Hyundai To Boost Ioniq Electric Range For 2020 With Larger Battery

Hyundai has confirmed that it is working on increasing the range of the Ioniq Electric.

Speaking during a recent press event for the all-new Kona Electric with Inside EVs, Hyundai senior group manager for alternative vehicle strategy, Gil Castillo, revealed that the 2020 model Ioniq Electric will be fitted with a larger battery pack.

“The Ioniq’s range will improve at the model-year change. It will get bigger. It will be a nice improvement, but not like the Kona’s range,” he said.

While Castillo failed to specify how much larger the Ioniq Electric’s battery will become, the current car is capable of traveling a touch over 124 miles (200 km) on a single charge. While that’s enough for some buyers, it isn’t enough for the vehicle to compete with vehicles like the Chevrolet Bolt, Nissan Leaf, and Tesla Model S. What’s more, it’s also substantially less than the 258 miles (415 km) which the Kona Electric can travel for between charges.

Inside EVs speculates that the improved Ioniq Electric’s range could sit somewhere in the region of 186 miles (300 km), putting it in the same realm as the 40 kWh Nissan Leaf.

Even with the improvements for the 2020 model year, it remains to be seen how much popular the Ioniq Electric will become, especially compared to the Kona Electric. Not only does the Kona look better (to our eyes), its range is much more substantial and more importantly, it’s a crossover, a body style proving much more popular than sedans across North America.