2023 Hyundai Tucson Ownership: Delivery, Driving and Total Experience

I’ve done two long drives in the SUV and have covered over 1700 miles on the Odo since delivery in February 2023.

BHPian gold sun recently shared with other enthusiasts.

Just sharing my experience with my new Tucson Signature AWD Diesel. I used to use Renault Captur and still do. After delivery at the end of February 2023, I had driven about 2749 km to date, including two long trips: a) Chennai to Kovilpatti – about 1200 km up and down – mostly driven by my son; and b) Chennai to Thane via Bangalore – approximately 1350km with me at the wheel for the entire route (with a stopover near Hubli) with my wife as passenger.

Since many of you have already shared the good and bad of Tucson, I’ll focus on a few specific things here.

delivery experience

I started following Tucson in late 2021 and started to like it more and more as I saw the international models review of it and eagerly awaited its launch in India. I didn’t look at any other cars at all and decided to go for the Tucson when it comes out in India. So I booked for Black Tucson Signature AWD when booking opened in July 2022 hoping to get my hands on Tucson sometime in October but for some reason I wasn’t able to get delivery until February 2023. Perhaps the delay is due to my choice of color, which was black. Of course, the retailer asked me in between if I was okay with the white color, but it was a strict no from my side.

The dealer delivered the car with floor mats (free of charge) and also promised to deliver a car care kit together with a vacuum cleaner, but to date have not received it.

experience behind the wheel

• Collision avoidance: I find this a more helpful feature. Of course, I had experienced it several times at his work: a few times while reversing and a few times in slow-moving city traffic (in Pune). I’ve seen the warning multiple times. Except once, when I thought I was in control to avoid a collision, the car hit the brakes. But realized that his judgment on this occasion was better than mine. As for a rear-end collision in such situations, it would have happened anyway if the ADAS hadn’t braked, ie I would have hit the car in front as someone coming at me from behind. In my opinion, that will only make me a better driver.
• With the lane departure warning system: I loved it the most. Again, this feature will surely make me a better driver as it doesn’t allow me to change lanes without using the turn signals.
• BlueLink cards: Although Hyundai claims its navigation system is far better than Google’s, I find it falls so far behind. It didn’t even recognize a few stretches of road in Hiranandani Meadows in Thane. Its redirection logic is also not to my liking. The ETA calculated by Bluelink is grossly wrong while Google Maps is close to accurate.
• Android Auto: It’s a bit cumbersome that I have to use a wired connection to use it. Also, it doesn’t work with many data cables and I found that you need to buy a cable that is USB 2.0 compatible. Would love to hear from others on this. If you connect via cable, you will not have a suitable place to keep the mobile phone as if you keep it on its wireless charging point. In my case, the phone overheats after a few hours. Android has informed me that it has closed all running applications due to overheating. Then I left the phone in the cup holder and then the heating problem was gone. I’m not sure if there is an option to disable wireless charging to allow the phone to stay on the charging pad while connected to a USB cable. Need to explore the settings.
• I find BlueLink useful on mobile, especially for remote locking. My Captur locks itself when I park the car and walk away from the car. But Tucson doesn’t do that automatically and you have to disable it explicitly (Maybe there are some settings I still need to explore). This is where I find bluelink useful as it notifies me that the car is unlocked so I can lock it remotely.

Other

When we left for Kovilpatti after a few days of delivery we noticed that the instrument cluster was showing some errors and found that the rear right tire pressure was too low – at around 12. To my surprise all the other tires were reading around 46 hp while the recommended tire pressure is 35. Perhaps the dealer had overinflated the car when it was delivered. Returning to the low-pressure warning, we took a gamble at the nearest gas pump, simply inflating the troubled tire (and also deflating the other tires to 35hp) and continuously monitoring the pressure on the instrument cluster. While everything was fine for about 200 km, it was suddenly flat. Aside from the strange road noise, we couldn’t feel any car drifting or other symptoms.

Immediately we stopped the car in a safe place and changed the tire with the spare wheel. The spare wheel simply looks like a motorcycle tire. Luckily we were able to find a roadside assistance service within a 2 km radius.

My son thought the suspension seemed softer than Captur, which I couldn’t feel. But later I could see that I could hear the loud noise of the suspension when you hit even small bumps and pushed to the limit. Although I had never experienced that before in Captur.

As I drove more and more I started to like and get used to the different warning tones and without even looking at the instrument cluster I would know what the warning is for. Good thing Hyundai used a different sound for different actions/warnings.

My wife noticed that the air conditioning for the passengers in the back row is not up to par. Unlike many other cars, there is no way to control the fan speed for the rear seat passengers. I’m not sure if there is a setting/option somewhere that I don’t already know about.

As for the Mumbai trip, I work in Thane and did at least a couple of road trips to Chennai every year. On the way to Chennai we stop at Chitradurga (Hotel Ojas by Ideal Yatri Niwas) and on the return we stop at Varur (Hotel the Cult), a place near Hubli.

For more insight and information, read the comments from BHPians.