Hyundai has unveiled a modified version of its brand new EV crossover, the Ioniq 9, that is specifically intended to conduct drone strikes to create rather than destroy life. Really. Called the Seed Ball Drone Station, it features a fully tricked out drone station in the back, with the third row folded down to set up a control rig for the operators. The electric car becomes its own charging station for the quadcopters, too. A take-off and landing pad also folds out of the trunk, something that all cars should have just because.
The drones themselves are, literally, bomber drones. In this case, though, the payload is seed bombs, sometimes called seed balls (Hyundai went with the latter, probably to sound less threatening). A seed bomb is simply a small ball of clay intermixed with soil and seeds; you can actually buy some at your local nursery. Toss one in a garden, and after a little while, you’ll have new growths.
Why would Hyundai care about gardening? It doesn’t — but it does care about foresting. The idea of the Seed Ball Drone Station is that it will drive into forests that have just suffered a wildfire and then deploy drones to reseed hard to access areas. This is all part of the company’s charitable initiative, the Ioniq Forest project, which wants to help with reforestry efforts all over the world. Ioniq Forest is active in 13 countries right now, including the U.S., so don’t be shocked if you see a Korean EV rolling through your nearest burn zone soon.
Electric vehicles are here to save the planet (again)
Part of the whole pitch of EVs is that they are green. That’s always been a bit of a stretch, in that zero emission doesn’t actually help the planet, it just doesn’t hurt it. With its Ioniq Forest project, though, Hyundai is looking to actually, literally make the world a little greener (and advertise its cars in the process).
To that point, the Ioniq 9 Seed Ball Drone Station is actually joining its smaller EV cousin, the Ioniq 5, which has had a Monitoring Drone Station variant since 2023. The latter has “conducted forest monitoring and data collection activities” for the Korean government’s wildfire response efforts. Hopefully, mobile drone stations like these will become part of recovery efforts more widely. Precision drone bombing has been honed in some pretty horrible conflicts around the world; I’d like to see that tech used in a more positive way. Literally regrowing the Earth is a pretty good start.
