It's no secret that SUVs and Pickups are more popular than ever right now. Gas is still cheap and the momentum has definitely shifted towards larger vehicles with more seats and more cargo room. Hyundai realizes that and according to Reuters, Michael J O'Brien the vice president of corporate and product planning at Hyundai U.S. said Hyundai's top management has given the go-ahead for an all new Pickup truck.
The pickup may look similar to the Santa Cruz that U.S. Hyundai execs showed off in 2015 as a concept. It's a smaller pickup and could compete very well in the booming small pickup market. Other trucks in that segment are the Chevy Colorado, GMC Canyon, Honda Ridgeline and Toyota Tacoma and the upcoming Ford Ranger.
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Hyundai also has plans to release a small SUV called the Kona and a redesigned Tuscon in 2020. Everything is pointing to bigger and better with Hyundai and if trends continue this could pay off big time for the South Korean auto maker.
O'Brien seems very optimistic even in light of a massive decline in Hyundai sales so far this year. Hyundai is down 11 percent compared to an overall U.S. decline of cars and light trucks sales of 2.9 percent. He had this to say according to autoblog.com:
"Our glasses are fairly clean. We understand where we have a shortfall."
Related: Check out the new Jeep Wrangler truck, called the Jeep Scrambler