RWD, 800 Volts, and Power Out
Several things struck EV analysts during Hyundai’s technical presentations on the E-GMP platform. In particular, four factors make it stand out: (1) It uses rear-wheel drive for the single-motor versions; (2) the battery pack can charge at 800 volts; (3) it’s capable of home recharging at a higher rate than today’s EVs; and (4) owners can use the battery as a power source for electric appliances, which Hyundai calls “Vehicle To Load” or V2L capability.
Rear-wheel drive: From the 1960s on, front-wheel drive swept small-car design because it increased cabin space by eliminating the driveshaft. Using much smaller electric motors between the wheels, that constraint goes away. While many mass-market car companies are sticking with FWD electric cars, perhaps even because it’s become what so many buyers are used to, VW Group put its motor at the rear. That can offer a sportier driving feel, as well as more room up front under the hood (which VW so far hasn’t taken advantage of). Hyundai is doing the same thing, meaning its EVs may prove unexpectedly fun to drive.
800 volts: Battery voltage means nothing to the average consumer, but higher-power batteries can recharge faster—and that does matter to drivers and EV shoppers. So far, only Porsche has 800-volt battery packs in production, in its Taycan sport sedan and the related Audi e-tron GT. Under optimal circumstances, the Taycan can charge from 5 to 80 percent of battery capacity in just 22 minutes, using the 350-kilowatt charging stations so far available only on the Electrify America network (owned by VW Group, Porsche’s parent company).
It appears all future Hyundai and Kia EVs will be able to charge at similar speeds to the Porsche. That’s not bad for a mass-market brand, especially since the Volkswagen ID.4 electric crossover now on sale can’t do the same—nor will all the other VW and Audi models on the same ‘MEB’ underpinnings. Creating an 800-volt battery for mass-market vehicles is a bold move, and it’s the first volume maker to do so. GM uses clever electrical architecture to charge its future vehicles with Ultium batteries at 800 volts, but the packs natively run at 400V. (To preempt howls from Tesla owners, we should note 400-volt Teslas can briefly charge at up to 250 kW. And Lucid has a 900-volt pack, but it hardly competes with the likes of Hyundai and Kia.)
Home charging rate: The Ioniq 5 spec sheet offered something of a surprise: the car’s onboard AC charger functions at up to 10.9 kilowatts, presuming the owner installs a Level 2 charging station capable of delivering that rate. That’s higher than the previous decade’s EV standards, which have been 6.6 or 7.2 kW. Higher rates give faster home charging … so, happier owners?
Vehicle to load (V2L) capability: When Ford launched its first hybrid F-150 pickup truck, the ability to use the onboard high-voltage battery to power electric appliances proved to be a huge selling point. Contractors could power electric tools or recharge their battery packs, and all those happy groups of camping or tailgating Millennials could power their audio gear, portable refrigerators, and everything else. That feature also got a ton of attention in February when people in Texas used their trucks to keep the lights (and heat) on during the state’s historic cold snap and energy crisis. For the fully electric F-150 Lightning, Ford upped the ante and provided up to 9.6 kW of power out—enough to power a home for up to three days.
Hyundai is still in the “portable appliances” camp for the Ioniq 5, which is limited to a maximum of 1.9 kW of power output. That’s not enough to power your house like the Ford F-150 Lightning, but it could keep your fridge or water system running—along with the boom boxes and other gear you’ll see in the glossy ads.
While the company has made broad statements of intent about electrifying, industry sources suggest it is preparing to slash its lineup of combustion engine and transmissions—all developed in-house, and now one of the broadest of any large maker—to invest in EVs at a far more rapid pace.
Brand Challenges Differ
As we roll into the 2020s, the Hyundai brand has joined Toyota, Honda, and Nissan among the high-volume Asian brands you can depend on. Toyota is known for reliability, Honda for more fun driving, and both Nissan and Hyundai fall into the “value” end of the spectrum. Each new generation of Hyundais—and they come more often than new models from, say, Nissan—is notably more stylish, more enjoyable to drive, and better equipped than its predecessors. That’s not a bad place to be.
Kia has a different problem, best encapsulated by Rolling Stone magazine’s old “Perception / Reality” ads. In the U.S., Kia may be the auto brand whose perception most lags the reality of the vehicles it sells today. It’s only been part of Hyundai since 1998; before that it was an independent Korean maker that had to declare bankruptcy during the Asian financial crisis of the 1990s. Now, the two brands share engines, platforms, and components buyers don’t see developed by the parent corporation’s technical center. But Kia and Hyundai compete fiercely in the market, and their offerings are nowhere near the mirror-image model lineups other makers have cloned.
Through 2019, the highest-selling U.S. Kia model was the Soul “square box” compact hatchback. It’s immensely practical, but an odd-looking hatchback advertised by singing hamsters isn’t the image Kia deserves. For 2020, the Soul finally gave up its sales crown to Kia’s Forte subcompact sedan, Sportage small SUV, and Sorento midsize SUV.
But the brand’s future direction was set last year by the Telluride three-row crossover, which looked superb, drove and handled well, racked up critical acclaim like that was its entire job, and represented an amazing value that required no compromises by the buyers who stampeded into dealers to order one. It deservedly won the North American Utility of the Year award in 2020. [Disclosure: This author is one of 50-odd jurors who vote each year to determine winners of that trio of awards.]
Since the launch of the Telluride, Kia has dumped the hamsters, redesigned its logo, and continued to launch good-looking new vehicles. Every model it sells is stylish, with shapes that seem more refined than its sister brand’s occasionally trying-too-hard design efforts. The one fly in the ointment is a new “global” naming system that dumped the well-known and recognizable Optima model name for the anodyne “K5”. (Apparently its EVs will share a similar pattern, starting with “EV6,” just as VW has ID.4 and so forth. Feh.)