PHOENIX – A little over a year ago, Hyundai in the U.S. released the Ioniq 5, its first dedicated-platform battery-electric vehicle. The awards have piled up from many outlets, including us, with the CUV taking home a 2022 Wards 10 Best Engines & Propulsion Systems trophy last fall.
The Ioniq 5 also has been a relatively good seller, with 22,982 deliveries in 2022 in the U.S., Wards Intelligence data shows. It’s not Tesla-like volume, but enough to make the CUV the third best-selling BEV among legacy automakers last year, behind the Ford Mustang Mach-E (39,458) and the Chevy Bolt EUV (27,091).
That should mean good things then for the similar Ioniq 6, on sale this spring in the U.S. But it is by no means just the car version of the Ioniq 5.
While it’s underpinned by the same E-GMP platform and has the same flexible 400V/800V electrical architecture (taking the pack from 10% to 80% in as little as 18 minutes on a 250-kW fast charger) the Ioniq 6, rated at 103 combined MPGe, gets even better range than the Ioniq 5 – 361 miles (581 km) max vs. 303 miles (488 km) – thanks to its lower, sleeker, more aerodynamic (0.22 Cd with 18-in. wheels) profile.
A 180-degree turn from the more traditional-looking Ioniq 5, the shapely, tapered, “streamliner” appearance of the Ioniq 6 draws a lot of looks here during our test drive. It has a unique presence on the road that is matched only in the modern U.S. car parc somewhat by Porsches.
But Hyundai, per usual, is giving you a luxury look with more down-to-earth pricing than the German brands. To be clear, the automaker sees the competitive set not including Porsche, but rather the Tesla Model 3 and the Polestar 2 sedans. However, Hyundai believes that because the Ioniq 6 dimensionally exceeds those models – by 6-10 ins. (152-254 mm) in length and roughly 3-8 ins. (76-203 mm) in wheelbase, leading to a big, lounge-like rear seat – it should have an advantage against them.
We take a $57,425 Limited AWD grade for an 85-mile (137-km) journey around Phoenix and nearby Scottsdale and find the vehicle enjoyable to drive, as well as quite efficient.
Hyundai’s standard three drive modes – Normal, Eco and Sport – are present in the car, allowing a driver to dial in a preferred character. There’s also Snow, which thankfully we don’t need here in the desert, and a MY mode allowing a driver to customize motor response, steering feel and eAWD operation and torque split.
About the latter point: When in Eco the car essentially operates almost entirely as a rear-wheel-drive vehicle, virtually forgoing the front axle’s motor, with only 168 kW (228 hp) of power churned out in Eco vs. 239 kW (320 hp) in Normal and Sport.
Normal sees more of a blend between RWD and AWD, while in Sport a dynamic torque split is in play.
To wring the most out of our car’s range, the majority of our drive time is spent in Eco, but Sport and Normal also are tested.
Eco has milder acceleration than Normal, while Sport naturally leans more aggressive.
Flooring it in Sport is a hoot. It responds as any good BEV should: pushing us back in our seats and distorting our faces as the AWD variant’s maximum 446 lb.-ft. (605 Nm) of torque is immediately unleashed.
But after spending most of our time in Eco, we come away with the impression the Ioniq 6 is an oasis of serenity. The car’s silent operation, coupled with the mild character of Eco mode and the car’s ivory interior, lends a peaceful vibe.
We spent the rare bit of time in Sport mode driving mostly in a straight line, but the low, wide vehicle takes the few curves we encounter relatively flat and grippy, while the suspension is mostly calming, although it transmits a bit of bounce over some road imperfections.
Steering errs heavy no matter the mode, which is music to our ears, er, hands.
The car has four distinct regenerative braking settings. Thankfully the lowest one isn’t too nausea-inducing, but some may not like that it falls short of one-pedal driving, as it brings the car to somewhat of a rolling stop in our experience.
Our strategy to stay mostly in Eco mode pays off. On our first leg of 54 miles (87 km), and when we flog the car a bit, we use 56 miles (90 km) of range. A second, all-Eco leg sees us do better: only 27 miles (43 km) lost over 31 miles (50 km) of driving.
With its light, minimalist cabin, simple lines and four pixels on the steering wheel – Morse code for H – the Ioniq 6 interior is very similar to the Ioniq 5’s. It also uses numerous sustainable materials as does its CUV sibling, such as recycled PET fabric on seats, bio-based PET fabric for the headliner and carpet made from recycled fishing nets.
