SEOUL — Simply how slippery is Hyundai’s new Ioniq 6 electrical automobile?
When the four-door fastback sedan arrives within the U.S. early subsequent 12 months, it would have the identical platform and long-range powertrain because the Ioniq 5 compact crossover. However the Ioniq 6 will get an enormous enhance in battery vary — thanks largely to its tremendous modern, air-shedding silhouette.
Actually, the Ioniq 6 is probably the most aerodynamic automobile ever produced by Hyundai Motor Co. It achieves a 0.21 drag coefficient, in contrast with 0.29 for the Ioniq 5, which landed this 12 months.
Hyundai is loath to label the Ioniq 6 a mere sedan. To its designers, the jelly bean-shaped EV is a “streamliner,” a reputation that harks again to the rounded kinds pioneered within the Nineteen Thirties.
The rear-wheel-drive model with the 77.4-kilowatt-hour battery achieves a spread of 381 miles beneath the Worldwide Harmonized Mild Autos Take a look at Process cycle. That is a soar from the 315-mile vary of the Ioniq 5.
The Ioniq 6’s pinched-off boat-tail aerodynamics are completely key to its eking out extra miles.
“Probably the most enchancment resulted from a lower in air resistance,” Hyundai world design chief Simon Loasby mentioned of the Ioniq 6 at a late September drive occasion right here.
“It takes our buyer farther on a single cost.”
Loasby challenged his staff to ship a drag coefficient under 0.20 by printing a T-shirt emblazoned with “0.1x.” They did not fairly get there. However the Ioniq 6’s coefficient nonetheless lands within the realm of such heavy hitters because the Porsche Taycan, Tesla Mannequin 3 and Lucid Air.
“Everybody mentioned, ‘You are mad. You may by no means hit that concentrate on,’ ” Loasby mentioned. “I do know, however I wished to see how far we are able to get. And that was our kind of mentality for the venture.”
The Ioniq 6 would not have an EPA-rated vary but. However Hyundai expects it to be round 330 miles, about 9 % larger than the Ioniq 5’s 303 miles. The Ioniq 6’s U.S.-rated vary needs to be finalized earlier than the automobile’s North American debut on the Los Angeles Auto Present in November.
The automobile has already gone on sale in South Korea, the place Hyundai says it has greater than 40,000 preorders, and lands in Europe this 12 months. It enters manufacturing for North America in January at Hyundai’s Asan plant in South Korea, with deliveries touchdown stateside two or three months later. At Asan, the Ioniq 6 is made on the identical line because the Hyundai Sonata sedan.
The Ioniq 6 is the second within the carmaker’s new Ioniq subline of EVs, all of that are constructed on Hyundai Motor Group’s E-GMP platform, which is shared with Kia Corp.
After the Ioniq 5 and Ioniq 6 will come the Ioniq 7, a three-row crossover due in 2024 or 2025. Loasby mentioned most of the aero enhancements of the Ioniq 6 can be deployed within the Ioniq 7. As an even bigger, boxier automobile, the Ioniq 7 will want each final design trick to increase its cost.
No tweak was too small to offer the Ioniq 6 higher aerodynamics. Hyundai mentioned it spent greater than 5,000 hours simulating completely different changes on supercomputers.
Pop-out door handles, full-body undercover, aero wheels, winglets alongside the rear fender and a low beltline within the entrance all assist shed extra air. Energetic air flaps alongside the entrance lip open solely when vital to chill the battery; in any other case, they keep shut to channel air to the perimeters.
A big rear spoiler — harking back to a classic Porsche 911 ducktail — provides to the bundle, additionally with a little bit of flare. The highest is inlaid with a deck of pixelated plastic that lights up throughout braking.
Hyundai even flattened the model’s “H” emblem on the hood to hurry airflow.
One other innovation are the hole closers within the entrance wheel wells. Due to the Ioniq 6’s brief entrance overhang, wind did not stream so easily across the entrance at first. To raised information the air, designers added small strips that slender the hole between the fender and tires.
The Ioniq 6 additionally adopts digital aspect cameras as an alternative of conventional glass and metallic mirrors. They beam photographs to small video screens on the proper and left of the dashboard.
The small profile of the exterior cameras pushes much less air than clunky mirrors. Hyundai estimates they add a couple of mile of vary. American drivers, nonetheless, will not be capable of faucet this expertise, as video aspect mirrors have but to win regulatory approval within the U.S.
Lastly, specifically designed low-rolling resistance tires additional prolong the automobile’s vary.
After an all-day 132-mile drive on the expressways of Seoul and on the nation highways exterior the capital metropolis, the Ioniq 6 take a look at automobile completed with 56 % of its battery cost intact and a spread of 141 miles nonetheless on the meter.
The Ioniq 6 is a key step in Hyundai’s EV transformation plan. The corporate needs to promote 1.87 million battery-electrics a 12 months by 2030 by introducing 17 new EV fashions — 11 for the Hyundai model and 6 for the Genesis premium marque. To get there, CEO Jaehoon Chang mentioned in March his firm will make investments $13.48 billion in electrification.