Cheaper Hyundai IONIQ 5 coming

The Hyundai IONIQ 5 could become thousands of dollars cheaper as soon as 2022 – albeit with less equipment in its EV arsenal.

As first customer deliveries of the Korean brand’s first ground-up EV begin arriving in Australia, Hyundai has all but confirmed there will soon be more affordable variants of the IONIQ 5 electric crossover, which shares its electrical architecture with the upcoming Kia EV6 and Genesis GV60.

In a premium-first strategy, the all-new Hyundai IONIQ 5 starts at a lofty $71,900 plus on-road costs, at which point it flies above some of the generous state rebates and incentives on offer for electric cars.

For another $4000 at $75,900 plus ORCs, the dual-motor all-wheel drive version of the electric crossover is the most expensive car in Hyundai showrooms.

But Hyundai Australia product planning manager Andrew Tuitahi has hinted that pricing relief should soon be on the way for prospective IONIQ 5 buyers.

“There’s a lot of scope for us to scale down the feature level, including the battery and range,” says Tuitahi, referring to the smaller 58kWh battery pack that is available in the car overseas.

That smaller battery shaves 11 per cent off the price of an IONIQ 5 in New Zealand. That alone should reduce the price from the longer-range 72.6kWh battery pack to more like $64,000 in Australia.

But there’s plenty more that can be taken out of a car that is brimming with gadgets, tech and luxury touches, including leather trim, 20-inch alloys, a panoramic sunroof, dual 12.3-inch screens and electrically adjustable and heated seats front and rear.

Tuitahi nominated those large wheels as another way to pull IONIQ 5 prices back, while other features could also be on the product planner’s chopping block.

“We can scale down to the 19-inch alloy wheels, which would give us slightly longer range on the big battery,” he said.

“There’s lots of potential trim levels and specs that we could offer customers.”

Tuitahi says the key is getting hold of more supply. Hyundai Australia can’t keep up with the early demand for the IONIQ 5 due to getting only 240 vehicles in the first batch.

But the company says that supply should improve next year. Hyundai says it is expecting another batch of cars in early 2022, followed by more vehicles throughout the year, although Tuitahi says those numbers will be “probably less than we’d really like”.

“As time progresses, as we see our supply change from the factory, we’ll definitely consider lower specification levels and therefore lower pricing in future.”

Exactly what form those more affordable IONIQ 5 variants will take will be shaped by customer feedback from the 13,000 people who registered an expression of interest on the Hyundai website; many missed out on placing a deposit when online ordering went live yesterday.

As for why Hyundai has aimed so high with the IONIQ 5, Tuitahi said: “at this stage we’ve considered that the flagship spec is the best way to introduce the car”.

With people already queuing to own one it makes sense to boost profits by selling more expensive variants.

Despite the imminent push to make the IONIQ 5 more affordable, there’s almost certainly a more expensive variant also in the wings.

Hyundai was recently caught testing the IONIQ 5 N – a high-performance version from Hyundai’s N sub-brand – at the Nurburgring in Germany.

Clearly the N version would sit above the current IONIQ 5 variants, further stretching the Hyundai brand.

But Tuitahi believes there will be enough substance to justify the price of a car the company has long hinted at but is yet to officially confirm.

“We’re very comfortable that if this car was to form the basis for an N [model] and we added the requisite N premium features and performance that customers would be comfortable paying for that as a Hyundai,” he said.