But there are a couple unique features the CUV doesn’t have: the steering-wheel pixels change colors for each drive mode, and there’s a wild ambient lighting system. With lit areas above and below the door armrests each having 64 different colors to choose from, there are 4,000 possible color combinations to illuminate and decorate the cabin of your Ioniq 6 at night. Very cool.
Also cool are the ribs/grooves on doors, played up by the ambient light.
That said, we’re not huge fans of all the hard-plastic trim inside the car. Given our test vehicle’s nearly $60,000 price point, there should be more soft-touch surfaces, especially on upper doors. The message Hyundai is trying to give – that plastic can be premium when used in an aesthetically pleasing way – is understood. But after having experienced a lot of $60,000-ish BEVs recently, including the Cadillac Lyriq, Mercedes EQB and Nissan Ariya, this feels more like a $40,000-$50,000 vehicle inside. That pricing range actually is where the Ioniq 6’s MSRP begins, but there’s no upgrade in interior materials for the Limited grade, although you do get faux leather instead of the SE’s cloth seating.
The car’s electronics are a mixed bag.
Voice recognition is excellent. We ask for an address in Michigan and, with the “-gan” just out of our mouth, it returns the route. There was a slight pause asking it to “tune to Classic Rewind,” but it pulls up the weather forecast and 20 of the nearest Starbucks lickety-split, allowing us to keep our eyes on the road and not focused on the touchscreen.
The navigation system’s map looks good and clear but zooming in and out via pinching and pulling is frustrating as a fingertip touch inadvertently drops a pin, resulting in being asked if we want to add the location to our route.
While doors are button-less, Hyundai thankfully continues to embrace them elsewhere. They’re available for main infotainment-system categories, which are duplicated by icons on the screen, too. The infotainment system is mostly easy to decipher, but Hyundai having both “Nav” and “Map” as category choices is slightly confusing. Nav is for route programming, and map is just the map view.
Our Limited test car has a 110V rear outlet that supplies 1.9 kW of power, enough to power small appliances for a few days without discharging the car’s battery, a Hyundai engineer says. There are also four USB-C ports, one USB port and a wireless phone charger. The latter is standard on SEL and above grades and adds a decent 33% of charge to our iPhone over an hour of driving.
Speaking of Apple, CarPlay is standard on the vehicle, including the base standard-range SE RWD grade. But, as with most new Hyundais it’s wired, not wireless. We’d call this a major faux pas on Hyundai’s part, but with General Motors announcing they’re doing away with CarPlay entirely on future BEV models, the bar has been raised for faux pas regarding the popular feature.
Lastly, we test various advanced driver-assist system (ADAS) technologies and have the same impression of them as with our December 2021 test of the Ioniq 5. ACC, “smart cruise control” in Hyundai parlance, is part of the Highway Driving Assist 2 package on SEL and above grades. It does a good job of keeping up with preceding traffic and being gradually responsive. As in the Ioniq 5, machine learning is employed on HDA2’s SCC to learn and mimic a driver’s acceleration tendencies. But the torquing of the wheel for lane-centering is too heavy. We shut the feature off after a few minutes, as we wrestle for control of the wheel so as not to get too close to a bicyclist in our lane.
HDA2’s lane-changing assist feature isn’t tested here as we do little highway driving, but Hyundai says they’ve enhanced it from the Ioniq 5.
The Hyundai Ioniq 6 is on sale now at Hyundai dealers who are certified to sell the car, located in 43 of 50 U.S. states. Pricing begins at $41,600 for a RWD SE with 240 miles (386 km) from the standard-range, 53.0-kWh battery pack (not debuting until late summer) and $45,500 for the SE with a long-range (77.4 kWh) battery pack good for 361 miles. The Limited RWD long-range model is $52,600 and offers 305 miles (491 km) of range. Opting for AWD increases grade prices about $4,000, with range of 270 miles (435 km) or 316 miles (509 km) depending on the grade.
Despite some issues, the Ioniq 6 is a great car, with alluring style and impressive range. The big question is, how many of these can Hyundai sell? With light trucks leading U.S. new-vehicle sales for over a decade, a car may not get as many takers as the Ioniq 5 CUV. But Hyundai believes, with so many sedans now gone from the U.S. market, the Ioniq 6 could stand out like never before.
But the automaker’s mum on how many units will be available for export from South Korea to the U.S. Low BEV production is an issue many legacy brands are experiencing, largely due to parts shortages, including of batteries. However, with Tesla’s BEV capacity in the hundreds of thousands now, the legacy OEMs need to step it up, and fast, if they are to establish a footing in what many see as the unstoppable future of the auto industry.
