Hail-a-Hyundai

Oneshift.com has said before that Hyundai is heading places, and this time it’s as a taxi, breaking the duo-poly long held by Toyota and Nissan. ComfortDelGro, the company that runs the largest fleet of taxis in Singapore, has placed an order for 700 Hyundai Sonata CRDi s, with an option to purchase an additional 1000 units. This is certainly a coup for Hyundai, as the competition to provide a taxi that complies with the strict Euro IV exhaust emissions has been stiff. The existing Toyota Crown and Nissan Cedric diesels do not comply with this standard. Within the last few years, we have seen many new Euro IV compliant cars being put on the road as taxis – the Volkswagen Touran, the Fiat Panorama, the Skoda Superb, the Ssangyong Stavic and the Mercedes-Benz E200 NGT. The level of specification of the Sonata CRDi seems to be quite high, coming standard with Hyundai’s H-matic 4-speed automatic transmission and independent all-round suspension. Two Sonata CRDi taxis started trials in April, and after 90,000km of trouble-free use over the past eight months, the decision was made to choose them for the taxi fleet.