Driving a Hyundai Ioniq 5

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Since the Ioniq 5 is the object of my temptation, I thought I would share some experiences of driving it.

First, the positives:

  • It drives very smoothly and quietly as you would expect. You need to take care that the rear seats are not touching the flap covering the boot space otherwise it knocks, but there are no other noises as you go.
  • The adaptive cruise control works very well (it slows you down as you approach slower traffic). You can control the distance it keeps from the vehicle in front between 4 values (1 closest, 4 furthest). I keep it at 2.
  • When the cruise control is on, it also has a feature called “highway driving assist” (HDA) that steers within the lane for you (you keep your hand lightly on the wheel). If you indicate to change lanes, the HDA steers across the lanes. I rather like this, but I can imagine younger people might find it irritating. You can “override” it always by just steering yourself.
  • It has a head-up display that works really well, showing speed, speed limit, navigation turns, and what features of the HDA/cruise control are set.
  • The acceleration is effortless when you need it. The 70mph to 90mph performance is great.
  • The amount of regenerative breaking can be set using paddles on the steering column. The maximum is called I-PEDAL and this is the setting I use. Around town it means you almost never need the brakes; the car will come to a stop nicely at junctions once you get the hang of how much to ease off the accelerator.

The negatives:

  • Rather annoyingly, the turning circle is not tight enough. It sounds like a small thing, but I just can’t get used to it.
  • The cruise control has a feature called “smart” cruise control. If you set the speed to the exact speed limit of the road you are on, then the icons turn green in the dash and the head-up display, and if the speed limit changes on the road it automatically adjusts the cruise control speed. It sounds great, especially in France where the speed regularly flips between 130 and 110 and to 90 in urban areas, but the road sign reading technology is just not good enough. All too often it misses the “end of” sign so you find yourself doing 110 when you could be going faster. Even worse, sometimes bushes and trees obscure part of the 90 sign for the exit lane and suddenly your cruise goes to 90. Sadly, it  just does not work and you find yourself setting the cruise to 1 above the limit, although I keep trying it out to see how well it does!
  • You cannot permanently disable the lane-change-without-indicating feature that beeps and resists you changing lane if you did not indicate. It turns on at 40mph. You can turn it off in the settings, but next time you turn the car on it is back. In truth, I don’t see this as a negative anymore as it is improving my driving!
  • As I explained in a previous post, if you try and charge it when the charging limit is lower than the current charge, it should beep and display on the dashboard that you made a mistake!
  • The Garmin sat nav is really awful at directions. Twice it has taken us to the “back” of the destination with no way to actually get there! And it is not good at finding things that Google, Apple and Tom Tom have no trouble with.
I think that driving on the motorway at 75mph (120kph) is the best trade-off between speed and efficiency. At 80 the efficiency seems to tail off significantly (well under 3 miles/kWh). At 70 there is not  much improvement in efficiency over 75; you need to go down nearer 60 to get more range. I don’t know if these values are true for all EVs - I suspect there will be some differences. At one stop there was a guy charging a big Audi that has 4 motors and a 78kWh battery. He told me he gets 400km range (250 miles), but only 300 at 130kph!

Overall, I really like driving the car! 

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