Hyundai Ioniq 6 review: Slippery, with character
Hyundai has grand plans for its electric cars. Its other plans are even grander
THINGS move with such dizzying speed in the electric vehicle (EV) world, that Hyundai’s hot new model is built on a platform that the company is already racing to make obsolete.
On the verge of a launch by Komoco Motors in Singapore, the Ioniq 6 is a relentlessly streamlined sedan that has a habit of picking up accolades, among them the prestigious World Car Of The Year Award.
As a product, it signals Hyundai’s confidence in its ability to compete head-on with the likes of BMW and Tesla; respectively, the Ioniq 6 takes direct aim at those brands’ i4 and Model 3, full electric cars that prioritise performance and style.
The Business Times estimates that the twin-motor version earmarked for our market will cost just under S$260,000 with certificate of entitlement (COE). With a 77.4 kilowatt-hour battery, it has a claimed range of 519 kilometres.
Komoco will follow up the Ioniq 6 with a petrol-electric hybrid car, the Kona, but a Kona Electric will join the line-up in early 2024. Alongside the Ioniq 5, an electric sport utility vehicle (SUV) that Hyundai assembles in Singapore, the two new cars are on a mission. Gi Back Lee, who heads Hyundai’s Asia business strategy group, told BT that the brand is gunning for the No 1 position in the EV market here.
A brief drive in both cars revealed that they certainly give Hyundai a fighting chance of hitting its goal.
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On the move, the Ioniq 6 makes very little noise of its own, but like the best EVs, it also does well to keep out external sounds, thanks to liberal use of noise insulation. Hyundai says its internal tests show that the Ioniq 6 is significantly quieter than the Tesla Model 3, which is crucial to making the cabin a place of relaxation.
It has special fluid-filled suspension bushes to dampen vibration, and from behind the wheel there’s a terrific sense of isolation from the road’s undulations. The ride and handling seem tuned to relax rather than excite, just as they are in the Ioniq 5, to the point where you seldom feel compelled to sample the car’s ability to slingshot to 100 kmh in a speedy 5.1 seconds.
Instead, it feels more rewarding to lounge back and take in how airy and modern the cabin is. The back seats are perhaps even more enticing than those in front. Despite the car’s impossibly low roofline, the Ioniq 6 has an enormous amount of room in the rear.
Some features are clearly designed to delight. The sound system can pipe a spaceship-like whirr into the cockpit, for drivers who want their ears to be involved when they tackle their favourite road. Even the mood lighting can be a part of the experience, by brightening up whenever you pick up the pace.
Perhaps most striking of all is the way the Ioniq 6 looks. Its roof swoops into a gentle taper at the back, because a streamlined car slips through the air more easily. The design not only boosts range, but is a standout feature of what is an already compelling car: nothing looks like the Hyundai, and few cars can offer the same combination of performance, refinement and roominess for the money.
Next to the Ioniq 6 and its other-worldly qualities, the Kona Electric feels distinctly down-to-earth. Sharing its platform with combustion cars means the five-seat SUV isn’t fully optimised around its electric drivetrain, but by the standards of today’s cars it is astonishingly refined.
It doesn’t quite smooth out every last ripple on the road the way the Ioniq 6 does, and it does let more wind noise enter the cabin, but the new Kona Electric is still extremely relaxing to drive, with a single motor that serves up acceleration in a fuss-free yet authoritative way.
The dashboard is centred around two 12.3-inch screens, arranged much like they would be in contemporary BMWs, but many key controls still have physical switches so the driver needn’t dive into the infotainment’s menu system just to change the fan speed.
Also noticeably improved is the build quality, while the car’s styling is just as eye-catching as the Ioniq 6’s, albeit more for its futuristic use of LED lighting than for its overall shape.
Perhaps more to the point, Hyundai has made the Kona 175 mm longer than its predecessor, and the extra size shows. There’s more legroom in the back than before (courtesy of a 60 mm stretch to the wheelbase), while the boot is significantly bigger, at 466 litres.
Crucial to its fortunes in Singapore is the detuned version with a 107 kilowatt motor that Hyundai is working on for our market. That would make the Kona Electric eligible for a cheaper Category A COE and make its price more competitive, with the welcome side effect of bumping up its range to 505 km.
More broadly, upsizing the Kona Electric creates room in Hyundai’s product lineup for a future compact EV. The company could certainly use as many electric models as it can create. It now intends to sell two million electric cars a year by 2030, raising its target from 1.87 million, after saying that global EV demand has been growing faster than the industry forecast.
But that ambition will involve destroying the very thing that has helped Hyundai win plaudits in the EV world so far.
The Ioniq 6 sits on dedicated EV architecture that it calls the Electric-Global Modular Platform (E-GMP). Albert Biermann, the engineering guru that Hyundai poached from BMW, created the platform, which supports the Ioniq 5 as well as subsidiary Kia’s sporty EV6.
E-GMP is structured around a flat battery with electric motors at either end of the car, the same layout used by state-of-the-art electric cars from the likes of Audi, BYD, Mercedes-EQ, Porsche, and others.
Yet, Hyundai Motor Group said at an investor conference on Jun 20 that E-GMP is on the way out, in favour of a new platform it calls Integrated Modular Architecture (IMA), which Biermann also oversaw before retiring in 2021. The platform will underpin 13 new pure EV models across its Hyundai, Kia and upscale Genesis brands by 2030.
The product blitz means Hyundai is going on a spending spree worth 35.8 trillion South Korean won (S$36.8 billion) over the next decade, 9.5 trillion of which is earmarked for developing battery technology and securing a stable supply of raw materials for the vital EV component.
But the IMA system is designed to save money. It makes use of 80 common modules that Hyundai can deploy across a wide variety of models, like Lego bricks.
Sharing modules such as air-con or entertainment systems across both combustion and electric cars will cut development costs and reduce vehicle complexity, the carmaker said.
It wants margins of more than 10 per cent for its EVs in 2030, compared to the 6.9 per cent operating margin it recorded in 2022.
But Hyundai is by no means running its own EV race. As early as 2026, Toyota has vowed to sell 1.5 million EVs a year while Ford is targeting two million.
If anything, Hyundai Motor is running several races at once. It has radical plans to diversify and pledged to invest 73.6 trillion won in ventures such as a vehicle software arm, a robotaxi service that it expects to turn profitable in 2028, hydrogen vehicles and robots of various shape and size.
The company is even hoping to develop an aircraft taxi service in Singapore. If it takes off, don’t expect Hyundai to fret about whether it helps to make cars obsolete.
Hyundai Ioniq 6
Power/Torque 320 hp/605 Nm Battery Type, Capacity Lithium-ion, 77.4 kWh Charging Time (Type) 7 hours, 10 minutes at 11 kW (AC), 1 hour, 13 minutes to 80 per cent at 50 kW (DC) Range 519 km 0-100 kmh 5.1 seconds Top Speed 185 kmh Efficiency 16.9 kWh/100 km Agent Komoco Motors Price To be announced Available Third quarter, 2023
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