Five months after Hyundai unveiled the China-developed IONIQ V, the electric fastback has now reached Chinese showrooms.
Its most striking feature is no longer its futuristic styling or 800-volt architecture, but its price: even the version offering up to 650 kilometers of range costs less than €17,000 in China.
Beijing Hyundai officially launched the IONIQ V on September 29 with five versions priced between 109,900 and 139,900 yuan. Temporary launch discounts lower that range even further, to 99,900-131,900 yuan.
The cheapest car therefore costs around €12,000 at current exchange rates, although such a direct conversion says little about what a European version would eventually cost.
More importantly, Hyundai has now filled the technical gaps left by the model’s unveiling at the Beijing Motor Show in April.
Two LFP batteries
The IONIQ V is available with two CATL-supplied lithium iron phosphate batteries. The smaller 53.5 kWh pack feeds a 140 kW/188 hp front-mounted motor and provides up to 540 kilometers of range according to China’s CLTC test cycle.
The long-range version receives a 66.8 kWh battery and a more powerful 168 kW/225 hp motor. Hyundai quotes up to 650 kilometers of CLTC range.
Some Chinese sources translate that into roughly 530 kilometers under WLTP conditions, but Hyundai has not homologated the car for Europe, so that figure should be treated only as an indication.
Perhaps surprisingly for a relatively affordable EV, the IONIQ V uses Hyundai’s E-GMP architecture with an 800-volt electrical system. It measures 4.90 meters long, 1.89 meters wide and has a 2.90-meter wheelbase, putting it very close in size to the Korean-built IONIQ 6.
Inside, however, its Chinese origins are obvious. A 27-inch 4K display runs on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8295 chip, while driver-assistance technology comes from the Chinese specialist Momenta. The infotainment system also integrates locally developed AI services from Baidu and ByteDance.
‘In China, For China, To Global’
That makes the IONIQ V more than just another regional Hyundai. It is the first visible result of the Korean manufacturer’s new strategy to use China not only as a sales market but also as a development and export base.
Hyundai calls that strategy “In China, For China, To Global”. CEO José Muñoz said at the model’s unveiling that China combines demanding EV customers with rapid development cycles, a deep battery supply chain and an advanced technology ecosystem.
Beijing Hyundai plans to launch 20 new electrified models over the next five years and aims to raise annual Chinese sales, including exports, to 500,000 cars by 2030.
Europe is among the regions Hyundai has mentioned as a possible destination for China-built vehicles. That makes the IONIQ V particularly interesting, although there is still no confirmed European launch.
Europe would be much more expensive
Its Chinese price certainly cannot simply be converted into euros. A China-built IONIQ V would need European homologation and specification changes, while transport, VAT, distribution and dealer margins would be added.
More importantly, Chinese-built battery-electric cars entering the EU are currently subject to additional countervailing duties. Manufacturers not covered by the European Commission’s investigation are subject to the highest rate of 35.3%, in addition to the normal EU import tariff. Beijing Hyundai is not among the manufacturers benefiting from one of the lower individual rates.
That makes a €15,000 or €20,000 European IONIQ V unrealistic. Even so, its extremely low manufacturing and retail costs in China leave Hyundai considerable room to position such a car competitively if it decides to export it.
A European price in the €30,000-€40,000 range would seem more plausible, depending heavily on tariffs and equipment. But that creates another issue for Hyundai: the 4.9-meter IONIQ V could then significantly undercut the company’s own IONIQ 6. That one currently starts at €43,199 in Belgium after incentives, or €48,199 at catalog price. The larger-battery IONIQ 6 variants move higher still.
That may ultimately be the most interesting part of the IONIQ V story. Hyundai went to China to compete with Chinese EV manufacturers on their own turf.
The result is an 800-volt EV with CATL batteries and Chinese software that costs a fraction of the price of Hyundai’s existing electric models in Europe. Whether Hyundai is willing to bring that disruption into its own European showrooms is now the bigger question.
