Hyundai SEVEN Concept: A Bigger Ioniq Crossover With Retro-Futurist Style

Hyundai took the wraps off its latest EV concept this morning at AutoMobility LA, part of the Los Angeles Auto Show. The SEVEN is an extension of the brand’s growing Ioniq EV line and strongly hints at a future Santa Fe-sized all-electric crossover. It’s hard to tell how close the SEVEN is to a production vehicle, but it’s filled with contemporary—and premium looking—design details. 

The SEVEN is built on Hyundai’s Electric-Global Modular Platform (E-GMP) architecture just like the 2022 Ioniq 5, but it wraps its mechanical pieces in a more conventional SUV shape. This type of “skateboard” platform, with the battery architecture as a base and the drive motors on both ends, allows for a fully flat floor and a scalable wheelbase, making it possible to create many different models for varying purposes. Expansion from compact crossovers into even roomier people carriers is only natural. 

Chances are good the exterior is coming to a showroom near you in 2024 or 2025, but the interior is a little more in the fantasy realm. The SEVEN references a variety of popular trends though, so expect many of these details to filter into production. 

The Lounge on Wheels 

People buy SUVs for room, but the flat-floor of the “skateboard” architecture opens up new possibilities for how the space within them is used. The SEVEN features a driver’s chair and a mid-mounted passenger seat. Both chairs swivel, and front a kind of sectional chaise lounge in the back. This high-style environment looks a bit like 2020’s Mini Vision Urbanaut and suggests what interior accommodations might be like once we have proper autonomous vehicles. 

The driver’s seat features a retractable control stick rather than conventional controls, and the stick stows away when not in use. There’s a kitchen-island style console in the center, a mini fridge, shoe care compartments and screens for everyone. The concept’s panoramic roof can display video and audio content to keep everyone happy on a long journey, and the intimate feeling cabin is bathed in soft ambient light.  

“The interior opens up a new dimension of space that cares for its passenger as a family living space,” said SangYup Lee, Senior Vice President, Head of Hyundai Global Design, in a press release. 

The details are executed in renewable and environmentally-friendly materials, too. Mineral plaster, bamboo wood and carpet, bio resin and the vehicle’s interior paints are all meant to reduce pollution. 

This interior is lovely, but in a production vehicle the space is more likely to be used in a manner similar to BMW’s iX, which Forbes Wheels has now had a couple of turns in.  

The lack of a transmission tunnel means that sitting in the center of the back seat is no longer a punishment, and it opens up the interior to make entry and egress from a third row easier than conventional vehicles. The ambient lighting and stylish, renewable fabrics in the SEVEN, however, are likely to last to production. 

One much-emphasized detail that reflects all that’s happened since Hyundai began its Ioniq push is the SEVEN’s Hygiene Airflow System and UVC Sterilization, meant to keep the car clean and free of bacteria and viruses when not in use. Hyundai says the system is based on the air sterilization systems on commercial aircraft. 

SEVEN’s Retro-Modern Exterior 

The SEVEN is not the only EV concept that Hyundai has unveiled this month. A couple of weeks ago, it took the wraps off of a restomodded version of its Korean-market-only Grandeur flagship. While the Grandeur didn’t make it to Los Angeles, it immediately resonated with non-enthusiasts on the internet thanks to its mixture of modern light and design cues and old-school squareness. 

Even a causal glance at the SEVEN’s exterior reveals many similar details, particularly the parametric pixel lighting signatures, sharp angles and clean, unadorned surfaces. The pixel lights are, in 2021, the stuff of reddit upvote gold and are reflected in the narrow band of LEDs on the hood and a spectacular set of LEDs that surround the rear hatch and light up in a bar of five stacked rows as taillights. There are even more pixel-LED accents above the wheel arches.

There are also 1980s-style pixel decals on the lower body and even the name is spelled out in a retro font. “SEVEN” adorns both bumpers, offset in a subtle, asymmetrical arrangement.

The angular, finned five-spoke wheels feature integrated active air flaps, which deploy or retract depending on brake-cooling or low-drag requirements.

The basic shape is muscular and handsome but only faintly reflective of Hyundai’s current SUVs, perhaps because Ioniq is meant to be an all-electric sub-brand even if this concept only wears the SEVEN label for now. Though mostly a break from tradition, there are some cues that resemble the Genesis GV80, which isn’t so surprising considering that this vehicle comes from Lee’s design teams.

Most EVs self-consciously break from conventional car styling tropes with cleaner and more modern looks, and this concept is no different. “SEVEN paves the way forward for what an SUV needs to become in the EV era with a unique aerodynamic pure form that does not compromise on its rugged personality,” Lee added.

Range Finder 

Hyundai says the SEVEN, though not a production vehicle as yet, is engineered to achieve a target range of over 300 miles. In real-world situations, the company says, the SEVEN is capable of charging from 10 percent to 80 percent in about 20 minutes on a with a 350-kW charger.  

This makes it more capable than some of the recently-debuted EV crossovers like Volkswagen’s ID.4 or Nissan’s Ariya (itself an attraction at the Los Angeles Auto Show), but the SEVEN is still at least two years from production. 

For now, customers who want a production EV crossover, and one with retro touches, can saddle up with the Ioniq 5, also on display at the show.