FIRST DRIVE: Hyundai N Vision 74 & RN22e | 670bhp Hydrogen Hybrid Drift Car And Electric Streamliner

[Music] when someone one day writes the big definitive book of car history well the early years will belong to germany for inventing the car the 1910s that's america falling in love with the model t ford the 1970s japanese domination but what about now the 2020s i think it belongs to the koreans this is a hyundai hyundai started importing cars into the uk in 1982 and at first they were pretty terrible comedy cars for cheapskates slowly they graduated to making decent but dreary white goods for your grandparents but in the past decades something incredible has happened to korean car makers kia started making good looking cars like the sportage the proceed and the stinger hyundai's become a hot hatch hit maker with brilliant n versions of the i-20 i30 and veloster and both brands are now home to some of the coolest looking family electric cars around in the shape of the kia ev6 and hyundai's ionix okay so here's just one example of what i'm on about right this is the bmw ix bmw's idea of a modern handsome suv sorry if you're eating and yeah this is the hyundai tucson this is hyundai's idea of a modern handsome suv which looks like a concept car which escaped from the design studio and went on the school run it's a bit cyberpunk it's cool and it's confident and it feels like well after a long time coming korean design is now making the european old guard look a bit silly so does that mean that korean cars can now do whatever the hell they like a proper sports car retro looks motorsport potential a powertrain from the future well how about all of those things in one car the hyundai n vision 74. if you're seeing some genjaro 1970s influences you're quite right this is inspired by a 1974 concept car hence the name maybe you're seeing some delorean influences sharp creases that shuttered rear window the narrow snout it's all in there isn't it but unlike most concept cars what's under the skin is just as interesting here you see this is a hydrogen hybrid part fuel cell part electric let me explain at the back you'll find two electric motors they generate a combined 670 brake horsepower which is why this car is apparently a bit of a drift monster they draw their power from a 62 kilowatt hour battery like a normal electric car and when it runs low you can plug it into the wall and charge it up so far so 21st century but the bit that's from the future is the on-board electricity power station you see hyundai's also plumbed in a hydrogen fuel cell which has been quietly working away on for the past few years trying to make it as small and light as possible the hydrogen fuel tanks weigh just 4.2 kilos and can be fully refueled in five minutes to give you another 370 miles of all-electric range because the 74 is rear-wheel drive only as the sports car gods intended honda's had some fun with it because you've got individual motors for each rear wheel it can do things like torque vectoring so carve a title line if you're going for the best possible lap or just throw all of the power at the inside rear wheel and kick it out into a big smoky drift they're saying it's got 664 pounds feet and could top out at 155 miles an hour if marty mcfly had one of these back to the future would have been a much shorter film so i'm afraid we've now arrived at that point of the video where i say unfortunately the end vision 74 is incredibly fragile and furiously expensive so wasn't it jolly nice of hindi to let us take a look at it but like and subscribe and goodbye [Music] except because the koreans are living their best car life right now this is not just a model it drives it's really fast and they say i can take it out on track so um i'm gonna go and put a really ugly helmet on right welcome to bilsterberg probably the scariest racetrack you've never heard of built on an old british army cold war munitions base that so mad baron decided to turn into a race resort designed by hermann tilker brought you a lot of boring f1 circuits didn't he but he really really got his act together for this place it's like all the scary bits of the nurburgring knitted together and it only takes two minutes to get round rather than 10. so a good place to drive a priceless concept car which they've only got one of drivable in the world i'm at an old army base and i'm in a hydrogen-powered weapon okay what can i tell you about it well basically it feels like a racing car it feels stiff it feels unyielding i've been told to stay off the curves because this thing is fragile but even though it's got power steering lovely sense of connection coming back through this we go flat shut down straight that's 110 miles an hour feels fast brakes are fantastic there's no sense of any regen nonsense spoiling your confidence in fact this i30n that's being driven by a race driver in front of me is holding me up come on man get out of the way inside a hydrogen car just feels like an electric car there's no sense of weird science going on behind me just feels like i've got loads of torque electric motors there's a lot of hissing and fans happening in the background but i'm not really aware of that i'm just aware of having to catch the slides because this thing's got serious amounts of torque and because of those rear electric motors it can simulate a limited slip differential but it can react so much faster so it's like the best limited slip diff you could imagine when manufacturers really get on top of these things i think we're really really gonna have some fun with them yeah a priceless concept car so what if you set it up to drift i'm gonna try and drift it oh there's so much elevation change down here that bits blind slight lock up there but just turn it in on the nose there you go that's a confidence inspiring car for you one and a half laps around an absolutely pant wetting circuit got a bit of tire temperature and you can just lob it around okay so now going into the track mode i'm gonna let the pace car get away from me on the straight here because i really want to feel what this thing can do when it's let off its electronic