Tech chaos with Hyundai’s latest EV drop left nearly half Ioniq 5s and 6s unsold
Hyundai on Wednesday revealed the full extent of website problems in Australia’s biggest EV drop, revealing that almost half of the 470 Ioniq 5 and Ioniq 6 on offer remained unsold after day one.
The practice of “throwing” offers online at a specific time – like tickets to a rock concert – has generated a great deal of interest and frustration, and usually these offers fill up within minutes.
But Wednesday’s drop – including 300 Ioniq 6 (on sale for the first time) and 170 of the hugely popular Ioniq 5 – met with major difficulties as the site failed multiple times.
At the end of the first day, 48 Ioniq 5 and 142 Ioniq 6 remained unsold, although that number has declined after customers managed to get back online on Thursday.
A Hyundai spokesman said: technical questions about the “Drive-Away” calculator. “For example, customers have seen errors when typing in zip codes. The technical issue caused the website to go into “protection mode”. We’re still trying to determine exactly what caused the problem,” he said.
“It’s worth noting that we sold around 750 Ioniq 5 last year and in this one instance had close to 500 Ioniq, so we’re pleased to see stocks being cleared.
“With the technical problem, to put it simply, we sold around 100 in the first hour and 180 in the next three hours. While you might say this is ‘slower’ than usual, we’re excited – if we can make more stock available, customers can take their time with the online ordering process and really enjoy it.”
The spokesman said the company hopes to secure around 200 to 300 of the Ioniq electric vehicles in a month.
The Driven has been looking at a few locations for the Ioniq 5 and there are still a few units available. Most of the EVs available were the top-of-the-line Epiq AWD variant, which started at $85,000 before street use.
The configurator also allows buyers to see what’s available in their state or to express interest in a variant/configuration that may not be available.
The Driven attempted to go through Hyundai’s Ioniq 5 shop configurator for different states and Ioniq 5 Epiq Edition became available in many parts of Australia.
This variant now comes with digital rear-view mirrors found on some base EVs in the Hyundai/Genesis family.
Last month’s release featured only the Ioniq 5 SUV, which saw 250 EVs snapped in just 15 minutes.
Similarly, the new all-electric Ioniq 6 sedan was available through the Dynamiq 2WD variant configurator.
This time it was Hyundai’s most significant drop in electric cars we’ve seen, with over 470 vehicles made available to Australians interested in making the switch to electric.
Of the 470, the all-new Ioniq 6 “Streamliner” sedans were the bulk. As I said, some are still available.
300 of these examples were available in February, with 76% of the total being the more efficient Dynamiq 2WD variant. Only 71 AWD variants were available in the form of 36 Techniq and 35 top-of-the-line Epiq variants.
Given the larger number of Dynamiq variants that can be ordered, it makes sense to still have a few available for customers to order. This variant offers a range of up to 614 km with the single-motor drive train with up to 168 kW of power and 350 Nm of torque.
Delivery of the Ioniq 6 sedan would take place within three months of the order being placed.
Riz is the founder of carloop based in Melbourne specializing in Australian EV data, insights and trends. He is a mechanical engineer who spent the first 7 years of his career building transportation infrastructure before founding carloop. He has a passion for cars, especially electric vehicles, and wants to help reduce traffic emissions in Australia. He currently drives a red Tesla Model 3.