Remember when Elon Musk wanted Tesla to have a “SEXY” lineup? His original plan was for the Model 3 to be called Model E, but Ford already had the rights to that name. So in 2016, Musk said during a shareholder meeting that the Blue Oval was “killing sex” by not allowing Tesla to use Model E for its smaller sedan. In 2024, Hyundai has a similar joke with a touch of sexual innuendo about the name of its newest electric car, the Ioniq 9.
In a post published on Meta’s Threads social media platform that rivals Elon Musk’s X, Hyundai says it “skipped Ioniq 7 and 8 so we could go from Ioniq 6 to 9. Nice.” As you might recall, the Korean brand initially wanted to use Ioniq 7 for its three-row electric SUV. The Seven Concept from the 2021 Los Angeles Auto Show previewed the production model’s name. However, the brand ultimately decided to go with Ioniq 9 instead.
As you can imagine, there were a lot of replies to that post (which has since been deleted). Just so we’re clear, the post came from the official Hyundai USA account on Threads, complete with the blue checkmark denoting it’s a verified account. Most comments are positive, but a few people aren’t exactly thrilled:
“Intern fail,” “This is humor from that guy who runs the other thing. Yuck,” “Please limit your competition with Elon to your cars and not your brain rot sense of humor,” and “Someone got a new social media content college intern.”
Unfortunately, here in 2024, even an innocent joke on social media can spark criticism. Sure, it might not be entirely appropriate coming from an automaker known for its honest cars, but when did we become so sensitive?
Photo by: Hyundai
The decision to change the name wasn’t just to have the Ioniq 6 and 9 next to each other in the lineup. A more logical explanation is that Hyundai wants to launch an Ioniq 7 and/or Ioniq 8 that would be positioned between the three-row SUV and the Ioniq 6 sedan. Had they kept the original plan, Hyundai wouldn’t have been able to introduce one or two more cars smaller than the 9 but bigger than the 6.
I mean, they could have, but the naming convention wouldn’t have made much sense anymore.