As promised, Hyundai drew back the cover on the Nuvis HCD-11 Concept at the New York Auto Show. As the name suggests, the Nuvis is the 11th concept to come from the company’s North American design center.

The Nuvis, which follows closely in the footsteps of the ix-onic Concept, which debuted in Geneva, is further from a production model and intended more as a design (and technology) study.

The Nuvis features a prototype of Hyundai’s upcoming Blue Drive hybrid system, which uses lithium polymer batteries. This new type of battery for a hybrid powertrain is innovative because it is not only much lighter and smaller than nickel metal hydride systems used in current mainstream hybrids, but it has (according to Hyundai) safety advantages over the lithium-ion units that other manufacturers (like Toyota and GM) are coming out with.

Another advantage of the lithium polymer setup is that it allows for significantly greater flexibility, allowing the batteries to be shaped according to how the designers want to create the car, rather than the other way around. 

GALLERY: Hyundai Nuvis Concept

More on the Hyundai Nuvis Concept after the jump:

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Yesterday some grainy images of Hyundai’s new concept car appeared online after a New Yorker snapped a few photos of the crossover and sent them over to AutoBlog (picture below). Today Hyundai has released this official photos of the Nuvis Concept.

Designed at Hyundai’s California Design Center in Irvine, CA, the Nuvis is part of a new breed of vehicles from Hyundai, which, the company says could form the basis of a new generation of crossover. The term “generation” is key here, hinting that this isn’t likely to be a new model but rather the next generation of a current model – likely the Santa Fe.

In fact, the Nuvis looks so much like the ix-onic concept from the Geneva Auto Show that we had to go back and look at some photos to make sure it wasn’t the same vehicle. The ix-onic is supposed to inspire the future design direction of all of Hyundai’s SUVs and crossovers and we can certainly see the family resemblance here.

Photo courtesy AutoBlog