Hyundai Reviews

Hyundai’s Staria people mover seemed destined to live in the shadow of its segment-dominating cousin, the Kia Carnival.Now though, Hyundai is rolling out a serious overhaul to the Staria van range, including the long-awaited introduction of fuel-sipping hybrid variants.The new Lounge grade we’re looking at seems expressly targeted at Carnival buyers. But in a people-mover segment that's suddenly been re-invigorated by a range of options from new brands, does the Staria have what it takes to stand out?Let’s take a look.First and foremost - pricing. While you can get a hybrid version of the cargo-hauling Staria Load delivery van at an appealing price point compared to some rivals, the people-mover version is only offered in this new top-spec Lounge variant, for now.A higher trim level than ever before, the Lounge moves the Staria into previously unseen levels of luxury, but it comes at a steep price.At $73,740 before on-road costs, the Lounge is nearly a $20,000 jump over the base people mover, making it a tall order not just to justify the leap to hybrid, but also among its core rivals.This is especially true since Kia has rolled out its version of the same hybrid technology to its Carnival, and you can now get into a base Carnival S HEV from just $56,310.Like-for-like when it comes to spec though, you’d be looking at a Carnival GT-Line, which costs $76,840.If you’re keen on what this taller and in some ways more spacious Hyundai offers, it might be worth waiting for more affordable versions. Hyundai will need a wider range of hybrids at more affordable price points imminently as it's facing tough fines under Australia’s recently implemented New Vehicle Efficiency Standard (NVES).Standard kit on this new Lounge grade includes refreshed LED headlights with an integrated light bar across the front and unique 18-inch alloy wheels. Inside it scores Nappa leather seat trim, heating, ventilation, and power adjustment for the first two seating rows, near fold-flat relaxation mode for the second row, suede headlining, privacy glass, acoustic lamination for the windscreen, and integrated sunshades for the windows in the rear rows.It’s a lovely place to be, and that’s before we mention the overhauls to the dash design. The pre-update Staria was already ahead of the pack, but the new version takes it to new heights with a fresh sporty steering wheel, a bigger digital dash, the re-introduction of physical buttons for the multimedia and climate controls (previously they were touch-capacitive), a stalk-mounted gear shifter from the brand’s EV range, and an update to the all-new software suite.The Lounge also gets a few extra bits of the interior clad with soft-touch finishes compared to the cargo van, particularly in the door cards, although this comes at the cost of dash topping and overhead storage areas.On the practical side, the Staria Lounge and its high roof and seven-seat layout (2 + 2 + 3) means access to the third row is one of the easiest of its contemporaries. You can just stroll between the second-row captains' chairs and room in all three seating positions is more than generous, with all three rows on rails for adjustability.The boot, as is the case with many van-based people movers, is not long, but it is tall and wide. This can be a challenge with baggage when all three rows are in use, as you’ll need to stack upward, but more room can also be found in the cabin behind the front seats. Some brands offer a shelf accessory for the boot to help with this. Hyundai does not.The Lounge only offers a tailgate rear. It provides nice shelter in the rain, but it's sheer size means there are limits as to where you can open it.One dire cost of the hybrid powertrain is its lack of any kind of tow rating.On the road, the Staria Lounge is unmistakably a van, missing out on the passenger-car feel of its Carnival cousin, but it’s still by far one of the best vans to drive.Visibility is commanding from the front two positions, while the inputs come with all the panache of other Hyundai vehicles. There’s nice organic steering and good feedback from the pedals, making it surprisingly confident on curvy stuff. The suspension, specifically improved for this version of the Staria, improves ride quality all-round, and the front-drive hybrid powertrain (180kW/304Nm) offers both strong electric torque and whisper-quiet operation at commuter speeds.Like other plugless hybrid systems though, the 1.6-litre turbo-charged four-cylinder engine can be noisy under load, at freeway speeds, and when travelling up steeper hills.It’s certainly more refined than any diesel offering though, and significantly more convenient than having to plug in as you do with rivals from China like the GAC M8.Fuel consumption isn’t as low as some hybrid SUVs, rated officially at 6.5L/100km. It’s a huge improvement on the 10.5L/100km of the previous V6 petrol version, but only a little better than the diesel (7.2L/100km), which can also tow. If you’re spending a lot of time on the freeway, the diesel may actually be better. Something to ponder.A boost to ownership costs, the hybrid costs an average of $487.80 per year under the five-year service schedule, which is slightly more affordable than the petrol or diesel.The warranty is seven years or unlimited kilometres, unless used for a commercial purpose, then it reverts to five years or 160,000km.Hyundai is conducting testing for the hybrid version with the hope it will be covered by the Staria’s maximum five-star ANCAP rating. It comes packed with all the expected safety gear at this price.

