250-Mile Hyundai Electric Car In Development

The Korean auto manufacturer Hyundai is planning to release an all-electric vehicle with a single-charge range of 250 miles by the end of the decade, according to recent reports.

The news originates with comments made by Hyundai executive Ahn Byung-ki in an interview with Automotive News, so is likely to be quite solid. Interestingly, the company executive also commented that, while electric vehicle (EV) technology development has been relatively steady over the past 6 years, the next 2 years are likely to see accelerated development.

Hyundai will of course be releasing a fairly compelling all-electric vehicle later this year in the US — the all-electric version of the Ioniq, which will possess a single-charge range of 110 miles. The “compelling” bit is of course that the pricing is expected to be fairly reasonable.

Autoblog in its coverage expounds on the connection between the electric Ioniq and the unnamed 250-mile EV, noting that, after the Ioniq, “Hyundai and its Kia and Genesis sister companies may develop a 200-mile range EV for 2018, and then that 250-mile-range car for 2020. Byung-ki isn’t concerned that the Ioniq will quickly be outdated because the longer-range vehicles will also be priced higher. The Hyundai executive also said the company had no plans to take on Tesla Motors in the luxury EV market.”

Positioning itself as a provider of lower-cost, “affordable” EVs is likely a good strategy for the company, as Tesla has more or less revealed that it won’t be developing an EV cheaper than the Model 3 anytime soon.