The company will kickstart its hybrid venture globally with the Avante and produce a small fleet of fuel cell electric vehicles by 2012. Interestingly, Avante is set to replace the existing premium sedan Elantra in the country later this year and company officials said that once the hybrid Avante is out elsewhere, it would come to India as well. “The plans are futuristic and, for the time being, based completely out of Korea. But as hybrids find more acceptance and emission norms get tightened here they will find their way into India as well,” said a company official.

World-over, the auto industry — led by Japanese companies like Toyota, Honda, Nissan and Mitsubishi — are looking at hybrids in an attempt to cut down on emission hazards as also the dependency on fossil fuel. “The importance of developing futuristic, environmentally-friendly cars is increasing for sustainable growth,” Hyundai-Kia chairman Chung Mong Koo said. “Therefore, technology for advanced cars, like the hybrid, is imperative. We plan to produce a small fleet of fuel cell electric vehicles from 2012. Mass production of environmentally-friendly cars will also create new jobs and develop the industry into a next-generation value-adding growth engine.”

Hyundai will first produce a compact-sized LPG model, the Avante LPI hybrid, which would use both liquefied petroleum gas and electricity. In 2010, Hyundai plans to introduce mid-sized hybrids that use gasoline and LPG.

Currently, the company provides Verna hybrid to government agencies as pilot projects in Korea. It entered the environment-friendly auto market in October 2004, when it supplied the government with 50 Click (Getz) hybrid cars. Since then, Hyundai and Kia have supplied the government with 350 hybrid cars in 2005, including the Verna model. This number increased to 730 cars in 2006 and 1,682 cars in 2007, totalling about 2,800 cars so far.

As of now, Honda is ahead in the race for getting the first hybrid into the country. The company will launch the hybrid version of Civic later this year and more variants would be considered based on its performance.