leash so let's just drop back hopefully the pace cars not noticed like dawdly and off we go wow that's so fast try not to upgrade myself into turn one oh that was a bit late on the brakes got it back it's so progressive on the throttle the only problem is that with no engine noise you can't really hear like when your revs are spiking the first thing you know about overwhelming the rear tires is when you sort of start banging your head on the roll cage and looking out of the side window oh yes this is a fun chassis oh yes hyundai where is this come from they've conquered hot hatches i'm not having to go at rear drive i mean no one is safe are they bmw m amg even porsche need to take some notice guys because this thing gonna come for you and all too soon it's over back into the pits at bilsterberg me and their nvision 74 have survived i'm gonna give it back to hyundai now i hope they don't put it in a museum i hope they take this gorgeous body stick it in a garage work out how to put it into production and give it back to me in a few years with some number plates on it well done to the hyundai technicians this thing if it's a glimpse of the future it's one that i'm here for well i enjoyed that but i'm afraid you're gonna have to take my word for it because the 74 isn't the car that hyundai selling to the public anytime soon it's a rolling laboratory experimenting with what they can do with hydrogen with the packaging with the cooling for if they need it in the future but i hear you you want to know what the immediate future of hyundai's go fast end division is well that's to go electric so let me show you this feast your eyes on the rn 22 e rubbish name but an interesting car because it's kind of a cross between the ioniq 6 streamlined saloon and an electric touring car now we know that the first hot n car from pie and dice souped up division will be a new ioniq 5 with more power but i think a 577 horsepower dual motor super saloon could be a fun place to go next so um let's take it for a drive okay leaving the pit lane again in bilsterberg already this car makes a heck of a lot more noise than the 74 did this is a very different kind of car this is hyundai's answer to a porsche tycoon i guess dual motor electric super saloon 577 horsepower they've asked me to leave the traction control on because this is potentially even more valuable so what have we got spec wise well we've got beefier brakes because of course heavy electric cars get brake fade on track we've got this variable torque split so we can play with the power across the axles that's already good fun to me obviously got lots and lots of aero too carfield is very neutral very responsive it's much less tail happy than the 74 was of course we've got drive going to the front wheels just feels like you can mash it but hyundai is adamant they're not doing evs that are just fast in a straight line that are about winning drag races to annoy people on youtube who've got muscle cars this is supposed to be just as good in the corners and even though i'm not supposed to slide it around the car wants to it's hilarious isn't it yet again korea has tried to build an elegant design study and they've accidentally built a bloody racing car now more about this simulated shift yes it's fake yes it's just software behind i say hey hey it's fun to listen to something and also it's kind of helpful for my caveman brain you see normally when you're driving an ev you've got no audio reference of what the powertrain's doing but in this because i can hear the revs well hear what the revs would sound like if it had a big petrol engine and because i'm getting engine braking and then these little surges on the up shift now i'm downshifting like engine braking there and there it's like grabbing third then second gear just gives you something to kind of lean against it's weird it's so difficult to explain but it does just feel whoa that was really lively through there it just feels like you're driving a car with a responsive paddle shift gearbox okay it's just the software it's just the zeros and ones making that happen but i'm already finding this very intuitive and very easy to use which is kind of funny given it's a priceless semi-race car concept one off and there you go i hit the rev limiter there i'm making mistakes evs evs do everything for you and i find that boring this car well i've already cocked up in it you just saw me hit the rev limiter i was a bit slow downshifting just there it's letting me kind of make mistakes i got some understeer there this might be the most interactive eevee i've driven them actually i might have to shut up now and concentrate oh it feels lively it feels like i kind of really glued down hot hatch but with the new rs3's drift mode in it but massively better throttle response it's a really really impressive bit of kitness i just hope the lessons from this do go into that ionic 5n that we know is coming this is going to go on to become an electric touring car and then maybe maybe we will get an ionic 6n [Music] maybe we'll start to get excited about electric performance cars after all i didn't expect to be that impressed today but as you can probably tell from my giddy laps i enjoyed myself but what really blows my mind is the sheer scope of everything that hyundai is trying right now bit of retro flavor or a modern design bit of hydrogen fuel cell awesome electric and their petrol cars are bloody good fun as well so while everyone else worries about how to do a driverless car high guys going to concentrate on making the fleshy human behind the wheel have some fun so that chapter then on the koreans taking over the car world should be a really enjoyable one as long as stuff like this gets built

Channel: Top Gear

Views: 5,120,752

Keywords: Top Gear, Top Gear Series, Car Review, Car Compare, Super Car, street car, BBC, BBC Studios, Chris Harris, hyundai n, n vision 74, car reviews, supercar review, hyundai supercar, car expert, hyundai hydrogen, hyundai concept car, hyundai concept, hydrogen car

Id: FCeqP91QUdI

Length: 14min 2sec (842 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 08 2022