On Thursday morning, Hyundai teased the largest of its forthcoming electric vehicles, which it will formally reveal later in November at AutoMobility in Los Angeles.
Of all the automakers undergoing electrification efforts, few are charging ahead quite like Hyundai Motor Group. Hyundai’s and Kia’s smaller electric vehicles are some of the few on the road to challenge Tesla for powertrain efficiency, and now the two brands, plus Genesis, are bringing a whole new family of larger, more powerful EVs to market, using a new 800 V architecture called E-GMP.
The first of those due on US roads will be the Ioniq 5, a retro-styled crossover with pixellated tail lights that we’ll get to drive in early December.
A curvy sedan is under development, too, first shown as the Prophecy concept. The production car will be called the Ioniq 6, and we might have a slightly longer-than-planned wait to see it, as it’s reportedly being redesigned to carry a greater-capacity battery (to achieve a 500 km range).
Hyundai’s new concept is called SEVEN, which is a pretty obvious clue that it will lead to the Ioniq 7 SUV, due in 2024. Like the Prophecy concept and the production Ioniq 5, SEVEN uses a lighting design that Hyundai calls “parametric pixels,” which it says connects “analog with digital emotions.”
Expect the SEVEN to lean heavily into the living-room-on-wheels idea. The Ioniq 5 is highly space-efficient on the inside, and it’s logical to expect the larger, more expensive E-GMP car to expand on that. The photos that Hyundai provided show a cabin that’s heavy on sustainable materials and elegant design.