Hyundai Ioniq Korean review

the front looks like they copied prius/toyota.

plastic parts on the wheels that come off? where have i seen that before?

where's the spare? hatch opening looks small.

'prius has been using nimh, we've been using li-on from the beginning'. iow, THEY copied US.
talk about having an inferiority complex.

what i love about the new prius, is you get that nice tray, where this stupid shifter is.

and finally: 15.3 l/km = ?

 

15.3l/km is 6.53l/100km, or 36MPG.

Prius Superlative

 

DCT 20.2km/L popped up on the sidebar in the beginning. So one rating of 47.5mpg.

Hyundai has been copying other car designs for decades. In the '90s, they borrowed mostly from European makes. The reporter stated the Ioniq instrument cluster is like Volvo's.

In addition to playing with the sport mode, he was wearing a coat and gloves. Where have the Prius previews been done, southern California?

 

I tried hard but could not see any cars that were not Hyundai or Kia while he was driving except for trucks. Did you see any other brands? How did Korea capture such brand loyalty?

I think 36 mpg is fantastic while flogging the vehicle. Doesn't look like the Ioniq will get better fuel economy than a Prius and it doesn't have to. Just like the Ford C-Max, I think Hyunda should concentrate on buyers that want a car that is more fun to drive.

 

Well I have to give the reporter credit to some of his not-so-nice comments to the ioniq finish and other features. He is objective at least. Bottom line is like everything else - WILL IT SELL??? price point will be an issue of course and what will that be?

 

Don't have to speed to flog a car. He was testing out sport made, and seemed to be manually shifting gears regularly. Upshifting for acceleration will eat into fuel economy. There are potential downsides to too much driver control. Ask Prius drivers making heavy use of EV mode, or original Insight owners with the manual transmission and Honda's poor software that allowed over drawing from the battery.

Another though I had on the drive in today. What was the wheel size tested, I don't recall? If the 47.5mpg figure was the official rating, those were the 17in wheels, with poorer efficiency.

 

So we will just have to wait for a tester that uses D always to mimick Hyundai "measurements"?...

I remember Ioniq supposed to beat Prius...but cannot cope without those too many "ifs".

 

Friend of mine said he got 20mpg in a gen3 on a test drive. Don't see how he did so myself, but hybrids aren't immune to inefficient driving.

The Ioniq is already available in Korea, and 15 inch wheel model does beat the gen3 Prius on their EPA based tests with a 52.5mpg combined. Don't have city and highway break down, but it likely does better on the highway than the city going by the Sonata's ratings.

It's been well discussed here: Hyundai IONIQ - Prius competitor? | PriusChat

 

So, few more "ifs"...
15 inch Ioniq beat gen3 Prius in EPA KR combined, as it seems
but/if
[KR gen3 Prius was 17" or 15"?]
[the 4gen Prius is already here, so Hyundai is proud of beating a 2009 car?]

 

There is always ifs, hence the your mileage may vary disclaimer on all window stickers. Using regulation test results for comparisons just removes all the variables that exist with reviewer drives.

It was poster here that dug up the Korean ratings for the cars. It wasn't reported what wheel size the Prius had for that rating. It is possible Toyota could have been able to use a one size fits all approach to wheel sizes and ratings, or they only offer one wheel size in Korea.

The gen3 was rated 49.4mpg combined there to the US 50mpg. The test cycles are the same, but the pretest rules might vary, or more likely, the difference is due to unit conversion and rounding errors.The actual US result could have been 49.5mpg for all we know.

The 15in wheel Ioniq was rated 52.7mpg combined. So it beat the gen3 and might edge out the non-Eco gen4. We have to wait to see if the EPA pretest and rules will lead to a meaningful difference for the US ratings.

The 17in wheel, which appears to be the one tested in the video, appears to have 47.5mpg rating, likely combined, going from the sidebar that popped in the beginning.

The Ioniq does get better highway than city numbers, but the gap is narrow. Like the latest Sonata hybrid, which has the Camry hybrid numbers, but just flipped between city and highway.

A post from the big Ioniq thread with an UK reviewer's impressions.

Also in the thread, a report that the PHEV will have 32 miles EV range and the BEV 155 miles.

 

An interesting car, for sure ...

Here is what I think the non-plug-in hybrid iteration will turn out to be on the US market: 1. Symbolically cheaper than the Gen 4 Prius, but more expensive than C. 2. Real-life fuel efficiency: at least 10% worse than the Gen 4. 3. Inner volume: closer to C than to Gen 4. 4. Cool/Hip factor: negligible. I also wonder what is the 6-speed DCT oddity is about .. are they hoping that shifting points will give the driver an illusion of a peppier engine?

For some reason the newer Honda Insight came to my mind: the car that tried to be as good as Prius while not looking like one, and that failed at both.

 

1. agree
2. On the Korean test, which uses the EPA test cycles, the small wheel sized Ioniq's rating was between the gen4 and gen3. The combined MPG for the gen 3 there is the same has here, but I'm unsure of how the new EPA rules will relate to the Korean ones. I only see 10% difference when comparing to the ECO Prius though.
   
3. A report has the hybrid at 122cu.ft. total interior volume. Above the Prius, but it will come down the specific shape and size of the space to call which is likely more usable.
4. That's styling and personal taste. It can't be right or wrong on the individual level, and neither have gotten an Aztek reaction.

The DCT, or plain old automatic on the Sonata hybrid, is the result of the differences between a power split(Prius) and parallel hybrid. With a power split, the transmission is part of the hybrid system. A parallel system is in addition to the ICE drivetrain. Putting the traction motor's output through the transmission allows a smaller, and cheaper, motor to be used. I guess it would be possible to put the motor downstream of the transmission, but it will cost more. The motor will have to be bigger, more powerful, without the aid of differing gear ratios, and in the case of the step transmission, the motor couldn't be used to eliminate the efficiency robbing torque converter.

No reason why Hyundai couldn't use a CVT in their hybrids like Honda did with IMA. The DCT likely means better highway efficiency, but more importantly, Hyundai/Kia uses step transmissions and DCTs in their ICE cars. The smaller motor requirement, and part sharing with ICE models could mean the parallel hybrid system can be lower cost than the power split one. On the Ioniq, the savings there might be going into a larger traction battery though.

In hindsight, Honda should have just skipped on the Insight2 and offered a Fit hybrid, which they already built under the Jazz name. The ICE model was the most popular model in the segment at that time.