It’s 2025, and we have all kinds of neat electric cars. We’ve got fast EVs, capable EVs, luxurious EVs, even EVs with beds. But, despite all those options, American buyers still only get one electric hatchback in the Fiat 500e — the rest of the market is all crossovers, trucks or luxury sedans. Now, finally, Hyundai is teasing us with a Volkswagen Golf-sized hatch that promises to be a practical daily driver in the Concept Three. It also promises the coolest interior of maybe any car, ever.
The Concept Three is Hyundai’s latest and greatest from the IAA Mobility show in Munich. The name positions it as something smaller than the existing Ioniq 5 and Ioniq 6, and the spec sheet matches — dimensions always shift slightly from concept to production, but the concept’s 168.8-inch length, 76.4-inch width, and 56.2-inch height put it squarely in Volkswagen Golf territory. It makes for a sleek look, particularly when those dimensions are interpreted through what Hyundai is calling its “Art of Steel” styling language, which first appeared on Hyundai’s boxy hydrogen concept, the FCEV Initium. The satin-finish “anodized-look” paint doesn’t hurt either, though Hyundai’s really muddying the waters here — you can’t anodize steel, making this really more the art of aluminum. Regardless, generally we wouldn’t expect a concept hatchback this low and wide to enter production without those numbers being reined in a bit, but Hyundai is king of design right now. If any company can do it, it’s this one.
Look at this beautiful Peeps-colored interior
The real treat of the Concept Three, though, comes inside. The exterior hews close to existing Ioniq line styling, but the interior is absolutely buckwild — a Peeps-style purple and yellow cyberpunk extravaganza, with the most interesting seats any carmaker has put together in quite some time. Who else is putting a seatbelt through the headrest? Who else would design front seats to look like papasans? No one is doing it like Hyundai.
The interior really feels like a mishmash of influences, with ’80s-looking headrests atop ’60s-style chairs behind an offsenter dash and center screen setup made up of customizable widgets that look straight out of the transparent plastic era of the late ’90s and early ’00s — though Hyundai says this interior is made with sustainable materials, which few toys in the early aughts claimed. This is what peak interior design looks like, and I hope at least some of these massive stylistic swings carry through to an eventual production version.
An Ioniq 3 to come
Beyond the styling and size, Hyundai is light on details for the Concept Three and what it might mean for a future electric hatch. The company is happy to talk about “Mr. Pix,” the pixelated character that shows up in the car’s interior, but less eager to say when we can get our grubby little mitts on the car that he occupies. Still, there’s a dire warning to Americans in the press release: Hyundai says that the Concept Three “signals the brand’s planned expansion into the European compact EV market,” but pointedly does not mention other locations.
Americans don’t traditionally love small hatchbacks, so a new electric hatch from a company whose workers we just rounded up and detained is probably not on the menu in the United States any time soon. Maybe, though, we’ll get lucky — the best-looking interior of any car could still grace our shores if we beg and plead enough. We can only hope.
