Hyundai Ioniq 5 N

[Duke]

Mrs Duke’s company car is due for replacement and of course tax considerations pretty much mean it’s going to be an EV.

The shortlist is
* Model 3 LR - the de facto choice because of range considerations (she does about 30k km a year), but a bit boring, and I know that lack of HUD/CarPlay and the stupid indicator buttons and auto wipers will annoy her
* Ioniq 5 - likely the 320hp one but the N is a possibility.
* Maybe the new Audi Q6 e-tron?

Have a test drive booked in the N as soon as the dealer gets their next demo car in, but we had a look round it and liked what we saw. Compared to other cars in its class/performance bracket it seems an absolute bargain.

Anyone driven one?

 

[Onehp]

Mrs Duke’s company car is due for replacement and of course tax considerations pretty much mean it’s going to be an EV.

The shortlist is
* Model 3 LR - the de facto choice because of range considerations (she does about 30k km a year), but a bit boring, and I know that lack of HUD/CarPlay and the stupid indicator buttons and auto wipers will annoy her
* Ioniq 5 - likely the 320hp one but the N is a possibility.
* Maybe the new Audi Q6 e-tron?

Have a test drive booked in the N as soon as the dealer gets their next demo car in, but we had a look round it and liked what we saw. Compared to other cars in its class/performance bracket it seems an absolute bargain.

Anyone driven one?

Yes. Very tempted.

 

[MR2rob]

Saw an Ioniq N, at the Hyundai 'showroom' in Bluewater Shopping Centre last week. Looked ok in the Hyundai baby blue, not for me though, its a pretty big old boy. I had a look at the price and if you buy on PCP and paid the 'final payment' it was £82k

 

[Duke]

I ended up not managing to get a test drive because of the sheer incompetence of the local Hyundai dealer.

Oh well, Tesla it is then.

 

[Michael Knight]

I submitted them form at their product pages last week that I am interested about the product. got a email back that are you interested, where i responded yes. Haven't heard anything since. so not very aggressive here eihter. Guess they're too busy selling normal cars.

 

[MatC]

Managed to get a test drive in one a week ago - I was accompanied by their staff as apparently they'd heard one had been written off recently during a test drive (not this particular dealer though)! and therefore policy is that all test drives are to be accompanied.

It is a big car but because it has good visibility I was surprised how quickly I adapted to it's size and was able to weave it in and out of a few tight spaces. 600bhp by far the most powerful car I've ever driven and it's quite amazing and addictive. More importantly I drove it in full N mode where it simulates an IC engine with a DCT and although you know it's all fake, you quickly forget that and just enjoy how these little simulations add to the experience to a normally very boring experience in an EV. I have had an i30N before so everything seemed familiar and even the noises seemed to be synthesized from that.

Handles very well for it's size and is quite nimble, however you do feel the weight on braking.

I started with a full battery which lost about 10% in 30 minutes of moderate driving and guess that it'll do 200 miles on a full charge driving in N mode. Maybe a bit more in eco mode but I doubt you'd ever do that in car like this!

It's a great 'toy' if I had that sort of money to drop (guessing that if I owned it for a year which is probably how long the novelty would last, I'd probably lose 15k in finance and depreciation). So with the sensible hat on, it was a "no" as I would be buying with my own money and not a company car or other tax offsetting arrangment. Paying 65k+ before financing costs to experience the thrill of a simulated IC engine and DCT which I could get by buying an i30N at half the price seemed bizarre (I know they're not available new anymore which why I regret selling it)

What I will say is that when the time comes when we can no longer buy IC engines and we are forced to buy EVs, if they can make them like this, then the future is not so bad!

Meanwhile it's a matter of keeping my GR and convincing the other half to let me get a used i30N again!

 

[MatC]

I submitted them form at their product pages last week that I am interested about the product. got a email back that are you interested, where i responded yes. Haven't heard anything since. so not very aggressive here eihter. Guess they're too busy selling normal cars.

I contacted the sales rep directly who I bought a car from before to arrange a test drive. I'm in the north west and my dealer said that even as a large hyundai dealer, they only had one demo car to share with a few other branches. They each get it for a few weeks and I was lucky that it had just arrived my my local dealer when I contacted them.

The shortage of demo cars may be a reason they're not responding.

 

[Onehp]

It's no secret I like BEV's but I didn't think they were a replacement for my GR Yaris which I considered my last ICE car, last of an era.

