How much does the United States like pickup trucks? You don’t need me to answer that question. Just look out the window and you’ll see all the reasons a manufacturer might need to build their own. Now, a company like Hyundai or its luxury arm Genesis can’t simply decide to sell a body-on-frame pickup and have the same success as Detroit’s Big Three. But at least one—if not both—of those automakers seems set to release a truck of their own in the near future. Hyundai says it’ll bring such a vehicle to market by 2030, and Genesis has even gone so far as designing one already.
The chunky rig was featured in a recent issue of Auto&Design, an Italian publication. There’s no mistaking it for anything else, as the grille and parallel headlight elements are distinctly Genesis. Said LEDs wrap all the way around the front fenders and pick back up on the rearmost part of the bedsides. In that way, it’s a lot like the X Gran Equator Concept that Genesis unveiled last spring. This truck actually shares a lot with that wild SUV once you look at them side-by-side.
It doesn’t have some secretive internal designation, according to the Auto&Design article; it’s simply referred to as “the pickup.” Luc Donckerwolke, chief creative officer and chief brand officer for Genesis, is quoted as saying, “An electric pickup truck? Why not? Then we discarded it because we had to focus on different projects. Maybe in the future, who knows.”
I’m not saying reverse psychology is at play here, but I’ve certainly heard similar talk from auto execs before, only for that very thing to become a reality in the near future.
My guess is that Genesis did the prep work in case Hyundai has success with its body-on-frame truck and the market seems ready for a more premium version. Aside from it being an unfamiliar name in the pickup segment, I think its biggest blocker would be the electric powertrain. I’m not saying it can’t work, but we’ve seen the EV forecast shift drastically in the past 12 months, and even a company like Rivian only sells a handful of battery-powered pickups compared to its SUVs.
I won’t hold my breath waiting for this to reach production, at least in the next four or five years. Whether or not this ever gets built likely depends on how well the public receives Hyundai’s version. That’ll be interesting to observe on its own, as I’m curious if it’ll have more success than the Santa Cruz. I bet it’ll be good, but whether or not it’ll be enough to capture a piece of the pie from other established players in the space seems a lot less certain.
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