At 70 mph, one Ioniq 9 lost 5 miles. Another trim lost 73.

Consumer Reports' 70 mph highway test of a 2026 Hyundai Ioniq 9 SEL, bought anonymously from a dealer, returned 315 miles. The report called that five miles shy of the car's EPA rating. MotorTrend lists the all-wheel-drive SEL at 320 miles, so the five-mile gap is the whole of the miss on that rating. MotorTrend's own 70 mph road-trip test of the rear-drive Ioniq 9 S, rated at 335 miles, stopped at 262. That is 73 miles under the sticker. The magazine's arithmetic puts the S at 22 percent below its EPA figure.

MotorTrend has run the same 70 mph road-trip test on three Ioniq 9 trims. The SEL completed 302 miles, 6 percent under its 320-mile rating, and was the only one of the three to pass 300 miles. The Performance Calligraphy, rated at 311 miles, managed 269, which the magazine called 14 percent under. Erick Ayapana's write-up says MotorTrend's road-trip results average about 15 percent below EPA numbers, because the EPA cycle mixes city and highway driving and the road-trip test does not. On that yardstick the SEL was the outlier, in the direction of holding its rating. The S was the miss.

MotorTrend's range-test article lists a 110.3 kilowatt-hour pack. MotorTrend's SUV of the Year story describes a 113 kilowatt-hour battery with 110 usable, while the specification table on that same story says 110.3. The two labels are not reconciled. Efficiency comparisons that divide miles by "the" battery size inherit that ambiguity.

Out of Spec Testing's video run is the independent check on the Calligraphy's 269 miles. The channel drove US-64 east of Rocky Mount, North Carolina, in out-and-back loops intended to cancel wind and elevation. A GPS check matched the car's indicated 70 mph. Tyre pressures were set cold. The car was not navigated to a charger, so the test excluded the energy a preconditioning stop would have used. The tester described an 11 mph side wind as the part of the day that was less than ideal, and said a side wind is harder to cancel than a headwind on an out-and-back route.

The run was called at 275.9 miles, at the moment the car could no longer hold 70 mph up a hill at full throttle, and the tester put that result at about 2.5 miles per kilowatt-hour. He described the pack as 110 kilowatt-hours with about 106 usable, then said the drive had drawn something around 108 kilowatt-hours, into the buffer below the indicated floor. Those usable-energy figures are his account of the car, not a line in an EPA filing. Against the 311-mile Performance rating, 275.9 miles is 35 miles short, about 11 percent, and about 7 miles longer than MotorTrend's Calligraphy.

The two highway tests are close, and they are not the same experiment. MotorTrend's number comes from a published 70 mph road-trip protocol with a fast-charge measurement attached. Out of Spec's end point is the loss of 70 mph on one afternoon with an 11 mph side wind, and without preconditioning. Neither result is the window sticker.

Edmunds' EV range test, run on an SEL and a Calligraphy the same day at an average of 74 degrees, landed on the other side of the EPA figures. The SEL covered 366 miles against a 320-mile estimate. The Calligraphy covered 349 against 311. Edmunds described the first as 46 miles over and the second as 38 miles over, 12.2 percent. The SEL was on 20-inch wheels. The Calligraphy was on 21-inch wheels and 222 pounds heavier. Both cars wore low-rolling-resistance tyres. Edmunds' route is a mixed test, not a steady 70 mph highway loop. Reading 366 and MotorTrend's 302 as a quarrel about the same SEL mixes two questions. One is mild-weather mixed driving. The other is a 70 mph road trip.

Charging is where MotorTrend's measurements give the large body some of those highway miles back, provided the stall can feed an 800-volt car. On the magazine's fast-charge test the SEL added 149 miles in 15 minutes and 257 miles in 30. The specifications published with the S and Calligraphy road-trip results show 130 miles in 15 minutes for the S and 133 for the high-output Calligraphy. Out of Spec's tester, describing the Calligraphy, put claimed peak charging in the region of 230 to 240 kilowatts and repeated Hyundai's claim of roughly 24 minutes from 10 to 80 percent. He also noted the limit that follows from the 800-volt architecture: a 400-volt charger, including a Tesla Supercharger of that type, will not deliver that peak. A 15-minute stop that adds 149 miles is a result from MotorTrend's test on a charger that could supply the car, not a promise about every plug on a given route.

Price frames the trim choice as it stood in the published tests, not as a current invoice. MotorTrend's SEL started at $67,920, and the car in the range test was $68,870. Consumer Reports paid $68,840 for the SEL it bought. In that comparison MotorTrend put the Calligraphy Design $11,170 above the SEL before options, with the 422-horsepower powertrain. The extra outlay, in the 70 mph tests, coincided with the shorter results: 269 miles at MotorTrend and 275.9 miles at Out of Spec, against the SEL's 302 and 315.

The EPA order says the rear-drive S should be the range car, 15 miles above the SEL and 24 above the Calligraphy. At a steady 70 mph, inside one magazine's set, that order reversed. The SEL gave up 18 miles on MotorTrend's test and 5 miles on Consumer Reports'. The S gave up 73. Edmunds did not publish an S figure in its paired test, and its SEL and Calligraphy both beat their stickers, so the reversal is not a universal finding. It is what the constant-speed highway tests show, and the mixed-route test does not speak to it.