Hyundai created a Hyundai-powered hotel.
The automaker built a luxurious, off-grid cabin in the English countryside, about an hour from London, by plugging into a Hyundai Ioniq 5. Hotel Hyundai, which the company says is the world’s first car-powered hotel, featured a single guest suite, a dining area with an espresso maker, and a movie projector and popcorn machine.
The setup used the Ioniq’s vehicle-to-load technology and an outlet adapter to provide up to 15 amps of power at a time.
Hyundai ran a contest to select members of the public to stay at the hotel, which was open from mid-October until Nov. 5. It hired broadcaster and food critic Grace Dent to curate a menu of locally sourced dishes that were prepared on site.
The company said it conducted research showing that more than half of British vacationers are rethinking travel because of cost-of-living increases and that nearly half want more “staycations” in the year ahead. Hotel Hyundai was meant to show how an EV can be used for more than just getting from one place to another.
“The whole experience demonstrates the practicality of this pioneering technology, and we hope the concept inspires more people to go off grid,” Ashley Andrew, managing director of Hyundai Motor UK, said in a statement.