First electric Hyundai N coming soon: E-GMP platform to underpin EV performance cars

There’s an electric Hyundai N coming soon, with the brand’s E-GMP architecture – debuted on the Ioniq 5 – to underpin a range of EV N models, with the brand’s performance boss promising “there’s something in the pipeline, not too far down the road”.

Speaking at the offical unveiling of the Hyundai Kona N, which also formed part of the brand’s annual N Day, Hyundai’s global marketing chief, Thomas Schemera, told media the brand’s performance division was ready to embrace electrification in a big way.

And it will start, he says, with a model based on the brand’s E-GMP platform, one that will “ring a bell”. The model he’s surely referring to, then, is the Ioniq 5, which acts as the flag-bearer for Hyundai’s all-electric architecture.

“As I’ve mentioned before, one of Hyundai’s top priorities is electrification. There’s no doubt about it,” he says.

“If you add one and one, (then) you know that there’s something in the pipeline, not too far down the road. There’s something coming up, and maybe it rings a bell if you think about our EGP or electric global modular platform. This shows a lot of potential and a lot of flexibility.

“So stay tuned, something is in the pipeline.”

Hyundai’s shift to alternative power in the performance space isn’t unique – hello Porsche Taycan – but it does promise to be potentially the most diverse. There’s an electric Hyundai N coming soon, sure, with the brand now putting what sounds like the finishing touches on Ioniq 5 N EV, but it’s also investigating the performance applications of fuel cell technology, and working on combining the two technologies, too.

Why, you ask?

“Because we can do it,” says Hyundai’s R&D chief Albert Biermann. “There’s not a lot of companies around who have fuel-cell technology and battery-electric technology. But of course that’s not the (only) reason.

“We’re working on a rolling-lap project where we have a high-power battery powertrain combined with a fuel cell, and in this setup the fuel cell adds to the power, but also to the ranger of the vehicle.

“And that’s a nice, challenging exercise for our engineers to squeeze a high-power battery electric powertrain and a fuel cell stack into one vehicle.”