This is Hyundai’s next electric vehicle, the Ioniq 6 sedan

The physical unveiling of the Hyundai Prophecy concept car was an early victim of COVID, originally scheduled for the hastily canceled 2020 Geneva Motor Show, though that didn’t stop me from blowing my socks off when Hyundai sent some images over the internet. At the time, I didn’t think the Korean automaker would take the concept — which I described as the result of “a transportation accident involving a Mercedes CLS and a Tesla Model 3” — into production.

It was clear I was a fool, because just as the Hyundai 45 concept turned into the excellent Ioniq 5 crossover, the Prophecy was translated into production as the Ioniq 6 sedan. Like the Ioniq 5, the Ioniq 6 uses Hyundai’s new E-GMP platform for 800V vehicles, but more importantly, it’s smaller (with a 50mm shorter wheelbase) and will be cheaper than the angular Ioniq 5. ( Yes this still confuses me as 6 is more than 5 so you expect a bigger, more expensive car, plus the Ioniq 7 is will be a large seven-seat electric SUV next year.)

The most notable change from the concept is the extra height of the Ioniq 6, an inevitable consequence of locating a 6-inch (150mm) slab of lithium-ion batteries under the cab floor. I asked Hyundai design chief Sangyup Lee if he’d been tempted to extend the wheelbase of the production car to maintain the proportions of the concept.

“This was the design and to be honest, that’s what we fought for at the design center. But the sales and marketing department decided that 4,485 [mm, or 176.5 inches] was about the right size,” Lee told me.

If you detect a hint of the past in the shape of the car, especially the profile, make no mistake. Lee told me that single-curvature designs like the 1930s Stout Scarab had an influence.

As you’d expect, some of Prophecy’s details had to be toned down for the Ioniq 6, but like its boxy big brother, pixelated lights play a big part on both the front and rear of the car. The show car’s clear acrylic spoiler is now made of black plastic, but also includes the central brake light, which is a very good performance. Knight Rider-like animation, swiping from side to side.

“The pixel is something that connects analog and digital. And it’s so unique, and the finer it gets, the more digital it gets. The right balance between the pixel and light signature is key in our design,” explains Lee.

The front of the production car is a bit finicky than the elegant concept, though. This is necessary, both to control airflow around, above and below the car, as well as to package the car’s various sensors (in that black strip). And we can probably forget about the side cameras here in the US, because the regulations don’t allow them yet.

Hyundai didn’t share much in the way of tech specs when we saw the Ioniq 6 in London, but Lee was justifiably proud that the production car achieved a drag coefficient of just 0.21, which will make it one of the lowest drag vehicles. . sale. That should mean quite a long range, especially if it uses the larger volume of a 77.4 kWh E-GMP battery – it’s relatively small for an EV, meaning a smaller frontal area, and the E-GMP-based EVs we tested have achieved at least 4 miles/kWh (15.5 kWh/100 km).

The interior of the production Ioniq 6 is more personal to the driver than the open space of the Ioniq 5. Interesting projection lighting illuminates the cabin at night, and the steering wheel hub has four LEDs that act as a charge indicator and provide visual feedback that the speech recognition system has heard you. And there are dedicated physical controls for common functions such as the audio or climate systems.

“The touchscreen is great when this car is [in] stationary, but when you move, touchscreens can be dangerous,” Lee told me. “So we always think together about the right balance, user experience and the buttons and the combination with the voice activation. In the future, voice activation will of course play the major role versus touchscreen, but this is still in transition. For us, everything that has to do with security, we use hardware. Anything not related to security will use a touch interface. So that’s how we balance that — that’s how we actually do the hierarchies,” Lee explained.

Production of the Ioniq 6 will start in Korea in July, with a formal public unveiling scheduled for July 14. We don’t have an exact date when sales will begin in the US, but we expect the car here sometime in the 2023 model year, possibly before the end of this year (though as of 2020, who knows what happens next week). Pricing information will now also have to wait, but for context it will be cheaper than the Ioniq 5, which starts at $46,650, meaning an Ioniq 6 will almost certainly undercut a Tesla Model 3, which, unlike the Hyundais , are not eligible for the federal plug-in motor vehicle discount.