This is Technology Bytes, episode 182 for August 30th, 2026.
Technology Bytes is a microcast where I share brief bytes on interesting technology.
Enjoy, and here we go.
Today I’m going to talk about Hyundai hybrid system, and yeah, I’m talking about the car.
And so really I’m talking about something I have no idea how it works.
I don’t know anything about it, but I’ve read some things and it kind of makes sense.
And so my wife bought a new Hyundai hybrid Tucson, a hybrid Tucson, Hyundai, whatever.
And so just the, you know, we’ve had it for a number of hours at this point, but I’ve read some about how Hyundai put their technology together for how the hybrid works.
Now this isn’t a plug-in hybrid; it’s just a HEV, as they call it.
And so in my prior thoughts, I had always thought there was two kinds of cars that made sense to get.
One was a gas-powered car with the power that you wanted and was able to give you, and the other was a fully electric car, which gave you a whole different set of, at least a different type of power to the wheels and how the car accelerated.
And I always thought that the hybrid version of that was the least of each system.
It was the worst gas engine and it was the worst electric part of an electric vehicle.
So I never thought a hybrid would be the car that I would ever purchase.
Here’s the deal.
I’m not 100% sure that I was wrong in my prior thoughts, but when you look at getting an all-electric vehicle, you have to plan for certain things.
And in my household, I don’t believe that having two all-electric vehicles is the best plan.
We have family in California and other places, and so we do take some longer trips.
And doing that in an electric vehicle is not that difficult, but does take some extra planning.
And I don’t need my wife to go through that if she’s on the road on her own.
But then again, in the hybrid world, your miles per gallon can be I don’t know.
Significantly better.
I don’t know what the percentage is, but I think the Volkswagen that she had before was probably about 28 miles to the gallon, and this hybrid Tucson is going to get about 38 miles to the gallon.
Now, there are other hybrids that are very similar, like the Kia Sportage that gets a little bit better, maybe up to 41.
But the Hyundai hybrid only comes in an all-wheel drive model, so that reduces the mileage a little bit.
But I think there’s some safety on the road.
I don’t think we need it, but I’m not opposed to it.
And if we are on a little bit rougher road, I can actually lock the power so that the same amount of power goes to all four wheels of the vehicle.
So that’s kind of cool.
The other thing is that there’s some performance in the hybrid that I wasn’t sure that I would like or how it worked.
And the fact that you have some of that electric vehicle-type motor in the chain means that you do get some benefit from that.
Besides just better miles per gallon, you do get some acceleration from that because it uses a combination of the power of the torque, maybe, of the electric vehicle motor and the additional power from the, what do you call, internal combustion engine.
And both things supply power to the drivetrain.
And so you get both of the power of the internal combustion engine and the power of the EV motor to make your car perform just a little better.
Here’s the thing.
The technology in this hybrid vehicle is maybe above my pay grade.
I am an engineer.
I have a nuclear engineering degree.
So reading some of what has gone into this and the transmission that makes it possible to transfer between the electric part of the car and the gas part of the car is quite fascinating.
And it’s also fascinating in that at certain driving conditions, the Power of the gas motor has enough to make the car go and to charge your battery at the same time without sacrificing drive comfort or responsiveness.
And then as soon as the gas pedal is hit, then the power from the battery gets to join with the internal combustion engine power and provide all of that to the drivetrain.
I don’t know exactly how that works, and reading it and watching it happen, I watched the, while my wife was driving, I had that screen up that allows me to see the times that it’s using electric power versus the time that it’s using the gas power and the time that it’s doing both and how that works, and it is pretty cool.
And it is fascinating, the engineering behind that technology.
I saw little indications here and there that Hyundai’s transmission that allows that to happen has had some problems, but I think those are older notes.
I wasn’t really looking at the year, but they’ve made some fantastic progressions.
So what do I have?
Like a 1.5 liter turbo engine for the internal combustion engine.
That’s probably what I would get if I just bought the Tucson, not the hybrid Tucson.
On top of that, I have a 77 kilowatt-hour battery on top of that that allows me to have that additional power.
I think it may be the best of both worlds instead of the worst of both worlds, but I’m not 100% sure yet.
So let’s see.
We’ve had the vehicle for Well, let’s see.
It’s almost seven.
So we’ve had the vehicle for four hours, and here I am telling you all about it as if I’ve owned it forever.
So I really don’t have a lot of real-world experience.
My wife knows that when she drove her Taos back and forth to work, that every two weeks she had to put gas in the car.
So is this going to be every three weeks?
Is it going to be two and a half weeks?
Is it going to be two weeks and a day?
We don’t have any real-world experience at this point with this vehicle.
It’s kind of interesting, you know, the things that we do know.
When you drive this car in reverse, it does not ever use the internal combustion engine.
It only runs on battery.
And when you start from a stop, the internal combustion engine is off.
And so your initial acceleration away from a full stop is all electric vehicle.
And then once you are up to a given speed, then it gives time for that internal combustion engine to come on and then join in the party, as it were.
So a lot of really cool technology.
I’m really interested to see how the real-world performance stacks up against some of my untested preconceptions, as it were.
And, you know, the initial thought is, yeah, it’s good.
My wife likes it.
She thinks it handles well.
She likes the way it drives.
There are different drive modes, and we tested it in the power mode, and it really does have a little bit of get up and go when you drive it in that mode.
In the eco mode, it just feels like it drags to me.
But that’s, you know, we’re different drivers, my wife and I, and she really liked how it felt and was very happy with how it went.
So we’re looking forward to real-world experiencing experiences with this vehicle, matching our initial highs after just becoming the new owners of a brand new vehicle.
We will see how that happens, how that goes, what it looks like, and we’re going to have this car for a long time, so we hope we like it.
And I will report back once we’ve had it for more than seven minutes.
Well, that is all I have for today.
If you have comments, suggestions, or questions, you can send them to technologybytes@merrigfamily.com.
As always, I want to thank you for listening to the Technology Bytes microcast, and I look forward to the next time we are together taking another bite of technology.