This month we farewell our Hyundai Inster after several months. Are we glad to see it go or is this a pleasantly charming little city car?Before we continue, it’s worth noting that we did get the Extended Range variant back after it had been crashed into shortly after our second month of testing began. Read our second chapter for more on how it compared to the Standard Range, but we managed to finish our testing with this version of the car which, at least on paper, seems to be the pick of the range.As mentioned in the previous chapter though, the Standard Range version (which is $3500 cheaper than the $42,500 Extended Range we have) is completely fine, and in some ways superior.Having recently driven many of this car’s more price-savvy rivals from China, I noticed how nice and relatively unobtrusive the Inster is to drive.While some more affordable cars, even a size up from the Inster, are full of invasive driver aids, annoying ergonomic features or controls, and sub-standard software, the Inster is refreshingly easy to get along with, and does a bunch of the no-brainer EV driving stuff really well.For example, there are four levels of adjustable regenerative braking, from barely noticeable, to full single pedal mode, and these are nicely tuned so that they feel natural, whatever level of electric motor feedback you might be comfortable with.I’ve already mentioned the nice steering and ride in previous chapters, which makes this car feel a cut above its size bracket let alone its price bracket.The active safety features which helped the Inster earn a four-star ANCAP safety rating (harder than you might think for a car this small) are relatively unobtrusive, or at the very least, easy to turn off.The lane keeping aid, which at times can be a bit heavy handed, can simply be turned down by holding a button on the steering wheel for a few seconds, rather than having to dig through menus on the touchscreen. The rest of the safety kit is relatively tame, saving you menu-diving time on start-up.Then there’s the cabin practicality on offer. The Inster is a car seemingly very aware of its limited footprint. To that end, while you don’t get a centre console box, there are bag hooks hidden everywhere, like on the passenger side of the dash and there are fold-out hooks hidden at the edge of the armrest. Clever.I mentioned in the first chapter how surprisingly spacious the cabin feels in both rows of seating, but one trick this car has is a second row on rails.This means you can roll the seating row forward to either reduce or entirely remove legroom and expand the boot capacity massively.It’s a rare feature on most city cars delivered to Australia, but much more common on Asian-market models, like Kei cars from Japan.It means you can have kids or pets in the second row which don’t need as much space, while maximising boot space, or passenger room when you’re not carrying as much stuff. This makes it versatile, but as you might imagine the airport run isn't it's strong suit.Upsettingly though, there’s no frunk. While it might seem gimmicky, frunks can actually be a useful place to put charging cables when the under-floor storage is hard to access because you’re carrying luggage.I took the Inster for a spirited drive before I returned it to really test out its driving chops, and walked away impressed.The amount of grip on offer and the solid feeling of the suspension is backed up with a good amount of agility in corners. It combines nicely with a bit of drivetrain punch in Sport mode to make for a fun little car to really push, even if the Hyundai N-style carbon-fibre-look digital dash overhaul is a bit ill-fitting.It took a significant amount of work to get the tyres to eke out a squeal, to my surprise, and the suspension travel is limited enough that much of the uncomfortable feeling when the battery starts to ‘float’ the whole body of the car on undulating roads isn’t present.Sure, it’s not objectively fast, but probably quicker than you expect, and it’s always better to drive a slow car at 110 per cent than a fast car at 10 per cent.Efficiency wise, the Inster did pretty well. The final number I pulled from the car after around 1500km behind the wheel was 13.8kWh/100km. It’s lower than many of its larger rivals, which do between 14.5 and 17kWh/100km.As for charging, it can be annoying that the port is on the front of the car, because it means you need to go nose in to some spots. At least it’s on the kerb side for when you're using outdoor roadside chargers.The maximum charging speed is quoted at 120kW, but I’ve never seen it go faster than roughly 70kW, even on stacks capable of 150kW. For what it’s worth, it doesn’t need it. The battery is so small it still charges in half an hour or less.Ownership looks like a decent story, too. Not only will this car cost a lot less in charging compared to a fuel alternative, but the Inster only requires a service every two years or a whopping 30,000km.Unfortunately, Hyundai charges $655 per visit. A head-scratcher given a combustion alternative like the Yaris Cross with so many more expendable fluids and moving parts is more affordable to look after.

Hyundai has just updated its Staria people mover and despite the imminent arrival of new electric and hybrid variants, is this diesel workhorse version still worth considering?

