IONIQ BRIDGES THE GAP ON EVS
“Electric cars are taking over! Autonomous cars will rule the road! The end of oil is nigh!”
Sigh. If you’re like me, you’re tired of all the rhetoric on how the auto industry is on the cusp of major change, like, any day now. I read my dad’s old copies of Popular Mechanics from the 1960s and ’70s and if you believe those stories, we should all be soaring over roads in flying cars, gently setting down in our suburbia-heaven driveways after a long day of work, our wives greeting us at the door in a dress and pearls, martini in hand. We all know how that worked out.
As for autonomous cars, they are at least 10 to 15 years from being viable on a mass scale. There’s no way they could even get out of the driveway in Canadian winters with current technology. And electric vehicles (EVs), while having come a long way in the past 20 years, still make up less than one per cent of all vehicles sold in North America.
Ah, but not so fast: I just had a chance to drive “the future” and I admit I was impressed. And what impresses me the most about it is it has nothing to do with sci-fi wizardry or space-age design. No, what impresses me is that it’s almost completely, well, normal.
This is the new Hyundai Ioniq, a full-on, battery-powered electric vehicle. Only, you wouldn’t necessarily know it’s an EV if you saw it in someone’s driveway; the only giveaways being the word “electric” on the trunk lid (obvious) and the closed faux-grille at the front (not so obvious).
This is no overblown golf cart or futuristic science experiment. The Ioniq is a handsome car that fits in with the rest of Hyundai’s design language, not to mention any other car on the road. The front-wheel-drive hatchback has a wheelbase of 2,700 millimetres, about the size of the compact Elantra. LED lights fore and aft give this top-line Limited model a more upscale look, while the body coloured wheels are a nice touch, too.
Inside, there are nicely textured soft materials on the dash and doors, subtle bronze-coloured accents, simple, well laid-out controls and a nifty TFT screen for the instrument cluster, which changes colours and details depending on the drive mode. In fact, this Ioniq Limited has an impressive list of features to coddle its passengers, including adaptive cruise control, heated front and rear seats, automatic climate control and a giant eight-inch infotainment screen.
So it looks like your usual new — and normal — car inside and out, but you and I both know, dear reader, that this is no normal car. It’s electric! It’s a Jetsons car!
How does it drive? Again, normal. At least, for the most part. It’s only when you start off that you realize it’s not your usual gas-powered car. Push the Drive button (no shifter here, just a cluster of buttons for the one-gear transmission) and then step on the gas, er, throttle. The Ioniq moves forward smoothly with a low hum. As you pick up speed, the noise of the tires and wind takes over, though the cabin is still relatively quiet.
With just 118 horsepower, you’d expect the Ioniq to be sluggish, but because it’s electric, that 218 pound-feet of torque is all available right from the get-go, so pulling away from stoplights or accelerating through traffic feels like most any other compact sedan or hatch. In Regular or Eco mode, this is no barn-burner as the torque is regulated for smooth delivery, though you really won’t want for power in the city or even passing on the highway. But put it in Sport mode and that torque is hampered only by the limited grip of the Michelin Energy Saver tires, which chirp their discontent under the full brunt of the electric motor.
The ride is comfortable, the handling is competent for a sedate compact hatchback (though the steering is vague and overboosted), the interior is roomy and relatively quiet and it looks sharp. Overall, the Ioniq would be a good choice for someone in the market for a compact hatch. In other words, this electric car is like a normal car.
So why, then, aren’t EVs more popular? Two reasons: range anxiety and price. And in my full week with the Ioniq, this is what I found out about both issues.
The Ioniq has a range of roughly 200 kilometres on a full charge. After picking up the car from Hyundai headquarters and bringing it back to the city (about a 30-km trip), I spent the rest of the week commuting to work, getting groceries and generally bumming around town — basically, driving normally — without a single recharge. This is good, because I don’t have a fancy fast charger at home. Topping up the battery with a couple hours of fast charge at a free station in Toronto to about 80 per cent capacity, I made the trek up to Newmarket, Ont., for Easter dinner with family, a more than 100-km round trip, and easily breezed into my driveway with about 25 per cent remaining. So unless you make regular trips beyond that — and let’s be honest, many of you probably don’t — the Ioniq is perfectly capable of being your full-time ride, especially if you opt for a quick charger at home.
Ah, but the price. With such expensive batteries, EVs have always had higher stickers than comparable gas-powered cars and the Ioniq isn’t different. The base model starts at $35,649 and, while there is no price yet for the Limited spec, expect that to be a little over $40,000. While those prices are in line with other electric cars, it’s steep compared with the Elantra, which starts at $15,999.
Don’t forget about the incentives: Quebec will give you an $8,000 credit and B.C. will toss in $5,000, but in Ontario it’s a whopping $14,000 off of the price. That’s great, but it’s still more expensive than its conventionally powered competitors, which is the deciding factor for many people. You really need to want an electric car to justify the added expense. But if you do, the Ioniq is certainly worth a look. It will start hitting dealerships next week.
Judging the Ioniq purely on the basis of transportation, it’s great. And along with the Chevrolet Bolt, Volkswagen e-Golf and a handful of other electrics on our roads, the Ioniq is part of a future of attainable EVs that satisfy a driver’s realworld needs of comfort and performance that seems to be getting closer and closer. But with prices remaining tens of thousands of dollars over gasoline-powered equivalents, that future still has a long way to go.