Category Archives: Ioniq 5

Electrifying 641bhp Hyundai Ioniq 5 N is yours from £65,000

November 14, 2023Buying a new car, Electric Cars, Hyundai, Ioniq 5, Kia, News, Reviews and CommentRepost

The Ioniq 5 N is the most powerful Hyundai ever, and based on the same platform tech as the Kia EV6 GT

We like the Hyundai Ioniq 5 here at Auto Express – so much so we awarded it our overall Car of the Year back when it launched in 2021. Now there’s a hotter Ioniq 5 N version, and it’s priced from £65,000.

To this point, Hyundai’s range of sporty N models consisted only of petrol models; the i20 N, i30 N and Kona N. The Ioniq 5 N is a different proposition altogether, however, with its all-electric drivetrain serving up 641bhp and 740Nm of torque.

We’ve driven the Ioniq 5 N in prototype form already and came away pleased with the car’s performance, as well as its engagement – something not many sporty EVs have managed to combine to date. Order books for the Ioniq 5 N are open now; priced from £65,000 it’s around £3,000 more expensive than its slightly less powerful Kia EV6 GT sibling.

Powered by an 84kWh battery, the Ioniq 5 N utilises a dual-motor set up to go from 0-62mph in 3.4 seconds with the car’s N Launch Control and boost mode engaged. The Ioniq 5 N tops out at 161mph.

To help optimise stability in the corners, Hyundai has given the Ioniq 5 N a clever e-LSD (limited-slip differential) in the rear motor, with a torque vectoring system that features 11 different settings.

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Opinion: the Hyundai Ioniq 5 N’s fake gear shifts are… actually quite fun

November 2, 2023Electric Cars, Hyundai, Ioniq 5, News, Reviews and Comment, OpinionRepost

The electric hot hatch prototype came to Speed Week and won over the cynics

When I drove the Hyundai Ioniq 5 N on ice earlier this year, a crucial element was missing. Actually, several were. Friction, for one thing. I gained no meaningful knowledge of how the car rode, stopped or handled. I couldn’t see how it looked, because it was still wrapped in disguise.

But mainly, the noise was missing. ‘Noise, in an EV? Course there wasn’t any,

you fool’ shouts the corner of the internet which comments before engaging brain.

The Ioniq 5 N is a very noisy EV. In N mode, it summons various soundtracks, from one imitating a modern turbocharged hot hatch roar to more futuristic spaceshippy tones. N mode also brings up a ‘rev counter’ on the instrument readout, complete with wavering needle, redline, and the re-gen adjustment paddles behind the chunky steering wheel have all of a sudden become ‘gearchangers.’

So, you can hit an imaginary redline. You can bang up through the imaginary gearbox or blip some imaginary downshifts. The noise barks and crescendos. The revs flare and blip. And though the cynical part of your brain is screaming ‘this is all fake, rendered purely for my entertainment’, the petrolhead part of your brain won’t care. Because it’s having more fun than it could in a silent EV.

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Is faster always better when it comes to EV charging?

October 4, 2023Charging, Electric Cars, Hyundai, Ioniq 5, News, Reviews and CommentRepost

22kWh home chargers slash your charging time, but for home use they might not be worth the hassle

Power matters when it comes to charging electric cars. Generally, the more Watts, the faster the potentially tiresome business takes place.

The fastest public car chargers offer up to 400kW, nearly 130 times the power you get from a three-pin socket at home. It’s enough to fill even the largest electric car batteries in record time. A long range Hyundai Ioniq 5 for example, on a 350kW charger, can get from 10% to 80% in around 18 minutes. That’s nearly 14 miles of added range every five minutes.

Of course, if you can, it’s vastly cheaper and more convenient to charge your electric car at home. But home chargers, which use alternating current (AC) rather than the direct current (DC) of rapid public ones, are much slower. Getting a full battery is typically an overnight affair.

The slowest home chargers run at 3.2kW, though most are 7.4kW which is about the same power as your home cooker circuit. These will fully charge a car like the long range Ioniq 5 in a rather pedestrian 11 hours or so.

Faster, 22kW AC home chargers are available, though. They sound appealing and can potentially slash your charging time to a third. But is the mindset of maximising your charging power at home a fallacy? Should you buy one? Probably not, and here’s why.

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Here are 10 of the best family friendly electric cars to buy

August 8, 2023Electric Cars, EV6, Ioniq 5, Kia, News, Reviews and CommentRepost

From the kids to the kitchen sink, these are the EVs tailor-made to suit family life

Ford Mustang Mach-E

“The most important Ford since the Mondeo? The Model T? Probably somewhere between the two in terms of what it means to the brand and its future. As crucial as the original Mustang, then – another car that kick-started the blue oval and launched it into a new and exciting future. Make up your own mind about the look of the car and what it says about you, but be in no doubt that underneath this is a fundamentally very well executed machine.”

