Hyundai’s design chief on how the Ioniq 9 was inspired by the Audi A2 and erm… Doctor Who

This is the new Hyundai Ioniq 9… and it is absolutely massive. You can read the full story by clicking these blue words, but first you should know that this thing is over five metres long. It’s actually 8mm longer than a full-size Range Rover and the wheelbase is over three metres. It’s very nearly two metres wide, too. 

The boot is pretty giant. With the third row of seats folded flat you get 1,323 litres of luggage space, and there’s an 88-litre frunk if you spec the single-motor car or 55 litres for twin-motor. You can have either six or seven seats inside, and there actually is genuinely enough space in the back row for a six-foot adult. 

Clearly, there was lots of space for Hyundai’s design team to play with, so TG asked Simon Loasby, Senior Vice President and Head of the Hyundai Design Centre, to tell us more about the gigantic EV…  

TG: With all of the aerodynamic requirements, how difficult is it to design a large EV like the Ioniq 9?

“What was interesting about this car was the bandwidth of what is called an SUV in the market. You’ve got everything from big, boxy SUVs to pumped-up coupes being referred to as SUVs, and we’d had big success with Ioniq 6 in terms of just how streamlined we could make a car.

“So, for this car we looked at what shape we needed to create to make a great three-row car and give the user the maximum amount of space, while also making it function aerodynamically. With our very first digital models we got down to like 0.3 Cd.

“We had three models running as we showed the SEVEN concept. One of which was obviously this, and because the architecture was working that early we knew that we had a chance to get down to the 0.27s for drag coefficient. We didn’t realise we would get to the 0.25s.

“Then we got into a real strive for simplicity. A design that doesn’t shout at you. I like to say, ‘beauty not botox’. We’re looking for an inherent natural beauty with an almost aircraft-like fuselage. The windscreen angle is very fast, and we’ve pulled the cowl point forwards probably by a couple of hundred millimetres compared to an ICE car.

“But then the highest point is further back somewhere over the second row. We don’t normally do that. That was probably the most challenging line from a side view – to get that downward acceleration. There was one other car which was really good at that – the Audi A2. We thought that design worked, and we wanted to try and extrapolate that and refine it for a full three-row SUV.

“We have a fantastic aero team, but this wasn’t an aero car. And yet we still thought ‘let’s see how well we can do’. We’d just done Santa Fe – the box – and we thought we could be 10 per cent better in terms of drag coefficient compared to that car. But it still needs to have that bold front end. It needs to have that presence, and it needs to have the height and the ground clearance. All of these are negatives for us really, but we took on the challenge to create that fitted suit which has a less daunting character. Even though it’s our biggest car, it doesn’t look so big from the outside. Picture the scene – I’m trying to explain Doctor Who and the Tardis to our team of Korean designers to explain small on the outside, big on the inside. It was a fun discussion.
 
“It’s justifiably large, but it’s non-dauntingly attractive. That’s what we were playing with here.” 

TG: And the rear is almost estate-like?

“The shoulder is actually quite straight on the car, but if the roof is too straight then it just starts looking too elongated and long. At the back the truncated rear gives us the biggest rear volume and efficient aerodynamics. It works in terms of space and to give us a unique character for this segment.”

TG: Do you now feel more confident in your designs with this overarching pixel language?

“For me it’s working. It’s hugely differentiated between cars. That’s difficult for us but it’s a wonderful creative challenge. We’re not down this narrow corridor of ‘these are our design elements and that’s it’. But we see it has worked on 5, it has worked on 6 and we believe it’ll work here too.

“And of course, we have a crazy big portfolio with ICE cars and fuel cell cars – we really do look at the whole range as chess pieces that come from the same set but look different to suit different purposes.”

TG: Where did the idea for the body colour inserts in the arches come from? 

“On SEVEN we had a wheel sitting inside a typically squared-off SUV wheelarch. All of that extra space around the wheel creates drag and turbulence, so anything that’s not flush or closed gives us a negative aerodynamic effect.

“So we wanted to close up the arch but still get that square look. Naturally we end up with the cladding in this circular shape, but we wanted to break up the height of the car so we took the cladding up further and then added the body-coloured insert. The lower trim levels all have black cladding, whereas the Calligraphy trim with the turbine-like 21in wheel has the cladding all in body colour.

“Cladding is a little cheat, in a way. It helps the car fit the club. Customers are attuned to thinking cladding means more versatility. Then with Calligraphy more body colour comes across as more premium.”

TG: Were you tempted to go even bigger than 21in wheels? 

“Oh yeah always – I’m a designer. I’m still having those discussions. I’d love to put 22s or 23s on it, but it comes down to getting into the right price category for the car, and the weight limits and the strength of suspension arms etc.”

TG: You talk about a furniture-like approach to the interior? Will that affect the materials used? 

“Oh, I hope so. I think velour is coming back. It’s kind of awesomely cheesy. There are some amazing sustainable fabrics coming for pretty much every surface of the interior too. We just have to get over the threshold for wear and tear in car interiors.

“On this car my favourite interior touch is the Universal Island 2.0. We have the first generation on Ioniq 5, but in this car we wanted to see how much further we could slide it and how much lighter we could make the rails. It’s bigger too so we’ve got two storage areas, and then it’s got this double-way hinge so that both the front seats and second-row can use it. It’s brilliant.”

TG: Could we see N or XRT versions of the Ioniq 9? 

“I would just say ‘never say never’. It’s a big car, so for an N you’d need really big brakes and really big wheels. Plus, anything about light weight and high performance kind of clashes, but never say never.

“In an American context an off-roady XRT version could work. We never rule these things out and as designers we’re always challenging everything. Who knows what could come.”