Ioniq 5 EV sales surprise Hyundai! Detailed Report.

Hyundai launched its flagship EV, the Ioniq 5, in India on January 11, 2023, with a target to dispatch about 500 units annually. Now statistics show that it has already sold 1.5 times the target, and there are a couple of months left.

Success Story!

India's second-largest car maker, Hyundai India, stepped into the EV space in the Indian market with its Kona SUV, which didn't turn things up for Hyundai until now as competitors like Nexon Ev lead that segment with its 'value for money' quotient and brand image. However, the flagship Hyundai model that is also an EV, the Ioniq 5, performed exceptionally well for the brand. News reports quoting Mr. Tarun Garg, COO, Hyundai Motor India, suggest that Hyundai itself was surprised to see the sales figure of the Ioniq 5, which costs well above Rs. 45 lakh.

Hyundai anticipated selling about 500 units of the EV annually, but it has already sold 750 units of it in just nine months. With this overwhelming response, the target for 2023 has been revised to 1000 units, which seems attainable. It clearly shows that car buyers with heavy pockets feel free to invest in good products, whether they are from a premium brand or not.

Mr. Garg also states that 50 percent of the Ioniq buyers also own a car from a luxury brand, while 80 percent of the Ioniq owners use their car as their primary mode of transportation.

The Siblings.

The Ioniq 5 is built on Hyundai's Electric Global Modular Platform (E-GMP), which is also shared with its cousin, the Kia EV6. Both of these flagship EVs sold about 1100 units in just 8 months. While the Kona EV SUV just sold 400 units in the same period. It is expected that the new generation of Kona will take a leap ahead in terms of sales when it is launched in India sometime next year.

Driving Fun

The Ioniq 5 is loaded with a 72.6 kWh battery pack, and coupled with an oil-cooled 217 hp motor, the car goes from 0 to 100 in under 8 seconds. The claimed ARAI range is 631 km on a single charge, but in the real world, it can go about 450 km easily on a light foot. It also has various regenerative modes to restore power, such as going downhill or doing just one pedal drive. Driving modes like Eco can further help in extracting better range from the car.

Hyundai's future plan

Hyundai India has committed to investing 20,000 crore in the Indian market, especially in developing electric vehicles, in the next 10 years. An all-new battery assembly plant will be one of the initial phases of this investment. Hyundai plans to bring six new electric vehicles to India by the year 2023. Localization of the products is aimed at as much as possible, because only then would Hyundai be able to compete with brands like TATA in the EV space. Currently, Ioniq5 comes into India through the CKD (completely knocked down) route, but to further reduce production costs, Hyundai aims to localize maximum goods.

As reproted, Mr. Garg claims that the EV market in India has 'grown'much faster' than Hyundai anticipated, and now they see about 20% of the market share of EVs by the year 2030. As far as the EV market is concerned, Tata Motors leads the charts with more than 80% of the share, while ICE car leader Maruti Suzuki still doesn't have any EVs. So Hyundai wants to take a lead over Maruti in that regard and compete with the market leader.