Suppose you're a Hyundai and Kia enthusiast. In that case, a lot of good things are happening around the 2024 Los Angeles Auto Show for both companies – and some of them also have international echoes.
For example, the Kia sibling of Hyundai has prepared for the LA Auto Show no less than five premieres, and we're eagerly expecting to see the North American version of the refreshed 2026 Sportage compact crossover SUV and the latest EV6 all-electric models, among others. Surprises may abound, too.
Over at camp Hyundai, the South Korean company couldn't wait any longer and spilled the EV beans on their much delayed 2025 Hyundai Ioniq 9 at the iconic Goldstein House in Los Angeles, just hours before the official debut in front of the worldwide audience gathered at the Automobility LA event.
Alas, as it turns out, even the parallel universes of vehicular CGI still have some unfinished business with the two sister brands. More precisely, that's because of a member of the imaginative guild of digital car content creators – this virtual artist, better known as Theottle on social media, has resorted to CGI slicing and dicing the new Kia Tasman truck into a Hyundai pickup twin!
His reasoning is simple. The pixel master rightfully believes that Kia poured quite a lot of money and various other resources into the research, development, and production of the Kia Tasman ladder frame platform. Indeed, the body-on-frame architecture is brand new and isn't shared with any other model from Kia or Hyundai. Well, according to the author, this situation needs to be properly addressed.
As such, he thinks a matching Hyundai version might arrive at one point in time – and proceeds to showcase his vision for the unofficial, hypothetical, and unannounced twin in his latest behind-the-scenes making-of video that we have embedded below. He asks the audience if "Hyundai's version will be as polarizing as the Tasman or it will adopt a more familiar Hyundai styling" and then proceeds to show us his version of the design project.
As far as we can tell, he uses the Hyundai Kona along with Tucson/Santa Cruz's radiator grille for the front end and profile reference, as well as Kona's heavily modified CGI traits for the rear and the open bed. The result is quite interesting, for sure. If you want our two cents on the matter, it's still wacky but also a tad more ruggedly elegant thanks to the squared LEDs front and back, the upright grille with full-width LED bar, and even the rear gets another LED strip across.
So, what do you think? Is there any chance that Hyundai will get a sibling of the Kia Tasman? If it does, do you think they might bring it to America to fight against the mid-size pickup truck sector's representatives or not?
Aurel has aimed high all his life (literally, at 16 he was flying gliders all by himself) so in 2006 he switched careers and got hired as a writer at his favorite magazine. Since then, his work has been published both by print and online outlets, most recently right here, on autoevolution. Full profile
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