Hyundai Ioniq 5

“That Hyundai is now confident enough to put a car as bold-looking as the Ioniq 5 on sale is impressive. But the fact this retro XXL hot hatch bodywork conceals one of the most complete family EVs money can buy is downright remarkable. If Hyundai can maintain this momentum behind the upcoming members of the Ioniq family, then the likes of VW’s ID cars and even Mercedes’s EQ clan ought to be extremely worried.”

Kia EV6

“The EV6 proves that forward-thinking doesn’t need to be entirely wacky. Distinctive yet not likely to immediately fall off a fashion cliff, interesting to drive but not likely to worry a dedicated sports car, the EV6 carves a very different path dynamically to the Hyundai Ioniq 5 with which it shares bones and blood. And that’s no bad thing.

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Matt Prior: Should electric sports cars have engine notes?

August 1, 2023Electric Cars, Hyundai, Ioniq 5, News, Reviews and Comment, Opinion, ToyotaRepost

Hyundai Ioniq 5 N simulates engine revs and gearchanges in ‘Ignition’ mode

How involved would you like to be? You might remember that last year Toyota filed a patent for a battery-electric vehicle with an H-pattern gearshift, so that an electric powertrain would respond like a manual internally combusting car, complete with a clutch pedal that felt like the real thing, even though, like the gearlever, it would be false.

As yet, no Toyota has arrived with this hardware, but Hyundai’s N performance division has taken a similar concept.

The Hyundai Ioniq 5 N is the first electric product of Hyundai’s N fun division. “For N, fun to drive is the highest priority. Electrification has transformed our lives but [so far] not our hearts,” Till Wartenberg, N’s vice-president, told me before we drove a prototype. “Car enthusiasts are the last group who can be electrified,” he said. I have a feeling he’s right. I like electric power, but it’s quite telling that when I recount the most fun I’ve had in EVs, an original Tesla Roadster, a Renault Twizy and a Nissan Leaf with plastic ‘drift tyres’ at the back all still feature heavily.

Finally, the Ioniq 5 N on a circuit eclipses all of those. It’s meant to be the car that finally sucks enthusiasts in, and part of the way it does so is by giving us the chance to pull on our muscle memory and aural sensibilities.

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The Hyundai Ioniq 5 is Esquire’s Car of the Year

December 13, 2022Hyundai, Ioniq 5, News, Reviews and CommentRepost

The all-electric Hyundai Ioniq 5 is like an eight-bit fever dream that will make you wonder why all everyman cars can’t

It’s just the sad truth: many cars look the same these days. Handsome enough but, you know, just another collection of artful swoops on wheels.

Which is why when you roll down the street ina Hyundai Ioniq 5, people do a double take as if they were seeing a glitch in the matrix. It’s one of the most delightfully distinctive everyman cars on the road today. Whereas most electric vehicles tend to resemble an inflated dolphin or a frog that’s swallowed another frog, Hyundai’s $42,745 electric vehicle is unabashedly angular; it wouldn’t look out of place in the Roblox metaverse. The playful shape harks back to sporty hatchbacks from influential Italian design maestro Giorgetto Giugiaro—in particular, the Lancia Delta Integrale and the Hyundai Pony, one of the first South Korean cars made for export.

That rare combination of utility and original design in a car made for the masses is the reason we designated the Hyundai Ioniq 5 our Car of the Year. And while it exudes small-car styling, the Ioniq 5 is actually longer than the Hyundai Palisade SUV, which means plenty of trunk space as well as massive legroom and headroom for all passengers. It’s extremely quiet even at high speeds, and it has the impeccable build quality and driver-assistance technology usually reserved for cars at a steeper price. Yet this is not a luxury vehicle. The Ioniq 5 embraces clean design and simplicity over opulence in a world where many cars seem to have gone through a maximalist design-by-committee machine. It feels just right.

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IT’S COMING OHM I travelled around Qatar in an electric car – where the chargers are free but nobody uses them

December 6, 2022Away From Home, Charging, Electric Cars, Hyundai, Ioniq 5, News, Reviews and CommentRepost

“I HAD David Beckham in the car a few weeks ago,” says our guide Manu, as we buzz past Qatar’s Lusail stadium.

“To be honest I am not a big football fan, so we talked about our families instead.”

This quietly spoken IT engineer has a job for the next few weeks chaperoning the stars of the beautiful game around Doha in a fleet of Hyundai Ioniq 5s.

Spilling the beans on his celebrity clientele would not go down well so he discreetly refuses to spill Beckham’s beans.

