SEOUL — It’s 430 kilometers (267 miles) to Busan, we’ve got a fully charged battery and a half-cup of coffee. It’s 9:30 a.m., the mercury reads 0 Celsius, and we’re driving a Hyundai Ioniq 9.
If all goes well, I’ll make it by nightfall with plenty of juice to spare, even without recharging.
Hyundai Motor Co. designed this Korean cross-country drive challenge for a reason: To show that its new three-row, full-electric crossover is engineered to make range anxiety an afterthought — even during highway-speed long hauls in freezing temperatures that would normally do in an EV battery.
“Let’s see how many of you can finish this drive without recharging,” Joonmin Lee, global head of product promotion, told us journalists during the mid-February event, just before we departed Seoul in a convoy of crossovers. “That’s the whole purpose of this test drive.”
A host of technological tweaks ekes every electron from the 110-kilowatt-hour battery, delivering over 300 miles of EPA-rated range in all setups and maxing out at 335 miles in the long-range version.
Hyundai’s fixation on driving distance helps the Ioniq 9 stand out from the Kia EV9, its platform-sharing corporate stablemate. The EV9’s long-range 100-kilowatt-hour battery gets a top EPA rating of just 304 miles, and the standard model has a 76-kWh battery for only 230 miles.
But the Ioniq 9’s range is buttressed by other technological tricks.
The aerodynamics of the Hyundai Ioniq 9 three-row crossover feature a curved roofline and pinched-off “boat-tailed” rear to help improve driving range.
Aerodynamics, innovative heating help extend EV range
For starters, designers spent more time in the air tunnel than in the studio for sleeker aerodynamics. The result was the Ioniq 9’s curved roofline and chopped-off, boat-tailed back.
The looks give the Ioniq 9 an ultralow drag coefficient of 0.26 in the version with side cameras instead of mirrors. That figure is the slickest of any crossover in the Hyundai Motor Group.
The boxy EV9, by contrast, has a drag coefficient of 0.28.
Hyundai also reworked the underbody on the Ioniq 9. The covering is not just flat sheeting. Engineers discovered an undulating concave and convex surface sheds the air better.
Inside the car, an ultraefficient heating and cooling system reduces strain on the battery. The setup, also deployed in the EV9, uses heat pump technology that recycles waste heat. Meanwhile, zone management allows separate heating of the front and back sections.
Hyundai said this system enables the Ioniq 9 to cover distances of more than 400 kilometers (250 miles) with the heaters on, even when outside temperatures are as cold as -7 C (19.4 F), an extreme scenario outside the scope of EPA ratings but not an uncommon scenario for much of the winter in the home market of South Korea.
Despite weighing almost 3 tons, the Hyundai Ioniq 9 three-row crossover promises more than 300 miles of range in every trim.
Ioniq 9 is a 2.9-ton behemoth
While none of these factors is a magic bullet for better range, they all add up.
And every little bit helps because the Ioniq 9 weighs nearly 3 tons, at 2,600 kilograms (2.9 tons).
At that mass, the Ioniq 9 is more lumbering family cruiser than spritely driver’s delight — even though the front and rear 160-kilowatt motors in the all-wheel-drive version provide plenty of punch and the brakes ample stopping power.
We left the capital city of Seoul near the border with North Korea and followed the expressways toward the country’s second-biggest city on the far southeastern coast. Along the way, my driving partner and I made only three somewhat lengthy stops, one for coffee, one for lunch, one for the call of nature.
The interior of the Hyundai Ioniq 9 three-row crossover is clean and modern with a large digital display.
Mind-numbing stop-and-go traffic bogged down progress during the morning and afternoon rush hours. And the February chill gave way to above-freezing temperatures as we headed south.
We didn’t nurse the battery, but we also didn’t crank up the heat or audio system. We drove like we normally would with a gasoline car. Our speed averaged around 90-110 km/h (55-70 mph).
By the time we reached Busan at 6:20 p.m., the sun was dipping below the city’s skyline, and our auto-headlamps had switched on. After covering some 431.4 kilometers (268 miles), our Ioniq 9 still had 19 percent of the battery on tap, with a range of some 97 kilometers (60 miles) in reserve.
There are a slew of differences between the Ioniq 9 and the EV9, starting with the Hyundai’s sophisticated, elegant, stately stance versus the Kia’s rugged, technical, futuristic vibe.
The Ioniq 9 is a little longer and taller than its Kia counterpart, offering more second-row headroom and a longer stretch for legs in the third row. It also pips the EV9 for rear storage space.
But Hyundai hopes the promise of driving all day worry-free will be a big draw for the Ioniq 9, especially on top of its large size, comfort and cargo capacity.
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