How AWD Works in Hyundai EVs

While the term “all-wheel-drive” (AWD) has become pretty ambiguous in the car and light truck world these days, it’s actually becoming a somewhat antiquated terms with the advent of battery-electric vehicles, or BEVs. Or, put more simply, “EVs”.

Don’t get us wrong; EVs are almost all available with AWD and it’s a tech that remains important to Canadians whether they’re buying an EV or no. The thing is, since most EVs don’t really make use of traditional transmissions and don’t tend to have driveshafts, they don’t get power to all four wheels as cars traditionally have.

Take the Hyundai IONIQ 5, for example. It is a full EV, but one that comes in two flavours: single motor (or rear-wheel-drive) and dual motor, which is how it gets the “AWD” designation. “Dual motor”, then, is fast becoming the de facto term for AWD EVs.

With the Ioniq 5’s completely flat load floor, there’s no room for a driveshaft. Instead, in dual motor versions of the car there’s a second EV motor mounted to the front axle. That’s how you get drive to all four wheels, and it provides 301 horsepower and 446 pound-feet of torque, providing some quick acceleration to the tune of 0-100 km/h in about five seconds. Since there’s no driveshaft, meanwhile, the floor is flat with that much more room for occupants.

The wone thing you’ll want to be careful of if you’re considering an Ioniq 5, however, is that just because the AWD version makes the most power, that doesn’t mean it makes the most range. That honour goes to the RWD Preferred Long Range model, which will get you 488 kilometres on a single charge to the Preferred Long Range’s 414 km.  

A quick side note: while the Ioniq 5 is joined by the Kona e in Hyundai’s EV portfolio, Hyundai also builds the Santa Fe and Tucson plug-in hybrid models that also get AWD. It, however, uses both its EV motor and its gas motor to send power to all four wheels but can cruise in all-EV mode for about 50 km, just not in AWD mode at the same time.