Hyundai Motor launches IONIQ as integrated e-vehicle brand

Hyundai Motor Company has chosen “IONIQ” as the name of its new electric car brand, an ambitious project for the South Korean carmaker. So far, Hyundai has retrofitted existing internal-combustion engine cars into an electric model, but starting from next year, it will start to use a platform dedicated to building e-vehicles.

Hyundai Motor announced Monday that it will call its e-vehicle brand “IONIQ,” which will be subsequently introduced for three years from next year. The term is a combination between “Ion,” an electric generator of energy, and “Unique” for the company’s ingenuity.

The launch of the separate electric car brand reflects the company’s ambition to present an integrated concept and obtain a stable footing in a rapidly growing e-vehicle market.

Hyundai Motor will also adopt a new naming system combining IONIQ with a number indicating the size of a vehicle. Typically used by German carmakers, such nomenclature is both intuitive and scalable thanks to a simple mix of a letter and a number.

Under the new naming rule, CUV models will be called “IONIQ 5,” while sedans and large-sized SUVs are labeled as “IONIQ 6” and “IONIQ 7,” respectively. But the old models using IONIQ as their name will not be included in the newly launched brand.


Do-Hyong Kim dodo@donga.com