Hyundai Ioniq PHEV
Plug-in rival for Toyota’s Prius
Hyundai has high hopes for the plug-in hybrid version of its Ioniq hatchback, not least because the car you could consider its warm-up act – the regular Ioniq Hybrid – rattled through Hyundai UK’S annual allocation before the end of February.
The PHEV version will be more expensive than the Hybrid, of course (its UK price is still to be confirmed), and its real-world fuel economy will depend on how it’s used (as with all plug-in hybrids). But if you’re reading this for one reason, I expect it’s this: 257mpg. Such remarkable claimed fuel economy could only come from an outstanding car, surely?
The third Ioniq derivative (there’s a full EV, too) is ostensibly the same as the Hybrid but with a much larger and more powerful lithium ion drive battery and the ‘Type II’ socket needed to charge it from the mains. The battery’s capacity is 8.9kwh, a shade more than the Toyota Prius Plug-in’s or the Audi A3 e-tron’s – not by coincidence, you suspect.
The bigger battery’s higher voltage also allows the Ioniq’s 60bhp electric motor to draw more torque from it more of the time than it can in the Hybrid, so although the PHEV is the heavier of the two Ioniq hybrids and Hyundai claims identical peak ‘system’ power and torque outputs for both, it’s the Plug-in version that’s more accelerative, if only by a margin.
The Ioniq Plug-in charges from a typical 16A wallbox in a little over two hours. Petrol power comes from a 104bhp 1.6-litre engine running on the Atkinson combustion cycle, and electrical and piston power are funnelled onto the road through the front wheels, via a six-speed dualclutch automatic gearbox.
Like its rangemates, the Ioniq PHEV is a fairly plain and unexciting car to drive. To be fair, it isn’t designed to match the emergent plugin niche’s sportier options either on performance or dynamism, but to bring plug-in hybrid technology to a wider audience at a cheaper price tag than it’s been available at so far. But even after you’ve tempered your expectations, the Hyundai seems frugal and functional but worthy, and much of its driving experience could be more refined.
The car can be driven in EV, HEV Hybrid and Sport modes, and our truncated testing suggested it should be good for around 30 miles of mixed driving on battery power alone – not quite equal to Hyundai’s 39-mile claim, but certainly up there with the Toyota on electric-only range and much better than most PHEVS. Over a total of 100 miles at mixed pace, we averaged 85.6mpg in the car overall, also a creditable result.
The Ioniq’s 60bhp electric motor feels potent enough around town and up to about 50mph. The car is happy to cruise on electric power at motorway speeds, but you need to rouse the combustion engine for meaningful acceleration here. It’s also frustrating that Hyundai doesn’t make it easier to drive up to the limits of electric power and keep the piston engine off via a haptic accelerator pedal or similar, even in EV mode.
Select Sport and a ham-fisted attempt is made to give the kind of driving involvement you get from a conventionally powered economy car: the steering becomes leaden and cumbersome, the gearbox struggles to deliver peak performance with decent responsiveness, the wooden ride becomes crashy and the car’s increasingly precarious grip only becomes clearer.
Plainly, no one ought to buy this car thinking that it’s a cut-price Volkswagen Golf GTE. As a fairly one-dimensional family hatchback bought to save on fuel costs, however, it deserves a firm nod of respect.