It’s been a pretty busy summer for Hyundai Construction Equipment. In addition to putting the finishing touches on moving its U.S. headquarters from Chicago to Atlanta, the company rolled out substantial refreshes on both its wheel loader and excavator lineups.
Near the end of July, Hyundai unveiled its seven new HX Series excavators, and in early August it rolled out the five new HL Series wheel loaders. Aware of the typical customer’s eye roll at a Tier 4 Final engine refresh (though both machine lineups have benefitted considerably from the change to new Cummins and Scania engines as we detail below), Hyundai used the opportunity to bring a complete overhaul to the cabs of these machines.
And while the company shared most of the details on these new machines with those initial announcements earlier this summer, at a dealer and media event in Atlanta last week, Hyundai gave the machines their first real public debut and shared a bit more insight into the design overhauls and the primary selling points it believes contractors and operators stand most to benefit from.
The main improvement to both the HX Series excavators and the HL Series wheel loaders is the cab. Hyundai marketing manager Corey Rogers says Hyundai engineers were heavily influenced in the redesign of the cab by the comfort and technology found in modern luxury cars.
In fact, comfort is the number one selling point of the new machines, Rogers says.
“The big thing is the cab. Man it’s a lot of space. This is a big nice cab. You can’t not like this cab,” Rogers says, noting that the HX Series excavator cabs are 13 percent larger than those found on the 9A Series, while the HL wheel loaders are 10 percent larger.
Rogers says the entire structure of the cabs has changed with both being ROPS and FOG 1/2. “And beyond the added comfort and safety of these changes, the new cab design gives us more space and an improved flat glass front design on the HX machines for better visibility,” he says.
