HIGH FIVE FOR HYUNDAI
Good-looking, fastcharging, tech-heavy – the Ioniq 5 looks fricking great
Hyundais are cars we admire but don’t necessarily desire. Until now. The Ioniq 5 is the first to use the brand’s new Electric-Global Modular Platform, so it’s hugely significant. It also references the Seventies Pony, the hatch (designed by Giugiaro) that first gave the brand traction outside South Korea. Not sure how many really remember it, but somehow that little nostalgia kick really works. The result is a sharply surfaced example of the perfect post-modern BEV.
Hyundai has thrown everything and then a bit more at it. Choose between a single-motor rear-drive version or all-wheeldrive dual-motor one, with a 58kWh or 72.6kWh battery. There’s a multi-link rear suspension too, promising genuine handling smarts. The Ioniq 5 uses 800V battery tech so it can rapid charge from 10 to 80 per cent in 18 minutes, or replenish 62 miles of range in just five. It’s also fitted with something called Vehicle to Load (V2L) which turns the car into a giant portable powerpack – yup, this is an EV you can use to charge another EV. And there’s a solar panel roof which offers an additional boost.
Its 3m-long wheelbase makes good on Hyundai’s Smart Living Space claims for the interior, which also uses sustainable materials and slimline seats. There’s full connectivity, two 12.25in screens, and augmented head-up display. Hyundai’s Tesla Model 3 killer? You bet.
Toyota launched a new fuel cell Mirai recently and it’s just so much better than the old one. Yet in Britain it will remain just as irrelevant. Hydrogen costs almost as much per mile as petrol, and is to be found in only about a dozen filling stations. But in some countries the fuel is cheap and generated renewably and there are lots of pumps. There, the Mirai makes both environmental and financial sense. Toyota has managed to drive the price down to match pure-electric cars.
Fuel cells have been the future for much of the past. A decade ago futurologists said electric cars wouldn’t be able to do long range, so they’d be good for commuter cars only. We figured quick-refuelling FC cars would dominate for long journeys. Then big-battery 250-mile electrics came along. But fuel cell cheerleaders pointed out recharging was slow and the batteries cost a fortune. Nowadays neither of those things are so true.
FC cars remain lumbered with another big drawback. Efficiency. Take 1kWh of electricity (ideally green), stick it into a battery car and you’ll get about three miles. Put that same 1kWh into an electrolyser to make hydrogen from water, then put the hydrogen in the FC car, and you’ll get about a mile. So the reason we might need FC cars in future comes down to when and where the world’s energy is available. Hydrogen is storable in bulk and so can buffer the energy supply system. The only practical way to store electricity is with a stack of batteries, and they’re in short supply.
It’s not fanciful to imagine redundant North Sea gas rigs being converted to electrolysing plants, powered by offshore wind, pumping hydrogen ashore. Or desert solar or wind production sending hydrogen via ships. Long-distance hydrogen transport is cheaper than long-distance electricity cabling.
Still, there are few hydrogen stations. Why build more? For trucks. FC trucks can carry more payload than battery-heavy electric ones. Only a few trucks stopping per day can make a hydrogen station more economical, and then it’s there for cars.
Fuel cell cars won’t take over the world. But maybe neither will battery cars, given their vulnerability to tight battery-mineral supply and shortage of green electricity on windless dark nights. Better to develop both, then.