Good day from the Indonesia Convention Exhibition at
BSD City, where the 2019 Gaikindo Indonesia International Auto Show (GIIAS)
opens today for the press. We’ll kick off our annual live coverage with the
Daihatsu HY Fun Concept, which was briefly uncovered for vice president of
Indonesia Jusuf Kalla this morning. The concept car, making its world debut,
will be formally unveiled later today.
The Daihatsu HY Fun is a sharply designed MPV with a
hybrid powertrain, hinting at Daihatsu’s next move for our region. It’s not
electric, but hybrid. Daihatsu sells inexpensive cars for the masses in
Indonesia and Malaysia, the latter via market leading sister brand Perodua, and
eco tech has to be affordable and realistic.
The Daihatsu HY Fun Concept is a three-row MPV with
six seats and virtual reality games for passengers. The first two rows of
individual seats can swivel around and face each other. Its footprint isn’t
very faraway from today’s Toyota Avanza and Daihatsu Xenia, and could be viewed
as an early vision of the next generation budget people mover.
This DNGA (Daihatsu New Global Architecture) based
MPV looks much sleeker though, thanks to a low roof and more sculptured panels.
The Avanza/Xenia is utilitarian and van-like in appearance – something like
that won’t do it anymore, but this surely will. Also, this shouldn’t be
completely dismissed as a flight of fancy – Indonesia and Malaysia are
Daihatsu’s two most important markets outside of Japan.
