The Hyundai Ioniq 5 is the best EV we drove in 2021

SAN DIEGO—In 2020, Hyundai Motor Group revealed that it had developed a new platform built solely for battery electric vehicles. The company’s smaller, earlier EVs have gotten impressively close to Tesla levels of powertrain efficiency, and these days, the Korean automaker is at the head of the class in terms of quality and reliability.

So the excitement was palpable when we learned that this new “Electric-Global Modular Platform” (or E-GMP) was intended for larger, more powerful EVs with either rear- or all-wheel drive. The platform would use an 800 V electrical architecture and would provide 18-minute fast-charging and the ability to power AC devices. The anticipation only grew when we got our first look at the Hyundai Ioniq 5—the first of those EVs—back in February.

In fact, if I had been paying more attention at the 2019 Frankfurt Auto Show, I would have seen the Ioniq 5, barely disguised as a concept called the “45.” The design team, led by SangYup Lee, channeled some of Giorgetto Giugiaro’s angular and boxy energy into the Ioniq 5’s proportions. The 45 concept was meant to pay homage to a 1974 concept that Giugiaro created for the Korean brand, but to my eyes, it’s more reminiscent of a 1980s Lancia Delta, except scaled up by 19 percent.

The Ioniq 5 has perfect proportions, but it’s about 20 percent bigger than you’d think.

Credit: Jonathan Gitlin

The sharp looks and spot-on proportions flatter the Ioniq 5. This is no small hatchback—Hyundai classifies the car as a compact SUV. That’s sure to spark some arguments about pigeonholing, but the car is 182.5 inches (4,636 mm) long, 74.4 inches (1,890 mm) wide, and 63 inches (1,600 mm) tall. So it’s much bigger than something like a Volkswagen Golf, but it’s just smaller than a Tesla Model Y. Curb weight varies from 4,200–4,662 lbs (1,905-2,115 kg) depending on the powertrain and trim.

But the Ioniq 5 has a remarkably long wheelbase: 118.1 inches (3,000 mm). That’s longer than the wheelbase on the Tesla or a Porsche Taycan. It’s even longer than the one on Hyundai’s much bigger three-row Palisade SUV. And that translates to a spacious and airy interior for both front and rear occupants.

The interior has a completely flat floor and uses a bunch of recycled materials—old plastic bottles have gone into the armrests and seats, bioplastic from sugarcane contributes to the headlining and carpets, recycled Tyvek fibers show up in trim panels, and the dashboard and door-panel paint uses polyurethane derived from bean oil.

The Ioniq 5’s interior is minimalist but not spartan.

Credit: Hyundai

The center console can slide back and forth, and the rear bench seat also slides and reclines. With the back seats in use, there’s 27.2 cubic feet (770 L) of cargo space in the rear, increasing to 59.3 cubic feet (1,671 L) when the rear seats are folded flat. Under the hood is another 0.9 cubic feet (24 L) of storage, but the space is so shallow that we question its utility.

The vehicle-to-load function is accessed via a three-pin AC socket in the cabin (in Limited trim) or by connecting a V2L dongle to the car’s charging port. The system supplies up to 1.9 kW of 120 V AC power and can even be used to slow-charge another EV.

To begin with, the Ioniq 5 is available with the choice of two powertrains. The longer-range rear-wheel drive Ioniq 5 starts at $46,650 and is propelled by a single 168 kW (225 hp), 350 Nm (258 lb-ft) permanent-magnet synchronous motor. It has an EPA-rated range of 303 miles (487 km).

All-wheel drive starts at $47,150 and combines a 74 kW (99 hp), 255 Nm (188 lb-ft) front motor of the same flavor with a 165 kW (221 hp), 350 Nm (258 lb-ft) rear motor. You can’t always simply add the two power outputs together to determine the combined output—that’s more a function of how much power the battery can feed both motors simultaneously. But in this case, the all-wheel drive Ioniq 5 packs in 239 kW (320 hp) and a combined 605 Nm (446 lb-ft), sufficient for an EPA-rated range of 256 miles (412 km). (All prices are before the $7,500 IRS 30D tax credit and any local incentives.)

