The name n stands for namyang home to hyundai motor company's global r d headquarters in korea
since 1995 but n also stands for nurburgring home to a european test center where the end
models were further developed and tested the close connection between namyang and
the nurburgring created the foundation friend the goal being to deliver driving enjoyment
both locations play a crucial role in developing testing and perfecting the responsive handling
and vigorous acceleration of rand models the n logo also resembles the chicane of a racetrack
a tight end curve where the skills of the driver and the balance of the car are rigorously proven
this reflects that our end models are agile vehicles that are fun to drive
and represent the ultimate driving experiences anywhere including racetracks
when is an engineer finished the answer is never because you can always make it better always
my name is tyrone johnson i'm the director for vehicle development here at hbcc hyundai motor
europe technical center responsible for all the hyundai brand development here in europe
to customize the cars adapt them for the european market so here at hmtc we have a dedicated
n group that works only on end vehicles future end products and they begin with lots of virtual
development simulation work to then help the designers that are also in the end group that
design the parts that have to go in the prototypes and then once the prototypes are available we have
suspension experts we have tuning experts we have tire and wheel people we have control systems esc
systems traction control launch control systems brakes systems that all is contained within the
end group itself but at the rest of htmtc we also have contributions from nvh also from brakes in
other areas some suspension contribution and we can't forget the central uh part of every car
the engine and the transmission which is also uh calibrated and developed here at hpcc and then
the first thing that customers always see is the car itself and of course design and design is also
here at hmtc so at hyundai we have a very robust development process throughout the years it takes
to develop a new car a new platform and end models follow that process also what's unique about n
is that we take the specific performance systems the systems that are really geared to meeting
their characteristics that we want to achieve in n and we dive into these systems very very deep and
develop them just that little bit more to really maximize them and a crucial part of that is the
work that we do with the nurburgring on the norch life that really challenges the car and brings out
all the errors that a car might have so we can fix them to get them really to the maximum level
we have to remember that hyundai n was born out of participation in wrc the world rally championship
and there's always a two-way relationship between motorsports and production cars it's
always a constant give and take with the elements of each type of car being used to improve the next
everything we learn from motorsports is fed back into the r d process and we use these
learnings for the next car in the end range or the next performance project
and what we look for is not necessarily the fastest car because many brands target only
the highest performance we're looking for fun to drive we have a metric internally instead of
rpm we use bpm so beats per minute how much the customer gets excited driving the car how much
emotion the customer is able to give to the car to his driving experience and that really is our
main focus the three pillars that we try to achieve are everyday sports car corner rascal
and racetrack capability in the end products and if the customer feels those three pillars while
he's driving our cars and we've been successful and that's what we strive for one of the things
that we've added now is a new dct 8-speed transmission which really adds a completely
new character to the car from previous models it includes also three modes the power shift
the grind shift and the track sense shift which really adds the complete end character to the cars
n-brand being a performance car is always a little bit of a special challenge to make
the performance a little bit closer to the limit and so for an engineer it's always a pleasure to
be challenged in this way to find yet that little more improvement a little bit more on the edge of
a performance car so that the customers can really feel the car on the road and we test everything on
the car right from the beginning the engines transmission the suspension system steering
systems those kinds of things depending on what's available in the first prototype everything gets
tested immediately we have a very extensive exhaustive testing program that we have on each
prototype phase to make sure that we're really optimizing all the system this is again about
diving very deep into the various systems and optimizing them as much as possible and this is
really sort of an iterative product process if we optimize the suspension then we have to adapt the
steering we change the steering we have to adapt the suspension or maybe some other parts of the
car the wheels and tires of the car it always gets better and better and better as we go through the
development process and then we start over again in the next prototype phase taking the knowledge
from the previous phase the next prototype phase may have some additional systems that the previous
phase didn't have and we begin again until we come to a final product and if we don't meet that
then we have to keep working for an end car really everything is important there's nothing that's not
um important so the driver experience uh really is a sum of many different feelings and performance
levels of the car including sound everything that the car does in terms of acceleration steering
the corner carving the rev matching including the sound really influences how the customer is
satisfied so sound is really a very crucial part of the end character development and we spend
quite a bit of effort in making sure the sound is just right on end vehicles because it contributes
really to the experience that the customer has in the car the i30n was hugely successful the i20n
early feedback that we're getting will be equally successful but then there's a customer segment
that once a slightly different car appreciates all the end characteristics that we've been
able to achieve and deliver but this customer wants a slightly different car with perhaps a
little bit more roominess of perhaps a little bit more entering and exiting the car perhaps
a higher driving stance than some of the others and so the kona really fits that
precisely and so we will include all the things that we learned in i30 knight 20
into the kona n and we're sure it'll be equally successful hyundai is a company that's well known
for high technology products so we really offer a lot of products across the full spectrum and
sends n is always technology driven i'm sure will be part of the future technology also
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