I didn't really think about one seriously as I though I wanted a smaller and lighter enthusiast BEV. However after seeing this review made on 'my' smallest road I love to drive,


I decided to go for a testdrive. It was a bit short but I liked it a lot. For me it basically does stuff you sometimes need six cars for:
- BEV with, where I live, very low running costs
- A roomy family car
- Very comfortable car when not on it. Very quiet, relaxed and suspension relaxes nicely. Ventilated seats. Running a business that's very nice when bit stressed out.
- Push of one buttom, it becomes a very competent track car - well documented on YT by now
- Almost any mode you're in, one push and it will instantly sprint all it can 650hp, snaps you neck even at highway speeds
- And the last one: on push on a button and it becomes a 'rally car'. It hides its weight very well, handles very nicely on the limit with a fully locking rear LSD, and the "DCT" it mimics is actually more like a flappy paddle sequential straight out of rally car, with very fast but noticeable shifts and it never hesitates. The latter ironically making it better then 'real' automatics and what has been my criteria for wanting to own one. You know the sound is fake but when on it your brain says otherwise, it draws you in. It basically has anti-lag as there is no real lag either. Oh, being a WRC team, Biermann (ex BMW M) and Tyrone Johnsson (ex Ford RS) and 5 year development really show.

Coming home, I watched all the reviews and Harris (without fakery), Camissa, Matt Farah, JP, Malmedie and many many more just love it too.

My personal situation is now also that I am the proud father of three small kids and I find less and less time to drive my now well driven road network, and when driving new roads on family trips or visiting car minded friends, the cool tool always sits at home unused. And the running costs in Sweden mean that even with quite hefty depreciation and none on the Yaris, it almost works out break even.

And lastly, it just looks cool IRL. Actually, knowing it would be big, not thát big... Got a pretty good price too.

So basically, the end of an era came a bit sooner then anticipated, it was great GR Yaris, and welcome to the Future with the first true enthusiast EV!

 

[Onehp]

Some more about the fake gears. @markku
I understand the scepticism, I was too. And if they got it only the slightest wrong, it would give an instant allergic reaction of disgust. But, it's executed extremely well. Not the sound but the actual behavior. 30s in and you forget you're driving an EV.

So it gives an experience. On track it also helps you judge your speed and on the road it hightens your sense of speed. So it plays important functions in driving enjoyment.

One thing the reviews don't mention but why it is extremely important for me. When skidding / drifting (in low mju surfaces), a big issue is that you can't judge wheel speed on an EV. With the 'engine sound", you get a direct "engine speed" = wheel speed feedback AND the gears help to put limits to that wheel speed as it hits the "rev limiter". This will really put the control back in the EV that I was missing sorely.

Here JP Krämer, biggest petrolhead alive perhaps, sees the light in a prototype 1,5 years ago, start at 7:45 if you don't wanna watch the whole thing:

Similar sentiments given by many other reviewers I respect, it's a game changer for driver nerds but for that very reason not necessarily one that will spread to mainstream EV.... Cadogan when he heard about the fake gears completely ridiculed it in his typical style, but in a later vid apologised and lifts this EV to the skies. Yes that actually happened...

Here another encounter with Biermann before he goes in retirement where they discuss this and many more important developments done. Interestingly Biermann considers the other sounds and the drift optimiser as marketing gimmicks, true man of my heart:

He also comments weight in the beginning and sums it up with "we made the elephant dance" and I fully agree. It's there but most of the time you don't notice it much and it's definitely fun! Harris and Camissa show how easily it is to play with balance on track on their channels. It goes on...

To be continued...

 

[markku]

Some more about the fake gears. @markku
I understand the scepticism, I was too. And if they got it only the slightest wrong, it would give an instant allergic reaction of disgust. But, it's executed extremely well. Not the sound but the actual behavior. 30s in and you forget you're driving an EV.

So it gives an experience. On track it also helps you judge your speed and on the road it hightens your sense of speed. So it plays important functions in driving enjoyment.

One thing the reviews don't mention but why it is extremely important for me. When skidding / drifting (in low mju surfaces), a big issue is that you can't judge wheel speed on an EV. With the 'engine sound", you get a direct "engine speed" = wheel speed feedback AND the gears help to put limits to that wheel speed as it hits the "rev limiter". This will really put the control back in the EV that I was missing sorely.

