Hyundai Palisade’s Breakout Year Shows How Quickly the Market Can Turn

Looking at the Hyundai Palisade now, it’s easy to forget that for a while it lived in that space between “doing fine” and “breaking out.” That changed in 2025, when the model quietly put together the strongest sales year it has ever had, helped by a redesigned second-generation version and the arrival of a hybrid that shifted buyer interest in ways that are easier to see in hindsight than they were at the time.

As Hyundai Motor declared in a press release, the Palisade was sold in around 211,215 units in 2025, which is quite impressive if you compare it with 165,745 sold in a year earlier, in 2024. That`s a 27.4 percent increase, which is a major step in a crowded segment where growth usually comes extremely slowly.

Exterior

On the outside, the 2026 Hyundai Palisade appears slightly broader than the former and has a rougher appearance. The bigger frame comes with a much more spacious cabin, an attribute that would appeal more to those intending to buy three-row SUVs than to the exterior appearance features every time.

Interior

The interior is contextualized as belonging to the same change. Hyundai also focuses more on cabin luxury and better technology than the previous model, but does not subdivide those into a checklist. It is a message of more of how to go rather than how to do and relative to the Palisade, it implies that the vehicle is intended to be more refined and more established in its position of a family midsize SUV.

Complete Powertrain Information

This new Palisade comes with a hybrid engine. Here we have a 2.5-liter turbo hybrid which is capable of developing 329 horsepower and 339 lb-ft of torque. Such an arrangement is a compromise between efficiency and high expectations of such a great vehicle.

Hyundai has an estimated 619 miles on a full tank, though, regarding driving range, and a 34 mpg fuel economy. It is also paired with two electric motors, combined in a six-speed automatic transmission, to the hybrid.

Other Specifications

Hybrid powertrain aside, the new 2026 Hyundai Palisade comes with improved all-wheel drive capability thanks to the new XRT Pro variant. This is actually a trim that the South Korean-based carmaker started selling on the local market back in January 2025. However, sales began to increase in the US market in the summer of the same year.