At the 2025 Los Angeles Auto Show, Hyundai unveiled the Crater Concept, offering a glimpse of what’s to come. In this case, it’s about the future of the XRT name. Available in several Hyundai vehicles, it appears that the automaker has finally decided to take its off-road-focused variants seriously. The Crater’s design follows the same language as the latest Palisade. That means angular and bold. This time, Hyundai applied that to a smaller vehicle that previews a go-anywhere compact SUV..
Just like its production XRT models, Hyundai gave the Crater Concept plenty of rugged details. Textured body cladding, 33-inch off-road tires, a lifted suspension, recovery hooks, roof-mounted lights, and a roof rack are all there. Hyundai kept things quirky, too. Pixel lighting features heavily on the Crater Concept, connecting it to production models.
The Hyundai Crater Concept brings whimsy into the cabin from the moment you get in via the coach-style doors. It has funky icons matched with a cool cylindrical orange dash featuring dials for controls and suspended by straps. Meanwhile, the interior goes all in on the rugged theme, including some of the most futuristic seats. The cylindrical theme continues on the dash, center console, and doors. It’s driver-centric, too, as evident in the four drive mode buttons on the steering wheel and the orange central marker. Hyundai also added a cool monster-like icon that’s repeated on the strap latches and roof lights to give the Crater more character.
Although it’s just a concept, we suspect the Crater previews the next Tucson. Based on its exterior footprint alone, this screams compact SUV. Most importantly, it hints at the future of the XRT variants. Whereas N stands for on-road performance, XRT goes all-in on off-road capability, and we can’t wait to see it full-fledged sub-lineup within Hyundai.
Source: Hyundai