Here JP Krämer, biggest petrolhead alive perhaps, sees the light in a prototype 1,5 years ago, start at 7:45 if you don't wanna watch the whole thing:

Similar sentiments given by many other reviewers I respect, it's a game changer for driver nerds but for that very reason not necessarily one that will spread to mainstream EV.... Cadogan when he heard about the fake gears completely ridiculed it in his typical style, but in a later vid apologised and lifts this EV to the skies. Yes that actually happened...

Here another encounter with Biermann before he goes in retirement where they discuss this and many more important developments done. Interestingly Biermann considers the other sounds and the drift optimiser as marketing gimmicks, true man of my heart:

He also comments weight in the beginning and sums it up with "we made the elephant dance" and I fully agree. It's there but most of the time you don't notice it much and it's definitely fun! Harris and Camissa show how easily it is to play with balance on track on their channels. It goes on...

To be continued...

With great pleasure I see that you are still here, dear @Onehp, and I'm so happy to be still discussing with you (and your competence) about cars!
Thank you for the videos, they sure intrigued me more and more about this car, and like the Chris Harris video they convinced me that I have to test-drive it sooner than later.
What I'm 101% sure by now, is that I couldn't replace my GRY with a Ioniq 5N. Any time I drive my beloved GRY it puts a long-term smile on my face, and it never happened to me this way with any other car I owned in the past. Leaving it would mean missing it every day, I can't help it.
And the fact that I recently replaced my Yaris Cross with a used Fiesta ST Mk8, is a clear hint about how I am more and more struggling with adopting and accepting car electrification.
From watching all the videos about the 5N, I'm fully convinced that it's a fun car to drive.
But what convinces me the least are the sentences like "even though it's an electric car..." followed by something like "it is really fun to drive".
It's exactly the same impression I get from a sentence like "we made an elephant dance". Okay, but it's still an elephant, and putting aside any effort it could put in place to hide that, it couldn't ever reach the grace and magic of watching a ballerina dance.
Any test drive of cars like the Ioniq 5N are complimenting the car for being so good with respect to what you can expect from a BEV.
So I deduce that I can't expect anything good from a BEV on the handling and fun side, and no noise, suspension tuning, fake gear change can ever fully hide the original flaw of being a (heavy) BEV.
That said, I promise I will test drive it, and I can't exclude it could become a good candidate for having a place in my garage in the near future, who knows?
And the fact that you liked it this much, is one of the most important ones to me, knowing how you love fun cars.

 

[Onehp]

Probably fazing out

BEV vs ICE does stir the sentiments, but just as d4a says, you can like both for different reasons
I have a similar experience of the M3...

Yes I'm replacing my Yaris but the N is obviously not a direct replacement. All cars are a compromise. The Yaris is great but quite optimised for one kind of driving, while 90% of my driving is still "normal".
For my circumstances, good charge infrastructure, free charging at work and almost free at home, a BEV has mostly benefits. No tedious warming of engine, no lag, no worries about misshifting, valve springs or oil starvation.

But already owning a BEV, it was too different from something like a truly fun ICE (increasingly rare). The N changes that for me, I sacrifice the handbrake turns and handbrake initiated drifts, but I don't have to miss the feedback of an 'engine' or 'gears'.

The N is for me a Swiss Army knife that does a lot of things incredibly well. For what it provides in space and comfort and performance, it isn't even particularly heavy.

https://zeperfs.com/en/match9044-9830-11586-8278.htm

And how a car handles is actually mostly a metric of the development team and can really feel they put a Lot of work in. The whole body is stifferened, lots of suspension work and lots of tuning the lsd'd awd. The N is definitely lots of fun and I looking forward to mastering it going around bends in all manners possible... Weight is of course a comprise...

 

[Onehp]

Hyundai Ioniq 5 N vs. BMW M3: Can an EV Match the Performance-Car Benchmark?

Fast EVs are nothing new. But Hyundai positions the Ioniq 5 N as more than that. It's meant to be fun. Can it meet the standard bearer of internal-combustion performance cars?

www.roadandtrack.com

"The 5 N? You play with it, feel it move around you. The 5 N is one of the best-handling cars on the market, not just for an overgrown hot hatch, not just for an electric car."

"Heavy as it was, the 5 N felt more nimble than the M3. More lively. More alive."

Goes some way in clarifying why I was so impressed.