The motors are oil-cooled and use hairpin windings, and the drive units integrate a single-speed transmission and the inverter. The front drive unit uses silicon semiconductors, and the rear uses more efficient silicon carbide. Since a permanent-magnet motor will cause drag even when not powered, the front drive unit is able to completely decouple from the axle for better efficiency in Eco and Normal modes.

For now, there’s just a single battery pack across the range; it has a gross capacity of 77.4 kWh. The battery is composed of 384 SK Innovation cells arranged in 32 modules. (Other regions’ Ioniq 5s use a 72.6 kWh pack with just 30 modules, and a sub-$40,000 Ioniq 5 is due in the US in spring 2022 with the smaller 56 kWh pack.) Interestingly, the 77.4 kWh battery weighs just 64 lbs (29 kg) more than the 64 kWh pack in the Hyundai Kona, which represents a 7 percent improvement in pack energy density over the last three years.

I arrived at the DC fast charger with 38 percent state of charge remaining, so I only saw a peak power draw of 93 kW. The car still got to 80 percent in just 17 minutes. However, setting a charger as your destination in the navigation does not trigger battery preconditioning—that feature should arrive as an over-the-air update in the future.

Credit: Jonathan Gitlin

The onboard 10.9 kW AC charger can top off the Ioniq 5 in a bit less than seven hours when connected to 240 V power. But the more impressive figure is how quick DC fast-charging is—just 18 minutes to go from 10 to 80 percent when plugged into an 800 V charger, with a peak charging power of 235 kW. If you can only find one of the more common 400 V DC fast chargers, fear not—the Ioniq 5’s clever power electronics don’t mind sucking down fewer volts and will still take the battery from 10 to 80 percent at 150 kW in just 25 minutes.

Helpfully, Hyundai has included an unlimited number of 30-minute Electrify America fast charging sessions for the first two years from the car’s date of purchase. However, don’t expect to be able to use the plug-and-charge (ISO 11518) protocol–it hasn’t been implemented. Hyundai says it is waiting to see if there’s demand from its customers first.

The driver gets a pair of 12-inch screens: one for the main instrument display and the other (a touchscreen) for the Ioniq 5’s infotainment system. Android Auto and Apple CarPlay are both included alongside Hyundai’s decent infotainment OS, but you’ll find only USB-A ports for connectivity. It’s a minor thing, but in such an otherwise modern EV, the older ports stood out. On the other hand, the augmented reality heads-up display feels cutting-edge, as it points out your directions or highlights the car being tracked by the cruise control radar.

The infotainment has a touch-based UI. But discrete controls for the climate and common functions are on the center stack below the screen.

Credit: Hyundai

I was only able to drive the AWD Ioniq 5, which in Sport mode will reach 62 mph (100 km/h) in 5.1 seconds. For context, that’s quicker than any recent vintage Subaru WRX. Sport mode uses both motors throughout the speed and throttle range, dynamically apportioning torque where needed.

Normal mode defaults to rear-wheel drive at lower speeds and throttle demands, Snow mode is a 50:50 front-to-rear split, and Eco mode uses only the front motor when the car moves from a standstill (at a more leisurely pace, as peak launch G is capped at 0.45, compared to 0.75 in the other modes).

When I tried the Kona back in 2018, I was taken by that car’s “smart deceleration” mode, which uses the forward-looking cruise control radar to regeneratively brake the car if a vehicle in front of it begins to slow. Hyundai has refined that technology for the Ioniq 5; the feature offers four increasing levels of lift-off regen that decelerate the EV at 0.1 G, 0.15 G, 0.2 G, or a one-pedal mode that regens at almost 0.3 G. You toggle through these regen levels using the paddles on the steering wheel, and you quickly learn the tip-in point for the throttle on each setting.

It was a cold and drizzly day in San Diego when we drove the all-wheel drive Ioniq 5, which doesn’t have an enormous amount of grip. Consequently, the 5 isn’t a car that compels you to attack the radii and apices of a tight canyon road. And you can believe those EPA range estimates—I averaged about 3 miles/kWh (21 kWh/100 km), a few percent more efficient than the official combined rating.