Hyundai provided flights from Albany to London and accommodation so Ars could attend the Goodwood Festival of Speed and the Ioniq 6 N reveal. Ars does not accept paid editorial content.
Hyundai's N division is celebrating its 10th anniversary in 2025. That's not long enough to earn the cachet of other performance sub-brands, like BMW's M or Mercedes-Benz's AMG, but N has certainly developed a reputation for fun, attainable, and powder-blue cars. With the Ioniq 5 N, Hyundai's skunkworks for speed proved that it can do the impossible: make an EV that's ridiculously, irrationally fun. Now, it's trying to reproduce that magic.
Meet the Ioniq 6 N, a new big-winged, high-powered, pastel-dipped machine designed for those who cross the spectrum between a love of EVs and a need for speed. It shares much of the performance architecture of the Ioniq 5 N, including stronger motors and cooling to match, but it has some significant updates that should make it even more engaging and fun.
Let's start with what's the same: The Ioniq 6 N uses a pair of uprated electric motors to deliver 641 hp (478 kW) and 568 lb-ft (779 nm) of torque, directed to all four wheels. Not only can those motors put out big power, but they can regen it as well, with the Ioniq 6 N able to brake at up to 0.6 G before it calls in support from its physical brake. (That's about twice as much as most EVs, which usually switch over to friction brakes at 0.3 G.)
Many EVs—including the regular Ioniq 6—make their wheels as disc-like as possible to cut drag. That's bad for heat dissipation and brake cooling, though. Credit: Tim Stevens
It rolls on a wheelbase that's 0.6 inches (roughly six cm) longer than the regular Ioniq 6. Yes, Hyundai went so far as to lengthen the footing on this thing to both give it more stability and make room for the 20-inch wheels wrapped in 275-section-width Pirelli P-Zero 5 tires.
Charge comes from an 84 kWh battery that provides an estimated 291 miles (469 km) of range on the WLTP cycle. That should equate to somewhere around 250 miles (400 km) of range on the EPA cycle, roughly 100 short of the non-N Ioniq 6. That power is directed through an interesting, dual-mode inverter. At lower-power situations (system output below 215 hp, or 160 kW), the car uses a silicon-carbide inverter optimized for efficiency. At higher speeds, the car switches to a less-efficient but higher-throughput silicon inverter capable of providing the current needed for peak power.