Hyundai Ioniq

The Hyundai Ioniq is the Hyundai that answered a simple question — how much car can this badge carry? — with 77 kW (petrol engine)<b from 1.6 L Kappa II GDI HEV I4. It was built from 2016 to 2022, as electrification stopped being an experiment and the crossover took every market.

How it came about

The Hyundai Ioniq (Korean: 현대 아이오닉) is a compact car which was manufactured and marketed by Hyundai from 2016 to 2022. A five-door liftback, it is marketed as the first Hyundai automobile to be offered without a standard internal combustion engine, but rather sold in hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and all-electric variants. The Ioniq Hybrid debuted in South Korea in January 2016, with all three variants debuting at 2016 Geneva and New York auto shows. The hybrid variant launched in its home market in February 2016, followed by the electric model in July 2016.

The plug-in hybrid version followed in February 2017. From its first model year (2017) through the 2019 model year, the Ioniq Electric had been the EPA's most efficient vehicle with a rated fuel economy of 136 miles per gallon gasoline equivalent (24.8 kWh/100 mi; 15.4 kWh/100 km). The Ioniq Blue Hybrid version has been rated at 4.1 L/100 km (58 mpg‑US), making it the most fuel-efficient hybrid vehicle to be mass-produced. Following its discontinuation in South Korea in 2021, production of the Ioniq ended in July 2022 in favour of battery electric lineup of Ioniq-badged models starting from the Ioniq 3 hatchback, Ioniq 5 SUV, Ioniq 6 sedan, Ioniq 9 SUV and the Ioniq V sedan for Chinese market.

The hardware

The engine is 1.6 L Kappa II GDI HEV I4; the output is 77 kW (petrol engine)<b. On the scales it comes to 1359 -. That is roughly 57 horsepower per tonne: unhurried — enough for the job, not for the bragging. Drive goes through a 6-speed DCT. The wheelbase is 2700 mm. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.

Family and rivals

In the Hyundai line-up the Hyundai Ioniq has a clear place: it handed the line to the Hyundai Elantra Hybrid (CN7) (South Korea and North America); the factory was Ulsan. The cars a buyer would have weighed it against include the Daihatsu Thor, the Daihatsu Sigra, the Acura CDX. Its Hyundai stablemates include the Hyundai Accent WRC and the Hyundai Accent.

Owning one today

Buying one now means $9,700–$22,000 for a typical example, and running it — fuel and maintenance at its age — costs about $1,740–$3,285 a year. Insurance sits around $1,160–$1,970 a year. The figures are class-level estimates from the federal record, with the formula on the methodology page; the model-year pages carry complaints, recalls and repair costs year by year.