If you’re going to launch a car specifically designed to be affordable to buy and run for growing families, it may seem a touch odd to choose the salubrious surroundings of The K Club in Co Kildare.
Surely a people’s car should be launched in Liberty Hall?
The new Hyundai Ioniq 3 certainly looked smart, parked on the lawns of The K Club, and perhaps the fact that we were cooing over a family-friendly affordable car, instead of the Mercedes-Maybach parked out front (the hotel’s official wheels) was some small victory for the common person.
The Hyundai Ioniq 3 might be a bigger victory, as it happens. It’s part of Hyundai’s enormous recent push for all-electric models, which last year saw the launch of little (Inster) and large (Ioniq 9) and everything in between (updates for the Ioniq 5 and Ioniq 6). The Ioniq 3, though, could be the biggest – metaphorically speaking – of the lot.
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Certainly, Stephen Gleeson, Hyundai Ireland’s managing director, reckons the Ioniq 3, which arrives on Irish roads rather than on hotel lawns in September, could be the car to knock the Toyota Yaris Cross off the Irish sales top spot and take back the top position for Hyundai, which of course held it for most of the past 10 years with various iterations of the Tucson.
“The best seller at the moment is the Toyota Yaris Cross,” Gleeson said. “Now, that’s €32,000, and yet it’s a smaller car than our Ioniq 3. So the possibility of sales for this car, at the kind of price it’s at and the design of the car, is just huge.
“Yes, there are cheaper cars, but it’s rare that you get a car that’s going to be as well priced as this Ioniq 3, and that is literally smack bang in a volume segment. So we’re really enthusiastic about this car.”
Could an electric car really take the top spot in Ireland? According to Gleeson, demand at Hyundai Ireland’s dealerships for electric cars has more or less doubled in the past six weeks.
The Ioniq 3 could be hitting the Irish market at just the time when a bulk of Irish consumers have decided to decouple their motoring from the whims of the oil futures trading market.
Hyundai is so far demurring when it comes to precise pricing, saying that’s all still under negotiation with the bosses in Korea, but reading around the edges, it looks like the starting price will be roughly €28,000 for the entry-level version of the Ioniq 3, with a 42kWh battery and a range of 335km.
There will be a circa-€2,000 step-up to a higher-spec model, with a 61kWh battery and an impressive range of 490km. Hyundai will sell the Ioniq 3 in five specifications in Ireland, with the range being topped by a sporty-looking N-Line model.
If the Ioniq 3 lives up to the expectations which are held for it, then it will represent quite the change. No model which is neither an SUV nor a crossover of some sort has topped the Irish sales charts for more than a decade.
And while Hyundai has splashed some black paint around the lower reaches and the wheel arches of the Ioniq 3, it’s very definitely a hatchback, not an SUV.
In fact, Hyundai officially calls it an ‘aero-hatch’ which means, as chief designer Simon Loasby told us: “What you see here is a compact, composed and confident aero-hatch, shaped by a European team for the European market.
“The Ioniq 3 is clearly defined by the way the roof line accelerates over the cabin, giving interior space, but attaching the air flow down to the spoiler on the rear, giving it a unique identity unmistakable with anything else on the road in Europe.”
Loasby is not wrong; the Ioniq 3 is genuinely distinctive and handsome, with overtones of the old Veloster coupe in the side profile, and faint hints of classic Alfa Romeos around the rear.
Inside, if you go for an N-Line model, you get moody black trim with contrast red stitching, but in the car we were shown, there was an almost Mediterranean look and feel, with beige and turquoise colour schemes, and a sense of brightness thanks to the optional glass roof.
The Ioniq 3’s cabin is really well-made too, with high-quality surfacing, and it’s practical – there’s plenty of storage space around the front of the car, including clever cupholders that have a pop-out panel so you can carry those massive hydration cups so beloved of Gen-Z.
There’s a new, square, touchscreen in the centre of the dash – 12.9 inches or 14.6 inches, depending on the spec you choose – and that uses Hyundai’s impressively straightforward new Google Android-based ‘Pleas’ operating system. While the software is clever – self-updating, and it allows you to download apps such as Spotify, YouTube, or streaming services – Hyundai knows how drivers actually function, and so there are plenty of physical buttons for the likes of cabin temperature and stereo volume.
Indeed, Loasby took a bit of a swipe at rival, especially Chinese, car makers. “All those frequently used functions are instinctively where you need to find them. So, without looking away from the road, you can find those functions. It’s the safest way of driving a vehicle.”
Although the Ioniq 3 is only slightly longer than a traditional ‘B-Segment’ hatchback (it’s about 100mm longer than the last-generation Ford Fiesta, for example), it’s impressively spacious in the back. Some of that space comes from setting the rear seat cushion at a downward angle, forcing your knees up and your posture into a space-saving Z-shape, but you can genuinely fit four six-footers in this car.
Does that limit the boot space? No, it does not. Hyundai has taken a leaf out of Ford’s copybook and, in a manner similar to the Puma, it has carved out an effectively double-floored boot.
The upper section is relatively small, but has no loading lip and holds about the same as you’d expect to fit into, say, a Mini Cooper.
However, lift the hinged boot floor up and below is the Ioniq 3’s ‘Megabox’ – a colossal space that’s big enough to swallow a suitcase that Ryanair would reject. The total space on offer is 441 litres, which is considerably more room than you’d find in the larger, more expensive likes of the VW ID.3.
All that remains is for us to find out how the Ioniq 3 drives, but if it’s as sharp in the corners as it looks in the metal, this could not merely be Ireland’s bestselling car next year – it could be the most talented and stylish car to take that trophy for some time.
