A sub $20,000 Hyundai EV is coming, but probably only for Europe. “Unfair,” we here at Autoguide say.
At the Automotive News Europe Congress in Prague, Hyundai’s European Marketing Vice President Andreas-Christoph Hofmann confirmed that the brand is working on a super cheap electric car. “Everybody in the industry knows the target of this kind of vehicle is 20,000 euros,” he said. With the American dollar and euro currently at equivalency, this would mean a potentially dirt-cheap electric car offering.
But, within the talk, it seems as if the potentially cheap EV would likely be for Europe only. Why? Because the cheap EV would be replacing the Hyundai i10, a city car not sold in the US or Canada. Automakers have been adamant that smaller cars have been hit hard by the push for electrification since their small size often makes range low, and the price of batteries tends to make them more expensive than their traditional ICE counterparts.
With a limited range, and overall lack of popularity of small cars in the US compared to Europe, it seems that Hyundai’s budget EV effort will be limited to Europe. There, it’ll face off against cars like the forthcoming VW ID.Life. Hyundai emphasized that the future seven-passenger Ioniq 7 EV would be a very important piece to its success in North America. Still, EVs have made up 16% of Hyundai’s sales in the first half of 2022. So maybe a similarly cheap model could find its way to North American shores.
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