It’s been four months since Hyundai pulled the wraps off the new 2024 Santa Fe but it doesn’t look any less shocking. New from the ground up, the now fifth-generation Santa Fe bears no resemblance to any of its predecessors and charges off in bold, boxy new directions for the automaker. It’s also full of functional firsts for the model, including grab handles on the C-pillars for easy roof access, loads of handy in-vehicle storage features and trims specifically meant for real off-road capability.
At the recent Los Angeles Auto Show the Korean automaker also revealed more of what buyers can expect. Although pricing and exact trim specs are still to come, there will be two four-cylinder powertrains, a 2.5-liter gas engine (carried over from the current model) making 277 horsepower and 311 pound-feet of torque and 1.6-liter hybrid with 232 hp and 271 lb-ft, the latter notably more than the 2023 Hybrid. On the Hyundai stand, a kitted-out XRT model, riding 30-inch all-terrain tires, previewed an array of camper-friendly accessories.
Hyundai also brought along two of its designers, SangYup Lee, head of the Hyundai and Genesis global design center; and Hak Soo Ha, head of Hyundai’s North American design center in Irvine, California. To find out more about how the new Santa Fe took shape, why it looks the way it does and explore all the interesting things inside it, Forbes Wheels sat down with both of them and got an in-person tour of the vehicle from Lee.
The Big Box
“This project started at the early stages of Covid,” Ha told Forbes Wheels. “Just like in the U.S., people in Korea were cooped up and itching to get out, so car camping and outdoor activities really boomed.” Instead of presenting a full set of interior and exterior sketches as in past projects, “We made a mock-up of the liftgate area,” Ha said. “We told the chairman and executives about overlanding and camping, and pitched it as a doorway to a world we as a company hadn’t really paid a lot of attention to.”
Indeed, although Hyundai built an off-roader for the Korean market in the 1990s, the Galloper, very few of its modern crossovers had much of an outdoorsy or off-road focus until the past three years. The Santa Fe’s shape began with the reimagined tailgate specifically to give consumers more utility and a place to commune with nature. “It was immediately clear that the width and the height would have to be ample,” Ha added. The bluff vertical tailgate, nearly 6 inches wider and 3 inches taller than before, was the starting point.
The full-width tailgate and the structure around it are costlier to manufacture than the ones on previous Santa Fes, and the taillights had to be repositioned to make it work, which also made it more of an investment for which the design department did get some pushback from the bean counters. “We all have a cost limit,” Lee said, “But we think if something is really beneficial for the customer, we should do it.”
There were also other reasons to open up the “gray zone,” the space between the vehicle’s outer edge and the inner edge of the tailgate opening. Lee said that watching families load and unload SUVs at Costco was one of his major inspirations. It’s also bigger overall, measuring 190.2 inches on a 110.8 inch wheelbase (up from 188.4 and 108.9). It’s also taller at 67.7 inches (up from 66.3) but some versions of the 2024, like the off-road-themed XRT, go as high as 70.7.
Enlarging the Santa Fe was a natural evolution for the lineup as a whole, too. The enlargement of the Tucson in 2022 meant it offered more style and space than the Santa Fe at a lower price, but the 2024 design restores the pecking order. Its third-row seat and larger size now has it nipping at the heels of the three-row Palisade, but an all-new Palisade is due in late 2025. The reworked Santa Fe gives it room to grow.
Of course, there was also the rest of the vehicle to style. “When you have a very rigid, square back, a round front won’t match. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle you put together until you get a result you like,” Ha said. When it was revealed, the Santa Fe’s boxy shape struck some observers as retro. This wasn’t the intent, Lee says, but old SUVs did provide some inspiration.
“In the eighties, many SUVs were made for off-roading, and we made it angular to emphasize rugged character and outdoor intent, so you may see a hint of seventies and eighties for that reason,” he said. “But also, design trends go around and come around. Slab-sided design was big then but nobody really has it these days. If you can add a modern, high-tech touch to it, you can have a fresh impact.”
Big, rectilinear vehicles do have pitfalls, however. “Our aerodynamics engineers call them ‘aero disasters,’ but we spent lots of time in the wind tunnel and got a drag coefficient of 0.29. That’s down from 0.34 on the previous model even though this one is a lot bigger,” Lee said. “We’re proud of that.”
The H Theme
Another element that observers notice right away? The H-shaped headlights and taillights, which are echoed throughout the interior with other H-theme motifs. They’re a riff on the lessons learned from Hyundai’s Ioniq EVs and their distinctive pixel-pattern light graphics.
“Regardless of EV or ICE, lamps are the most important design touch,” Lee said. “They’re a functional element, yes, but they’ve become a really important identifier for the brand. We came up with the ‘seamless horizon’ lighting signature and now have it on the Kona, Sonata, Staria and Grandeur [the last two aren’t sold in the U.S.]. We’ve been doing this for about three years and we’re starting to see a lot of imitators. So we told our design teams, ‘Let’s think about the next step.’” The H, Ha added, evolved naturally from the Santa Fe’s shape.
