automotive world has gone full-fat bananas over ‘electro-mobility’.

At least car manufacturers have, with Tesla’s entertaining antics disrupting the status quo, and causing virtually every mainstream brand to get on board the zero-emissions express.

But of course, the other side of that equation is demand. The rush to meet ever tightening emissions regulations (and save the planet in the process) fails to recognise the fact that not everybody wants a ZEV… yet.

The days of big-bore, more is good, internal combustion propulsion aren’t over yet, and Chrysler, like the rest of the ‘Murican Big Three’ is keeping traditional muscle car enthusiasts happy.

In fact, we’re in the midst of a US horsepower arms race not seen since the late 1960s and early ‘70s, and Chrysler’s SRT (Street & Racing Technology) performance subsidiary is leading from the front with a variety of over-the-top Hellcats, Demons and Red Eyes.

Australia has recently picked up a whiff of that action with the utterly mad 522kW Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk, but the only slightly unhinged SRT version, and this car, the Chrysler 300 SRT, have been around for some time.

Launched here in 2012, the second-generation version of the 6.4-litre naturally aspirated sedan was discontinued in the USA in 2014. But sensing a large sedan-sized opportunity as local manufacturing from Ford, Holden and Toyota went the way of the Dodo, the local FCA team negotiated a continuation deal.

Think of the 300 SRT as America’s M5 or E63. A full-size performance sedan with a thick layer of luxury laid over the top, but at around one third the price.

The first time I drove the Hyundai Nexo it was in a place called Goyang in South Korea.

Goyang was a place of pure contrast. The old Korea clashed with the new as you walked through ancient seafood markets toward the towering Hyundai Motorstudio, an ultra-modernist expression of design, perched like a steel battleship above a simultaneously crumbling and rapidly modernising city. 

Part museum, part design expo, part car dealership of the future, it was as though the whole place was a metaphor for the breakneck pace at which megacorp Chaebols like Hyundai were advancing Korea at a faster rate than its populace could keep up with.

The brand’s Nexo SUV is the same in a lot of ways. It’s a mid-size SUV that might be popular right now, but it contains the technology of the future wrapped in a digestible format for the masses.

Of course, it’s the future from a certain point of view. VW would argue EVs alone are set to drive our brave zero emissions future, but Hyundai is of a different mind.

What you’re looking at here, or so Hyundai’s representatives tell us, is the ultimate replacement for diesel. Long range, high load capacity, and an ultra-fast refuelling time are part of the hydrogen fuel cell promise. One that promises to out-do many of Australia’s qualms with EVs.

A statement of the future it may be, but what’s the Hyundai Nexo actually like as a car? We went to its Australian launch to find out