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Sketchy preview of NZ’s next Ioniq

A pencil drawing of Hyundai’s impending electric sedan has been shared.

LAST year you saw the car, in concept form, the end result of presumably hundreds of hours’ work  – this week, a sketch that might have taken a few seconds and been drawn on a napkin.

 So goes the prelaunch process for the next big thing on the electric vehicle scene from Hyundai.

 The Ioniq 6 sedan is a sister ship to the hugely successful Ioniq 5 hatch, current holder of New Zealand Car of the Year.

 The real thing has been seen, albeit in heavily disguised form, undergoing testing and, of course, the muse was a design study, called the Prophecy, displayed at a motor show in Munich last year.

 There’s still no clarity about when the actual production car will be fully unveiled. The website for Britain’s Autocar magazine reckons it’ll fully break cover in a matter of days. TheKoreanCarBlog has said debut will be on July 14, at a motor show in Busan, South Korea.

 It should have been out in March or April but, according to reports, was subject to last-minute changes to some of its components. According to another website, Motor1, those revisions were ordered by the man at the top, no less than Hyundai chairman Chung Eui-sun.

 Anyhoo …

 To keep appetites whetted, Hyundai today released the drawing, here, which emphasis the design thrust toward achieving an aerodynamically-optimised shape. The very design philosophy inspired by Prophecy (also pictured).

 Hyundai describes the car as an ‘Electrified Streamliner,; which corresponds with the way the concept looks.

 Riding on the E-GMP platform shared with the Ioniq 5 and Kia EV6, the Ioniq 6 will reportedly use a 77.4-kilowatt-hour battery pack.

 A dual-motor variant is believed to be under development with an output of around 224 kilowatts.

 The big question is whether Hyundai will also build an N performance version sharing its 430kW electric powertrain with the EV6 GT, which is going to run at this weekend’s Goodwood Festival of Speed.

 In the coming days, additional IONIQ 6 teaser images will be revealed on Hyundai’s official social media channels and IONIQ 6 Campaign Page (ioniq6.hyundai.com).

 As for the obvious question? The answer is ‘yes’. Hyundai NZ said more than a year ago it had signed up for Ioniq 6. It’s also keen on Ioniq 7, the larger sports utility that conceivably become as battery-wed replacement for the Palisade.