“I don’t think we’re getting the credit we deserve, at Hyundai, for the range of electric cars that we sell.” Coming from someone else, that might sound like sour grapes, but from Stephen Gleeson, managing director of Hyundai Ireland, it’s arguably a fair point.
Perhaps we have become too accustomed to all those Tucsons on the road – that model has been the bestselling car in Ireland in eight of the past 10 years – but it’s easy to forget that Hyundai’s EVs have been racking up awards.
Hyundai, by its own figures, also sits on top of the Irish EV car market right now. For the year as a whole, VW is still the bestselling electric car brand, but since the July 252 plate change, Hyundai has been on top, with 20 per cent of the market, and a great deal of that is down to the success of the plucky and surprisingly spacious Hyundai Inster.
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According to Gleeson, that Inster is a model that is starting to seriously change the Irish electric car market. “We’ve seen customers – I can think of one in particular – who have been ready to sign on the line for a larger, used car and then, when they see an Inster in the showroom, they change their minds.
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“You know, in Irish dealerships, the majority of people will come in and say ‘what can you do for me in the line of a second-hand car, for around €15,000-16,000?’ Now, an Inster isn’t quite that cheap, but our dealers can then talk to a lot of those customers, and do the right deal that puts a new electric car within their reach.”
Indeed, the Inster has been such a success for Hyundai in Ireland, that there’s every possibility it might break the 2,000 sales barrier next year, if this year’s sales are anything to go by. That is in a market where the bestselling EV, the VW ID.4, shifted 1,500 units last year.
Does that mean that the market for EVs is finally on the up? And if it is, does that just open the door to the burgeoning Chinese brands? Gleeson thinks not.
“If you go back 10 or 15 years, there were lots of pieces about ‘the Korean brands are going to take over’ and 20 or 30 years ago it was all ‘the Japanese brands are going to take over’ but we have customers coming into us, having looked at some of the Chinese brands, and saying that the quality just isn’t there.
“So, I don’t want to look back in 20 years and feel like an idiot, but I think that brands like us, brands like VW, will be able to defend our market.
“You look at the Chinese brands now, and they’re bringing in more and more plug-in hybrids, and maybe that means they’ve lost a bit of their competitive edge, because we have so much more experience in internal combustion engines. And maybe it’s because Hyundai is such a strong brand in Ireland, so maybe we will defend our patch here a bit more.”
Part of Hyundai’s strength in Ireland comes from what many might consider something of a weakness: that it’s a privately owned importer, an independent operator rather than an offshoot of Hyundai HQ.
In theory, brands that are part of a larger whole can do better, able to communicate more easily further up the chain, and able to dictate better terms. Not so, says Gleeson.
“We can still be pretty quick in turnaround from ordering stock to delivery from the factory,” Gleeson tells The Irish Times. “We’re what’s called a stocking distributor. Some distributors take an order for the car, and then that order is sent to the factory, and you could be looking at 10 weeks for that customer to take a delivery. In our dealers, if you see a car you like, the dealer will most likely say to you ‘I have that in black, white or red and if you pick your colour I can have you into your new car next week.’ That’s what so much of our success has been built on.”
Now, Gleeson has a new challenge – selling a new all-electric Ioniq 9 seven-seater SUV into an Irish car market that has proven quite resistant to EVs in recent years, and that may react with a touch of shock when it sees the €78,000 price tag for a car with a Hyundai badge.
Given that Hyundai already has the popular Santa Fe seven-seat SUV, which is more affordable and comes with hybrid and plug-in hybrid power, does that mean that the Ioniq 9 is on a hiding to nothing?
“When we knew the Ioniq 9 was coming, there was a lot of questions asked,” admits Gleeson. “Especially, do we sell this to Santa Fe customers? But if you just do that, you don’t grow your sales nor your brand, and we knew from experience in other areas that an electric model like this doesn’t necessarily sell to the same customer base.
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“In fact, being an EV allows you to talk to other customers, whom you might not have spoken to before, and we’re already seeing trade-ins of BMWs, Mercedes, and others for this model. Equally, with our smaller, more affordable, models our dealers often already count the owners of more premium models as customers, but where they might have sold them an i20 or even a Tucson as a second family car in the past, now they can talk to the likes of a Volvo XC90 owner, and show them a car with the same capability.”
Speaking of premium brands, we’re still waiting for an Irish arrival of Hyundai’s own luxury brand, Genesis. Much-discussed in years past, it does now seem to be happening, albeit there’s the inevitable wait for some key models – EV models especially – to become available, but Gleeson tells The Irish Times it is happening in the coming years.
A premium brand to rival Lexus, and a €78,000 electric SUV to rival Volvo and BMW. No wonder Gleeson’s not worried by Chinese brands just yet.
