Hyundai's meteoric rise to success has been characterized by vastly improved quality, new technologies, and novel design. It is aiming to continue its ascent by diversifying into multiple new industries and exploring new ways of making money. At the same time, the Korean automaker is continuing to build on these cornerstones of its car business, and that means more eye-catching designs. The Hyundai Kona is one of the cars that is preparing for a redesign, despite the fact that the spicy Kona N version only arrived last year. As the heavy camouflage that our spy photographers captured indicates, we're still some time away from seeing the new look revealed.

The Kona was the first Hyundai product to feature split headlamps, and it's not giving up on the design trait with the new model either. For the refresh, however, it appears that the lower lamps will no longer be horizontal and will now be upright instead, as is the case with the Palisade and Tucson. Under the hood, we're expecting the redesigned Kona to be offered as both a gasoline-powered model and an EV. With no identifying decals or visible charge ports, the prototype you see here is unelectrified. Internally, the new Kona is known by the codename SX2, while the Kona Electric is called the SX2e EV, with the lowercase e reportedly referring to Europe. The codename SX2 N Line is also part of the lineup, so we can expect a sportily styled variant to continue being offered.

Inside, we can't see much but it's safe to say that a new infotainment display will be accompanied by a new driver cluster screen. At the rear of the new Kona, even less is apparent but it seems that a high-mounted taillight design will carry over. The secondary taillights that are horizontal on the current model seem to be getting the same treatment as the illumination clusters on the lower half of the front bumper. We can't really see much more, but these are still early days and we'll surely see the test mule shed some camouflage as development continues. At some point, Hyundai will need to delete that aftermarket light bar and evaluate the car's lighting capabilities. Hopefully, when this happens, we'll see more of the design revealed. As for the full reveal, that's expected to happen in 2023, but when exactly is not yet clear.