Since last year, Hyundai has been trickling out news about the Ioniq — the hybrid it hopes can dethrone the Toyota Prius.
Now we've seen it in person at the Geneva Motor Show. The car is unique in the industry because it uses three different powertrains on one platform: hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and full electric.
It's the latter two that are the most interesting. The plug-in hybrid will use a 8.9 kWh battery to go as far as 50 kilometers (around 30 miles) on electric power before the petrol engine kicks in to get you the rest of your journey.
The all-electric Ioniq packs a 28 kWh lithium-ion pack, good for 250 km of range or about 155 miles, and starting around €38,000. That's around the same range as the next-generation Nissan Leaf, and a bit short of the Chevy Bolt. The plug-in and hybrid versions should be priced around the same as the Toyota Prius, if not a bit cheaper.
I'll need to actually drive the thing before we can make any concrete judgements, but given Hyundai's other cars I suspect the Ioniq could provide Toyota quite a run for its money. It'll come to Europe and Korea this year, before possibly coming to the US in 2017.
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