We agree Lusail is an impressive stadium, but our favourite is the one close to Doha airport, through which 1.2million fans will pass over the next a month and a half.

The stadium we like most is 974, a structure made from 973 shipping containers. The 974th sits out front as a gate guardian.

From 974 to Lusail is 18 miles. The furthest any two of the eight stadia are apart is 25 miles. It is the most compact World Cup ever.

Qatar, the UK’s second-largest supplier of natural gas, is still wedded to gas-guzzling V8s

The immaculate streets of Doha are populated with Toyota Land Cruisers, V8 Land Rover Defenders and giant Chevy Escalades made popular by Hollywood’s red-carpet brigade.

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Hyundai Ioniq 5 tow car of the year 2022

June 29, 2022Electric Cars, Hyundai, Ioniq 5, News, Reviews and CommentRepost

The Hyundai Ioniq 5 has been named ANWB Tow Car of the Year 2022. A first, because it is the first time that a fully electric car has received this award. The Ioniq 5 takes over from the Hyundai Tucson Hybrid that was crowned the best caravan tractor in the Netherlands last year.

The battery-electric Ioniq 5 competed against the Kia Sportage 1.6 T-GDi Plug-in Hybrid, the Volvo XC40 Recharge Pure Electric, the Lynk & Co 01, the Peugeot 308 Hybrid 225 and the SsangYong Korando e-Motion. Specialists from the KampeerKampioen and ANWB Experts selected the six finalists. Attention was paid to, among other things, technical innovation, importance for the market, permitted towing weight (minimum 1,350 kg based on the ANWB towing vehicle advice) and pricing (based on the basic version).

According to the jury of the 2022 Trek Car of the Year election, the Ioniq 5 owes its victory mainly to its great driving characteristics and smart gadgets for (caravan) campers. The selection committee is referring, among other things, to the Vehicle to Load technology (V2L) with which the electric Hyundai can supply power, for example for camping in the wild. The Ioniq 5 can supply 220 volts to the caravan.

The Ioniq 5 is available with a choice of two battery packs and rear-wheel or four-wheel drive. There are four versions in total: Style, Connect, Connect+ and Lounge. In the standard Style version, the IONIQ 5 (with 58 kWh battery) is already very richly equipped.

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Tell your friends about EVs: Study suggests automakers still aren’t getting the word out

June 2, 2022Electric Cars, Hyundai, Ioniq 5, News, Reviews and Comment, UncategorizedRepost

Electric vehicles make a lot of sense for the pragmatic aspects: their ownership costs and environmental advantages. But once you’re in one, everything changes.

As results from J.D. Power’s U.S. Electric Vehicle Consideration Study indicate, a lot of American consumers still need to simply get a ride in an EV.

The firm, in the study released Thursday, found that among those who had no personal experience with EVs, just 11% said they were “very likely” to consider one. For those who had merely been a passenger in an EV, the portion “very likely” doubled to 24%; and for those who had driven an EV, it rose to 34%.

Automakers still aren’t effectively getting the word out about EVs to all would-be buyers. Power notes that nearly one-third of those who reject EVs simply cite a lack of information about them.

Across the survey, the “very likely” portion of shoppers rose to 24%, up from 20% a year ago.

The study is based on 10,300 responses from consumers from February through April 2022, and it looks at EV consideration “by geography; demographics; vehicle experience and use; lifestyle; and psychographics.”

There are also potential inroads for automakers in appealing to mass-market shoppers. J.D. Power found that 37% of those who own premium vehicles said that they’re “very likely” to consider an EV for their next vehicle, versus 21% for those who currently own mass-market models.

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Model update: Hyundai Ioniq 5 AWD Ultimate

May 25, 2022Hyundai, Ioniq 5, News, Reviews and Comment, UncategorizedRepost

We’re not alone in having been wowed by Hyundai’s Ioniq 5 EV since it made its debut late last year. However, until now we were yet to drive what should, based on price at any rate, be the range’s most impressive offering – the one with the most powerful, all-wheel drive powertrain. So, is this really the best of the bunch, or an unnecessary excess when the rear-wheel drive version is already so good?

Well, the all-wheel drive model certainly delivers when it comes to performance. Using an electric motor to power each axle, it has a total output of 305hp, which puts it in high-end hot hatch territory, and despite the heavy weight associated with EVs there’s acceleration to match. 0-62mph in 5.2 seconds is quoted, and from behind the wheel seems very realistic. The way the car gains speed is highly impressive and a little bit intoxicating, with the usual instant response of an EV to the accelerator pedal only adding to the sensation. And with very little audible accompaniment to the speed gain, other than a very faint whine, a keen eye needs to be kept on the speedometer to ensure continued legality.

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