Huge demand for Ioniq 5 as first Australian batch sells out within hours

The first round of Ioniq 5 electric vehicles to go on sale in Australia – Hyundai’s first-ever dedicated battery electric model – has sold out within hours of opening to online orders on Tuesday morning.

The carmaker confirmed on Wednesday that all 240 of the Ioniq 5s allocated to the Australian market had been snapped up in little more than two hours after ordering went live, with 170 $2,000 deposits taken on the $A71,900 (base price) EV through the Hyundai website.

“Online ordering went live at 9:30am AEDT. The load on the website led to some technical issues and the early suspension of the ordering process. The vehicle sold out in just over two hours,” Hyundai said on Wednesday.

The clear display of strong customer demand offers a welcome sign of growth for the Australian electric vehicle market, which still has much catching up to do compared with other developed nations. The initial offerings of the Volvo XC40 Recharge was also quickly sold out.

For those customers who missed out, however, the evaporation of such a small initial allocation of Ioniq 5s would be little more than frustrating, with the timing for a second offering likely to be months away, according to Hyundai, possibly early 2022, once the company has a “clear visibility of supply.”

“Very frustrating.” Was the feedback from one customer, who shared his expeirence of “joining the early order rush” and narrowly missing out, including the technical difficulties and “early suspension” of the ordering process, as confirmed above by Hyundai.

“But at least they shipped some to Australia, so that is a good thing,” the reader said, noting a number of further positives from his experience, including a tow bar on the accessories list – “so ‘someone we all know’ will see that one can indeed have a good weekend away in an EV!”

Hyundai said customers who had missed out on this first batch would receive regular updates about the supply situation and timing for release of the next batch.

“We plan to only release vehicles for order once production has been scheduled, to ensure reasonable delivery timeframes for our customers,” a spokesperson said.

So why the hot demand? Well, it is no surprise, really. Just last month Hyundai said it had been swamped by an unprecedented level of interest in the Ioniq 5 in Australia, with more than 10,000 would be customers registering their interest – and 100 paying a deposit giving them priority when bookings opened in late September.

As The Driven has reported, there is much about the Ioniq 5 to appeal to prospective electric vehicle drivers. Built on Hyundai’s dedicated Electric-Global Modular Platform (E-GMP), it includes charging rates of up to 350kW, and ranges of 451km (2WD), and 430km (4WKD).

But one of the key attractions of the Ioniq 5 has been its vehicle-to-load (V2L) function, which allows customers to charge electric devices, such as electric bicycles, scooters, camping equipment, appliances in the home, or even another electric vehicle.

The “charger-on-wheels” also allows customers to charge high-power electric equipment via the vehicle’s charge port, where the vehicle can provide up to 3.6kW of power.

“Luxuries” include seats trimmed in sustainable eco-processed leather, 12-way power front seats with ‘Relaxion’ (zero gravity) mode and memory function, a heated steering wheel, heated and ventilated front seats, heated rear seats, a vision glass roof with power sunshade, and a smart power tailgate.

“It is our great pleasure to introduce the futuristic IONIQ 5 battery-electric medium SUV, the first model from our IONIQ EV sub-brand,” said Hyundai Motor Company Australia CEO Jun Heo on Wednesday.

“The powerful, long-range, ultra-fast charging IONIQ 5 represents the leading edge in zero-emissions battery-electric vehicles and is certain to delight our customers.”