Overall a Very Fine SUV
Overall we like our 2025 Santa Fe Calligraphy Hybrid. It has many really thoughtful and nice features.
First, the things we like. We take many road trips on the highways. Power is good. Driveability is great. The ride is top notch and the vehicle is quiet at at highway speeds. The mileage in town is as good or better than advertised. We get anywhere from 34 mpg to 38 mpg in town depending on the terrain and the roads. On the highway, the mileage is not quite as good (as expected) but we do get between 28 mpg and 31 mpg at 75 to 80 mph in hilly terrain which I consider very good given the size of the vehicle. The driver assistance features work well. The lane keeping assist is very nice on the highway. I like the HUD on the windshield. The seat cushioning is fairly comfortable. I like a firm seat for long drives but the Santa Fe buckets are a little on the hard side in my opinion. My F150 seats are more comfortable and the Honda Pilot we traded for this were also better. Firm with a little more cushion.
Now the things we are not wild about.
As far as the seats go, the driver seat memory feature works poorly, IMO. Sometimes I have to readjust my seat as I do not think the seat always return to the position I have set. Could be just my perception? Not entirely sure as we have not had the vehicle for a long period yet. However, I do think the engineers need to rethink how the vehicle determines which driver is present. I am 6'1" and my wife is 5'5" so our presets are quite different. All other vehicle that we have had with this feature use the key FOB for determine who opened the driver door and then adjusts the seat BEFORE entry and start. This vehicle requires you to select who is in the driver seat AFTER the vehicle is started. This means that if my wife was the last to drive, As soon as I get in and start, the seat goes to her position which almost causes a head bump for me and my knees to hit the lower dash until I Indicate that I am the driver. REALLY? That's the best Hyundai can come up with? Very poor! A real pain in the behind (and the head and the knees). Just use the two individual key FOBs to set the presets like everyone else does. That works great. Also, after you shut the car off, the seat goes backward to the exit position. That's good. But after closing the door, the driver seat goes back to some forward position. Huh? Just leave it in the exit / entry position so it does not have to move back again when the door is opened. Avoid this unnecessary seat movement!
The other seat beef is with the 2nd row buckets seats. The electric actuated movement to move the seatback up for third row entry is overkill and unnecessary IMO. Just provide a release button for forward and back seatback movement. The other thing we do not like about the second row buckets is that they do not lay down flat to allow for large cargo loads. Maybe I am missing something but I have not found a way to lay the seatbacks down and there is nothing in the owners manual that I can find. We missed this when we were looking before we bought which blew my mind as I took it for grated that all SUV second rows lay down. MY BAD! This is a possible deal breaker as far as buying another Sante Fe after this one despite the other nice features. One advantage of an SUV is the large cargo space available when needed. NOT on this one!
We only have had the vehicle for about 5 months. No major issues as I would not expect to have. However, there is one issue (beside the seat memory mentioned above) with the HVAC blower. Periodically after the vehicle is shut off, everything shuts down as it should. After a short period of time that varies, the HVAC blower will come back ON with vehicle off and will run until we get in and do a ON/OFF PB cycle. This has happened 6 or 8 times in about 5 months and we have always caught it. Not sure what happens if we do not catch it. Run the battery down?? I will have the dealer check at the first provided oil change that I let them do. I have already done two break in oil changes so they will do the third one. I will do most of them.
Verified Owner
