Ioniq leads Hyundai’s charge
The Ioniq range incudes the first of 22 new battery-assisted vehicles to come from Hyundai.
According to the electric vehicle evangelists, we’ll need to double the number of EVs we buy each year if we’re to meet the current transport minister’s target of having 64,000 on our roads by 2021.
Said preachers of the joys of driving electric also reckon that the government target is only achievable once new EVs begin to be priced below $50,000. Until the recent launch of the new Hyundai Ioniq EV, no new battery-driven car has gotten even remotely close to that magic number.
The new exhaust-less Ioniq costs $59,990 here. If there was a $10,000 subsidy to help promote the uptake of EVs here like there is in the US, then the electric Hyundai would be locked into that sweet sub-$50K spot in our marketplace.
Unfortunately, our transport minister is all talk, no action, when it comes to the promotion of EVs, and until there is a price incentive to encourage car consumers to take advantage of New Zealand’s near-unique generation of electricity from renewable sources, the electric Ioniq has the potential to become a bit of a wallflower in NZ Hyundai showrooms.
Buyers will hardly notice it in their rush to get to the other new Ioniq launched alongside the EV. This is a petrol-electric serieshybrid version with a price starting at $46,990, and it’s seriously good. It beats that poster vehicle range for hybrid powertrains, the Toyota Prius, in several key areas. It uses less fuel, costs less, has more stuff, loads more stuff and it doesn’t look like a car from a cartoon.
Where the EV could prove to be the right car coming at the wrong time (in terms of a lack of government-sponsored affordability), the Ioniq Hybrid hits the target Toyota smack between the headlights, and gives it a bloody nose.
Such commentary is based on a 200km drive from Queenstown to the feral side of Lake Wakatipu at Kinloch, and back. That distance is right on the limit of the EV’s stated 210km range given that it weighs 10kg more than the 1370kg Ioniq Hybrid, and has a 28kWh lithiumion polymer battery made by LG to power its 88kW/295Nm electric motor.
We started this journey in the Hybrid, which combines a 1.6-litre four-cylinder petrol engine producing 77kW/147Nm with another lithium-ion polymer battery that is some 25 times smaller than the Ioniq EV’s. This powers an electric motor that can either drive the Ioniq Hybrid on its own at low speeds, or add its performance to that of the petrol engine to produce a combined output of 104kW/265Nm.
Both the new battery-enhanced Hyundais drive the front wheels, via different transmissions. The EV has a simple reduction gear and relies on the strong force large electric motors are capable of producing right from the get-go. The Hybrid has a dual-clutch sixspeed transmission, which is probably the key to its efficiency and driveability advantages over the CVT-equipped Prius. The petrol-electric Ioniq drinks fuel at a rate of 3.9 litres/100km over the city-highway driving simulation according to its lab test report. That’s certainly a figure that’s bound to please many taxi ownerdrivers.
This frugality meant that my driving partner and I reached Kinloch after consuming less than one-quarter of the fuel in the Hybrid’s tank. Not bad given all the changes in elevation of the winding lakeside road, and the need to quickly overtake rubbernecking tourist drivers at times. Credit the ultra-slippery 0.24 coefficient of drag figure of the Hybrid’s body for some of this – the same as the front grille-less Ioniq EV.
For some reason, we had absolutely no problem swapping the keys to our relatively fuelledup Ioniq Hybrid for an EV for the drive back to Q’town. We soon found out why. Our EV was displaying a range of 98km for a 100km journey back to the unwelcoming Hilton, which by my calculations meant that it would run out of juice while crossing the antiquated one-way bridge over the Kelvin River, south of Frankton. The air-con was quickly switched off, the overtakes were kept to a minimum, and every red light was keenly anticipated with a long drag of the EV’s regenerative brakes on the way back. We made it, with an indicated 7km of range left in the battery.
It was brave of Hyundai NZ to launch the Ioniq EV with an open road drive that would test the ability of the vehicle to store energy to the absolute limit. Perhaps it was a deliberate strategy intended to highlight that there is a third Ioniq powertrain yet to come this year – another 1.6-litre plug-in Hybrid, equipped with a 9.8kWh battery that’ll allow a greater electric-only range. No word yet on the price of this version, but it could sit between the current hybrid and the EV, and could be the Ioniq model worth waiting for if it does.
Looking back, this was a launch drive that divided the two new Ioniq models into different markets. Until there is a fiscal incentive to buy an EV, the electric Ioniq will only appeal to business/ government fleets keen to boast about their environmental responsibilities. For the rest of us there is the Ioniq Hybrid, which, as mentioned, is no bad thing.