First drive: Hyundai’s wild RN22e aims to prove EVs can be fun

• HYUNDAI RN22E CONCEPT
• Price range: TBC
• Powertrains: Twin electric motors with 430kW/740Nm, virtual eight-speed dual-clutch transmission, AWD.
• Body style: Two-door coupe
• On sale: Probably never but maybe 2024

Hyundai’s N division is absolutely smashing it at the moment, with both its production sports cars like the i30 N hot hatchback, and its concepts. Last year it debuted two of the latter, the absolutely brilliant hydrogen-fed N Vision 74 and the semi-near-production battery-electric RN22e. At the recent N Festival over at The Bend in Adelaide, a few lucky journos including myself were given a couple of laps in the RN22e to experience what Hyundai is planning for its sporty electric future.

Make me an instant expert: what do I need to know?

Technically, the RN22e is a platform for working out the kinks of high-performance applications of the E-GMP platform, which the N division will use to develop future electric N vehicles. Presumably, that means Hyundai can change the body shell out to test different model shapes.

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* Hyundai all but confirmed to be working on Ioniq 5 N

The concept uses two electric motors to generate a rather healthy 430kW of power along with 740Nm of torque. Big power figures from electric vehicles aren’t anything new, but Hyundai has also included a new sort of torque vectoring on the rear motor, called ‘electric torque vectoring by twin clutch’. It basically results in substantial amounts of grip from both ends. This is the N division trying to retain the ‘corner rascal’ ethos of its other N cars.

The AWD system is also fully variable, able to send all of the power to the front or rear axles individually, which means it also includes a drift mode.

There’s a special audio system which adds speakers to the outside of the car for more presence, along with a different sound entirely. It actually sounds really cool too, a deep thrum like an angry spaceship. Almost like a V8, but thankfully not quite.

N has also included a very interesting new transmission with the RN22e. It’s actually a virtual transmission, designed to emulate Hyundai’s current eight-speed transmission found in the i30 N. Activating the transmission requires a pull from both paddles and changes the sound as well as the driving feel.

Audibly, the car becomes more whiny, sort of like if you isolated the sound of a supercharger and gently blended it with a V12. It’s a great example of how cool you can make an EV sound, and how it can change its character in an instant.

Where did you drive it?

The Bend, a fairly new circuit in the middle of Adelaide. We drove on the West and East circuits, but the RN22e was let loose on the full 7.7km GT circuit.

Each journo only had two laps with the car, and unfortunately I didn’t get to experience the full straight thanks to shortened track sessions. But ultimate top speed is a secondary goal with these cars – I was more interested in how it drove around the corners and that tricky digital gearbox.

Thankfully it’s good news on both fronts. The RN22e might still be a work in progress but there has been clear work done on making it a real corner carver. The front is nice and stable and the instant electric torque doesn’t overpower either end.

That torque vectoring system works a treat, which is good because the motors offer asymmetrical power outputs – 160kW on the front and 270kW on the rear.

This gives the car a naturally rear-biased feeling, great on the track, if making the car a little tail-happy. Which is good, I feel that a car like this should be a bit of a handful.

The ‘eight-speed’ transmission works really well in eight-speed mode, but it feels almost too perfect, a bit like CVT stepping. It does adjust the power output to feel more like actual gear changes, it just needs a bit more grit to get it closer to a mechanical gearbox.

The foundations are there, though, and it doesn’t need much work at all to become a really cool piece of kit.

It’s also slower than leaving it in what I guess would be ‘Auto’ mode, but that’s okay. Call it a gimmick if you want, but being brutally honest, a manual transmission is a gimmick as well. Everyone knows a PDK transmission makes a faster Porsche 911, but a manual is more fun.

I also drove the i30 N in hatchback and sedan forms, i20 N and Kona N, they were all brilliant fun around the East and West circuits, but that probably doesn’t come as much of a surprise.

What stands out the most?

That transmission. Most sports EVs have an interesting sound to them, like the Porsche Taycan or Audi e-tron GT, but this is the first to have a proper go at emulating a physical transmission. And the fact that it actually gets pretty close is remarkable, considering the RN22e is essentially a rolling laboratory. It only needs a little bit of fine-tuning to iron out the kinks, which may have already been done by now.

It’s hugely powerful and very competent through the corners, so if Hyundai’s N boffins have the transmission fully sorted and engineered out the CVT-ness, we might even see it in the Ioniq 5 N, which should debut some time in the second half of 2023.

Why would I buy it?

Bit tricky to say, considering this is a concept, but lots of the gubbins inside the RN22e will see the light of day in various electric N models, like the Ioniq 5 N and Ioniq 6 N. But the transmission is awesome, even in its current beta form, and the twin-clutch torque vectoring bumps up performance nicely. It’d be very interesting to see it on track against a Taycan or e-tron GT…

Why wouldn’t I buy it?

The idea of an electric performance car still makes you feel weird and you’d ultimately prefer to make the most of combustion power while it’s still around.