Tragedy strikes, as our Inster from chapter one gets side-swiped.Thankfully, not while I was driving it, and also, the damage, mechanically, was fairly minimal even though the torn-off bumper looks a bit dramatic.So, what happens next? The car goes back to Hyundai to be repaired and in the meantime we were offered up a Standard Range version in its place. It’s the perfect opportunity to see the difference between the two grades, and evaluate whether it’s worth spending the extra to get into the Extended Range we started with.The price separating the two cars? Just $3500 with the main difference being the battery size.The regular Inster we’re hopping into has a 42kWh battery, which according to the more accurate WLTP standard offers 327km of driving range, while the Extended Range gets a 49kWh battery pack, offering a 360km range.However, the Extended Range also comes with bigger wheels, and can optionally have the brown houndstooth interior the previous car had.I kind of prefer the black pack interior on the Standard Range model we've substituted into, and I even think you’re better off with the smaller wheel and larger tyre package, as it makes the ride noticeably more comfortable and probably contributes to additional driving range despite the smaller battery.There is also a slight difference in the tune of the electric motor, with the Extended Range scoring slightly more power to compensate for its modest weigh increase. For what it’s worth, the increase in power is barely perceptible due to the change in weight.I do wonder what the point of having both grades is in Hyundai’s range, as the battery sizes and even the prices are so close together. It’s not as though anyone considering even the more expensive version of the BYD Atto 1 at $27,990 is going to be convinced to buy an Inster at nearly $10,000 more.Then again, there are some things which you should be thinking about at this entry-level part of the EV market.For example, as alluded to in my first chapter, the underpinnings of the Inster feel far more sophisticated than pretty much any city car I’ve driven in the past, with robust steering and good suspension calibration. And there are finer technical details which should make this car age better than some of its contemporaries.The primary one is its liquid-cooled battery, where the Atto 1 gets only an air-cooled unit (with some assistance from the air conditioning). If you’re not across the differences, liquid cooling is generally associated with much better battery ageing over time. The older-generation Nissan Leafs (Leaves?) and Mitsubishi Outlanders had air-cooled units which cut their range in half after 15 or so years.Plus, the relatively tame tech in the Inster is actually to its benefit. Sure you can get bigger, fancier screens and software in a whole list of new Chinese cars at this price point, but a lot of them are quite annoying to use in the real world.For all its last-gen visual appeal, there’s something to be said for simple software and an array of physical buttons and dials which just work.Back to the difference between the two Inster grades, and I’m quite surprised to find I don’t miss the Extended Range version at all.I’m using the Inster in a way I assume it was intended to be, either as a city-exclusive vehicle, or as a second car. In the midst of a fuel crisis, it’s very nice to be able to hop into something and not have to think about how much it is costing you just to drive to the shops which are otherwise just outside of walking distance.I prefer driving the Inster anytime I’m in or around the denser parts of the city where I know parking will be at a premium. It’s great to leave my personal Forester, or any other vehicle I might have on loan which is larger, at home when I know I’m going to be hunting for kerbside parking.In this context, the Extended Range version of the car starts to make less and less sense. I’m doing comparatively so few kilometres and charging so infrequently despite the lesser range. When it comes to charging, Hyundai’s spec sheet earmarks an impressive 120kW charging ability, but the fastest I’ve seen, even on a 150kW stack is around 70kW. With such a small battery though, you turn around and it’s half charged.It won’t be convenient on a road trip, perhaps, but most people buying this diminutive hatch as a second car won’t notice because they’ll spend most of their time charging it seamlessly overnight.Other benefits of the Standard Range include better ride quality, as previously mentioned, and still plenty of pep, with the lack of weight (for an EV) and skinny tyres making it chuckable around corners. It also uses a bit less energy. I’m seeing 11.4kWh/100km on the dash, compared to the Extended Range, which was doing closer to 14kWh/100km.As to what others are thinking of the Inster, it’s a real love/hate divide, with the styling make-or-break for family and friends who seem to either love it or hate it.Nobody is a fan of how plasticky the interior feels, however I’m yet to receive a complaint that the screens are too small…In good news for me, the Extended Range version will be returned to me for next month’s chapter after being repaired.I did 457km in the Standard Range, only needing to charge it twice, and get this, according to my calculations, I was going to get exactly the claimed range of 327km from a full charge. I don’t think that’s happened before.Tune in next month for our farewell chapter and video.Acquired: March 2026Distance travelled this month: 467kmOdometer: 5207kmAverage energy consumption this month: 11.4kWh/100km

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