Can we expect to see similar treatments on future models? Sort of. “When I worked on Genesis, the two-line lighting signature was key to identifying that brand. At Hyundai we’ve been evolving with ideas like the ‘electric jewel’ for the Tucson and Santa Cruz, then the seamless horizon for the Kona and now the H for the Santa Fe. Part of this is about highlighting the actual lamp technology, but yes, you’ll see some progression even if it won’t be exactly the same.”
Stepping Up the Outdoor Game
One thing you probably will see on future Hyundai SUVs? The clever hidden hand grips in the C-pillars. Though invisible at a glance, the handholds have flip-in covers that allow users to have a firm grip on the upper part of the body while manipulating things on the roof.
“Most designers see the C-pillar as just a garnish area,” Lee said, “But we wondered if we couldn’t use it for something else. We saw that lots of lifestyle customers are putting stuff on their roof racks, so the genesis of this was just ‘How do we make getting up to the roof rack easier?’”
How many attempts did it take to design? “Fifteen to 20 easily,” he quipped. The choices, however, weren’t purely aesthetic. “You have to make sure the mechanism looks good, but can also hold the weight and deal with water management. There’s a tiny drain in there to prevent water from getting trapped.” Now that it’s something only this vehicle has, Lee added, it’ll probably get used again: “We’re always thinking about brand design consistency in terms of lines and aesthetics, but if we think functionally, a handle like this can be a brand signature.”
Hyundai also designed a big set of off-road and overlanding-themed accessories for the Santa Fe and previewed them over the summer with a special XRT concept. Though some of the more radical bits from that concept won’t make it to production, a ladder, roof rack and a light bar were on display in Los Angeles on a production Santa Fe XRT, and Hyundai has also showcased rooftop tents on the SUV.
Like Honda’s Trailsport trims, XRTs are meant to be rugged but the 2024 Santa Fe XRT will really be the first XRT to venture meaningfully beyond cosmetic ruggedness. We don’t know the full extent of the XRT’s mechanical changes, but it will have a 1.5-inch lift over the regular Santa Fe, giving it 9.7 inches of ground clearance, and use 30-inch all-terrain tires on 18-inch rims. That’s a significant escalation in capability from any previous Santa Fe and really any other Hyundai SUV.
Inside the Santa Fe
The emphasis on utility continues within, where there are lots of new storage options including dual gloveboxes, a console bin that opens in two directions, and a side-by-side pair of wireless phone chargers. There’s also a big storage spot for purses and handbags underneath the console. Much of this came about by borrowing a page from Hyundai’s EVs.
“The gear shifter on the Santa Fe is something I originally designed for the Ioniq 5,” Ha said. The Ioniq 5 features lie-back seats for use during charging downtime, and a sliding console to match. “To create that, we had to move the shifter and other things off of the console and onto the steering column, and that proved very functional and space-efficient. So in this vehicle, we could put other things there like the wireless chargers.”
The whole interior has some of the lounge-like vibe of the Ioniqs and 2021’s SEVEN concept, but it’ll be a three-row machine. “With all the tech features,” Lee said, “we don’t want to make the interior too busy but instead a calm living space. It’s a lot like furniture design. No funky lines, just clean surfaces.”
While the former Santa Fe did offer a tiny third row in other markets, Hyundai considered it too small to offer here, and the even older Santa Fe XL wasn’t very popular. The new Santa Fe’s third row offers 30 inches of legroom (more than a Toyota Highlander) and is tolerable even for adults under 6 feet. It also has ample cargo volume behind the second row (40.5 cubic-feet). The Palisade, meanwhile, has a more premium feel and more cargo space behind its slightly larger third row. (The Santa Fe has almost none.)
UX Is Design, and Design Is UX
Perched atop the dashboard, like a big screen TV on the mantle of a fancy living room, is a new “panoramic curved display” that looks very much like those in new BMWs. It combines two 12.3-inch screens (one for the gauges, one for infotainment) into a single unit and features clean, contemporary graphics. On the console, there’s a touch-sensitive HVAC panel but also plenty of physical controls. Wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto will be standard.
“We want to to be like a living room but it also has to be easy to drive,” Lee said, hinting at the challenges of user experience (UX) design in motor vehicles. “That’s part of why we curved the screen. It’s easy to see without looking too far away from the road and when you reach your arm out the curve puts it perfectly within reach. Plus we have all the hard buttons. Anything that relates to safety or basic operation we keep the hard buttons so you can just instantly operate things without having to look away from the road.”
He continued, “For me, UX is design and design is UX, and I tell my staffers that they are all UX designers, and this is true inside and outside. For example with the C-pillar handle, I probably stepped up and down more than 500 times to test the grip and position, and to make sure you don’t slip when it’s wet. This is where we can really improve our design product because design is not just about what you see but what you feel and interact with.”
The new Santa Fe will arrive at dealers in the spring of 2024, and as more details and prices become available, we’ll keep you appraised.