 

[Onehp]

Being the way I am, I had a user review ongoing in my head of this car, and since I don't really have a new forum home for it was thinking about writing it down here after I had experience all seasons with it. Until then, Autocars review covers this car the best imho, and conveys a good bit of my current thoughts on the matter.

So just in case an owner of the current best WRC team homologation car was wondering about that other WRC team's EV driver's car ...

Hyundai Ioniq 5 N review | Autocar

Is this self-styled ‘corner rascal’ the driver’s EV we’ve been waiting for?

www.autocar.co.uk

That it swallows my whole family - (too) huge rear legroom and a sliding rear bench makes for a big luggage space, while doing what is does is pretty effing amazing.

 

[Duke]

How's the real-life range, say from 80% SoC to 20%?

 

[Onehp]

How's the real-life range, say from 80% SoC to 20%?

About 200km, enough for an every 2h break driving schedule.

 

[Old Boy]

I think its REALLY sad that folk are having to fool themselves into thinking their EV has a DCT gearbox, an engine and makes engine noises ! Its like vegetarians who miss meat so much they still have to have veggie food shaped and made to taste like MEAT !! veggie sausages, burgers, chicken nuggets, fish fingers etc. Bit sad really. That hyundri thing still weighs 2000 kilos so with 650hp its really a car with 325 bhp per tonne. No 2 tonne car will ever corner like a one tonne car., its going to eat tyres if you drive it like that, "best handling car" " more nimble" ?? people have very short memories of how fun cars used to be, light and nimble like P205GTi etc etc !! If an EV is so fantastic, why try to make it feel like you are in an apparently 'old tech' engined normal car? I mean when they made jet engines for aircraft they didn't try to make them sound like propeller engines !!

 

[Old Boy]

About 200km, enough for an every 2h break driving schedule.

so here in the UK that big sounding 200 number equates to a pathetic 120miles ! I regularly do a 300 mile each way trip up to North Yorkshire from London in a trusty old Ford Fiesta 1.4tdci and I do it there and back using less than a full tank, it does 70mpg, I normally stop once after 3 hours for a leg stretch and a bite to eat and I'm off up the road in under 15 minutes. Nobody would excuse an engined car if it had to stop to take a break every two hours !! you are making feeble excuses for a poor technology ! I used to drive London to Barcelona for the yearly GP, a 1000 miles each way with fuel stops every 350 miles, we would comfortably get off the Ferry in France at midnight and be at Cabrera de mar camp site Barcelona at 3pm Thursday in the afternoon. In a poxy EV the time I arrived the GP would be over ! its not progress !

 

[Duke]

Is anyone forcing you to buy one?

 

[Onehp]

so here in the UK that big sounding 200 number equates to a pathetic 120miles ! I regularly do a 300 mile each way trip up to North Yorkshire from London in a trusty old Ford Fiesta 1.4tdci and I do it there and back using less than a full tank, it does 70mpg, I normally stop once after 3 hours for a leg stretch and a bite to eat and I'm off up the road in under 15 minutes. Nobody would excuse an engined car if it had to stop to take a break every two hours !! you are making feeble excuses for a poor technology ! I used to drive London to Barcelona for the yearly GP, a 1000 miles each way with fuel stops every 350 miles, we would comfortably get off the Ferry in France at midnight and be at Cabrera de mar camp site Barcelona at 3pm Thursday in the afternoon. In a poxy EV the time I arrived the GP would be over ! its not progress !

Lol. Yes your fiesta is a better car, and so is your bladder. It also beats many a supercar, even a Veyron....

Btw can push it to double that using the full charge (100=>10%) but that wouldn't be much fun...

More importantly, when having fun, the range looks to be very similar to the GR Yaris, with the difference that filling it up at home costs me roughly 20 times less. 20 times! Quick charge it's still only like a third. That's technology for you!

PS: my first new car was a Fiesta 1.6 tdci. Much more fun than a 1.4 tdci. Great memories. However, I wouldn't voluntarily sit longer then 2h in one on a stretch, that's for sure...

 

[Onehp]

A vid I didn't expect to see, my favourite cars GRY + Ioniq 5 N battling it out in awd territory: the Wet

Thread 'WET Tsukuba mk2 manual vs auto vs GT-R vs 5 N' https://www.gr-zoo.com/threads/wet-tsukuba-mk2-manual-vs-auto-vs-gt-r-vs-5-n.7151/