Hyundai Ioniq 9

FIRST DRIVE Premium price and a highend finish move Korean brand upmarket - but can new flagship SUV match plush rivals?

- Jordan Katsianis

IF there were any doubt that Hyundai is a car company that should be taken seriously as a premium player, the fact we're speaking about a new model that'll start at the thick end of £70,000 and rival Volvo's flagship seven-seat EX90 SUV says it all. The new Ioniq 9 joins a growing band of Hyundai EVs that have shed their high-value image to become world-leading all-electric models, so how does this latest offering shape up?

The Ioniq 9 sits on the company's E-GMP architecture, and its figures are up there with the industry leaders. All feature a 110kWh battery pack mounted under the floor, paired to either a single rear-mounted motor, or a dual-motor set-up with one on each axle. This is slightly larger than the packs you'll find on rivals such as the Kia EV9 and equal to the EX90's, yielding a better range than the Kia - up to 385 miles on the single-motor variant.

That figure is around 35 miles up on the EV9 and matches the more expensive Volvo, although it drops down to 329 miles in cars equipped with a 429bhp dual-motor set-up, as driven here.

Hyundai is on the leading edge when it comes to charging speeds, too, because the Ioniq 9's 800V electronic architecture can support up to 260kW DC fast-charging. This means that despite the huge battery pack, it is still able to top up from 10-80 per cent in just 24 minutes.