![]() Wireless device charging is included as standard, although it’s via a slightly small pad that our phones had a habit of falling off. However, its menus are laid out sensibly, the screen is crisp and responds quickly, its icons are easy to hit and usability is good, aided by a few menu shortcut buttons just under the screen and a physical volume knob. It has no manual cursor controller, so there’s seldom an alternative to operating it with an outstretched hand. ![]() The Ioniq 6’s 12.3in touchscreen infotainment system is the one that will be familiar to Hyundai regulars. Quite why they need to be built up like they are in cars with conventional mirrors is open to question. In a car with ‘digital side mirrors’, these are where the additional video screens are carried. Also seemingly Mercedes-inspired are multi-coloured ambient lighting features, which help to play on the space-capsule design theme.Īt the lateral extremes of the fascia, meanwhile, are raised buttresses that look too large and conspicuous to be styling features. Nestling behind that wheel is a twin-screen instrumentation-cum-infotainment flight console. Surely Hyundai should have been especially proud to have its brand identity on this car? It has certainly made a tidy effort of tactile quality – the car’s switchgear, mouldings and materials all feeling solid and moving with expensive heft. Just as it was on the Ioniq 5, it seems an unusual decision. Hyundai prefers to put a row of LED lights here instead, which light up in different colours to alert the driver of various things. Up front, the Ioniq 6’s dashboard layout is missing an identifying feature: the maker’s badge that commonly sits on any steering wheel boss. The car’s flat floor makes for plenty of storage space in the front of the cabin and useful extra leg room for any passenger travelling in the middle of row two. Leg room, however, is almost absurdly generous by comparison as a result of the long wheelbase, while boot space, under the large sloping saloon-style bootlid, is in fairly rich supply too. Taller drivers will therefore be short of head room, which is an irksome failing if it affects you. The seat and steering column offer lots of adjustability but can’t quite mitigate how high the seats are mounted. But testers taller than six foot all reported being short on head room behind the wheel – some given a problem serious enough to cause neck ache over even an averagely long journey. That’s not enough to go hunting Performance Teslas just yet – but, of course, an N-branded model could arrive later.Ī slight shortage of head room in the back of a car like this may be forgivable. Front suspension is via MacPherson struts, alongside which a second motor is fitted in upper-level AWD models, which have a combined 321bhp. The entry-level car is powered by a 225bhp rear-mounted electric motor, packaged and carried neatly and efficiently within its multi-link rear axle. Benz hit 0.20 with the Mercedes EQS two years ago, but a Tesla Model 3 is up at 0.23 and a normal family hatchback at around 0.27. So what’s the functional gain? Active aerodynamic shutters and air-vectoring wheel-arch curtains contribute to a drag coefficient of just 0.21. There’s less amorphous anonymity here than those Mercs have somehow, and more visual intrigue. It brings to mind the mood that Mercedes is seeking to conjure with its EQ-branded EVs – though not succeeding at quite so well. Hyundai calls it “a bridge to the future of electric mobility”, and the styling philosophy that has fathered it “optimistic futurism”. Whatever the route taken to achieve it, this is certainly a car to notice. Time to find out exactly what that aerodynamic design is worth, then – and whether the executive saloon segment has a new leading protagonist in its midst. Those proportions, and its general silhouette, have delivered an ultra-low drag coefficient for the Ioniq 6, in a cabin that seats up to five occupants and that benefits from various other practicality gains courtesy of Hyundai/Kia’s clever E-GMP vehicle architecture. Hyundai describes this as a modern ‘streamliner’: a low-cut, super-sleek four-door of short-snouted, long-tail proportions that wouldn’t have been contemplated on any executive car 20 years ago. But in another sense, a wide-eyed reimagining of the traditional mid-sized saloon concept, and a car designed not only to stand out from its rivals, but also for greater aerodynamic and energy efficiency, and greater associated range, than so many of them. After Ioniq 5 comes Hyundai Ioniq 6: in one sense, Hyundai’s reply to the popular Tesla Model 3 – and just the kind of car you would expect it to make. ![]()
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