James Goldstein attends the unveiling of Hyundai's Ioniq 9, held at his home in the Hollywood Hills in Los Angeles, on Nov. 20.Mark Richardson/The Globe and Mail
If bigger really is better, then Hyundai would like to show you the new Ioniq 9. It’s an all-electric three-row SUV, and it has the longest wheelbase of any Hyundai in production.
Although pricing is not yet official, the South Korean car maker is keen to compare its size to the Tesla Model X and the Rivian R1S, which both sell for at least six figures and are slightly smaller in most areas. It’s much more closely related, however, to the Kia EV9, made by Hyundai’s sister company in Georgia and with which it shares a platform, though it’s modified for the different batteries and longer, 5,060-millimetre wheelbase of the Ioniq 9.
The big Hyundai, which was unveiled at an event in the Hollywood Hills Wednesday evening ahead of the Los Angeles Auto Show, can ream off impressive figures. Its 110.3-kilowatt-hour battery is claimed to be good for at least 500 kilometres in either its rear-wheel-drive or all-wheel-drive versions, and probably closer to 600 kilometres with the rear-wheel drive. It can tow up to 5,000 pounds, and like the smaller Ioniq 5, it uses 800-volt architecture to charge from 10 per cent to 80 per cent in as little as 24 minutes. Take that last figure with a grain of salt, however: it’s assuming you can find a working 350-kilowatt fast charger, and that the temperature is an optimal 24 degrees Celsius or so. Your mileage may vary.
The price? Hyundai’s not yet committed to anything before the SUV begins deliveries next spring, but you can be sure it will be close to Kia’s EV9. That three-row SUV starts at just under $60,000 for the rear-wheel-drive option and goes up to about $79,000, before all the various taxes and dealer fees, but also before any federal and provincial rebates. There’s really nothing else to compare it to, except the costly Tesla and Rivian, and maybe the Volkswagen ID. Buzz, which starts at $80,000.
For the money, you get a very well-thought-out cabin, with plenty of room for five people in the first two rows. All those seats can recline into “comfort” mode, almost laying vertical as you wait to charge during a road trip. And then there’s a third row, which benefits for leg room from a nice flat and low floor, and from the Ioniq 9′s huge wheelbase of 3,130 millimetres, but is still cramped for adult passengers. This is no minivan, or VW Buzz bus, but it’s the next best thing.
The least-costly rear-wheel-drive edition has a 160-kilowatt motor attached to its rear axle, while the all-wheel-drive version adds a 70-kilowatt motor to the front axle. There’s also a performance edition that uses two 160-kilowatt motors, one for each axle. Hyundai says the three variants can accelerate from standstill to 100 kilometres an hour in 9.4 seconds, 6.7 seconds and 5.2 seconds respectively. Trust me: your family in the rear two rows won’t thank you for the extra power.
There are some other cool features that we won’t get in North America. Digital side mirrors that show an image from behind on small screens on the inside of each door are available in much of the rest of the world but not here, because Canadian law states that a driver cannot watch a sustained video image while moving. And the second-row seats that swivel to face backward, creating a lounge environment around a movable table and storage cubby, will not be allowed to swivel because that’s unsafe while moving. So the rest of the world gets to enjoy these fun toys, while we stay safe. There’s got to be something to that.
The Ioniq 9 is made in Georgia, like the Kia EV9, though in a separate manufacturing plant on the other side of the state. Canadian units, however, will be imported from Korea, just as we import Korean Ioniq 5 SUVs though they’re also made in Georgia. The American plant is brand-new and, apparently, already at capacity. As well, the American dollar is so strong right now that it is less costly to buy and ship cars across the Pacific than it is to bring them by rail from the United States.
Despite different manufacturing plants, Canadians get the exact same Ioniq 9 vehicles as Americans with one notable difference: U.S. units have one cupholder that’s slightly larger than ours, closer to the driver. American drivers like their Big Gulps.
The writer was a guest of the automaker. Content was not subject to approval.
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