Hyundai Just Made the First Enthusiast EV | IONIQ 5 N Drive Review (POV)

It cuts power! It cuts power and bangs off the rev limiter. What a treat! Hey crew, I've got the key to that 25 Hyundai IONIQ 5N. We are going to take it for a drive but first let's check it out looks on the inside and outside. This is the first electrified N model from Hyundai and the way you can tell it apart from the standard IONIQ 5, apart from all the N badges, is that it is 2 inches wider, 3.2 inches longer and 8 tenths of an inch lower with a unique front fascia with these gunmetal gray accents and additional cooling including active grille shutters. It's also got matte black badging for the new Hyundai logo and this one is painted abyss black. It's the first black version of the IONIQ 5N I've seen either online or in person. A lot of them are in that boost blue color. It still has the pixel design projector LED headlights, DRLs and turn signals. There are additional side curtain vents here on the N model. At the side are 21 inch forged alloy wheels wrapped in Pirelli P Zero summer tires, 275 section front and rear. Within those wheels are upgraded Brembo brakes clamping on 15.2 inch front rotors. The calipers have that red orange color same as we see on certain exterior pieces and there at the back there's more functional aero. The longer lower profile sitting on those bigger wheels is a much more in-your-face impression than the standard IONIQ 5 and I'm so glad to be soaking it in thanks to the owner David who pretty quickly reached out to me after taking the first customer delivery of a U.S. bound IONIQ 5N. Please thank him in the comments and go check out his side hustle vinyl wrapping cars at Vinyl Garage USA. Here at the back the 5N still uses the pixel LED taillights and turn signals above some new functional vents off to the side and pixel accent above a protruding rear diffuser. That's where a lot of the additional length comes from and there is a more pronounced spoiler up top. Overall the 5N just looks cool. It shrugs off some of the maturity of the standard 5 but in its place you get this seriousness for speed that I very much enjoy. And now here's a question with it lowered compared to the 5 is this now really just a big hatchback or is it still a small SUV? I think hatchback let me know in the comments what you think and let's check out the interior next. Opening up via the deploying door handles and looking inside at the only color option for the 5N interior this black leatherette with boost blue contrast stitching and perforated suede seat inserts. On the doors there's injection molding up high, padded leatherette for your arm and hard plastics down low. You get a one-touch up-down window control. Stepping in is so very easy to do. Barely have to duck my head behind my own seat at six feet tall. Got tons of knee room. The seat back's injection molded. No map pockets on either side and the foot pockets are pretty darn narrow so my knees are pitched up at an angle. Headroom, well that's great news. Head easily clears the roof and that's with my seat kind of upright. I can recline it really far back to take a snooze and three full size adults could fit inside this cabin because there is no drive shaft hump so it can easily slide over and again have headroom. I don't think I'd want to take a long journey with two other big adults back here but you can make it work. There are two USB-C ports here in the center and then your air vents are off to the side. If you don't have a middle passenger then an armrest comes down with leatherette padding and two cup holders. So very spacious. Let's check out the front next. Door close noise. That's that nice thud of quality. Smart keyless entry is for the front two doors. These front sport bucket seats look super aggressive. They have six-way manual adjustment but heating and ventilation you don't see that combo often. There are pass-throughs for a racing harness and illuminating N logos. The front doors look similar to the back. We add two one-touch windows. I mistakenly said the rear were also one touch. They are not. You get power adjusting and power folding door mirrors. This is the release for the power lift back and behind that second row seats we've got 27 cubic feet of space and that expands to 59 cubic feet when those are folded down. Unfortunately you can't do that from back here. You've got to go around to the side and pull levers to get those down. Under the cargo floor is a little bit of storage space for your charging cables. Here's your power close button. No power close and lock function though. Off to the right side is the charge port door and the 5N can take up to 235 kilowatts of DC fast charge to jump from 10 to 80 percent in just 18 minutes or via level 2 charger it'll take you about seven hours to fully replenish the battery. Before jumping inside got the pixel design theme for the foot pedals and I'll note there is no sunroof in the 5N. No pano, no standard sunroof. You've got that slick top to lower the center of gravity and increase that body rigidity. Tapping the start stop button twice puts us in accessory mode triggering on the 12.3 inch digital gauge and 12.3 inch infotainment system. There is apple carplay and android auto but they're not wireless which is shocking for a 25 model year vehicle. Still the infotainment is very easy to navigate and quick responding. Underneath that we've got physical controls for volume and media, some climate functions, two usb-c ports and a wireless charging pad. You'll notice this console area is actually different than the standard ionic 5 that had that sliding center stack piece. This is fixed and I think better laid out. You've got this pad here for drivers to rest their knees against, you've got your surround view camera button, parking sensors, a usb-c port there, dc outlet off to the side, this large open cubby with these cup holders that come out and grab your beverage. Underneath the armrest which is lightly padded we've got a little bit of extra storage as well. On the passenger side we've got more boost blue accenting for the contrast stitching and that plastic bar. Visibility is great. There is a blind spot back there but there's standard blind spot monitoring with rear cross traffic. This cabin is very well equipped and comfortable, spacious certainly. I just wish there was a little more color going on here. All this black. I know there's some boost blue and these orange red accents but I just want a little more especially without a sunroof to bring in some natural light. Now let's take the Onik 5N for a drive. All right let's fire it up. This electric vehicle is idling like a turbo four-cylinder gas powered hot hatch. That's what I'm hearing right now piped in through the speakers and probably what Hyundai's N development team were going for with this idle noise and I'm not mad at it and it is one of multiple sound profiles. You can have no noise coming out through the speakers at all all within the N configuration screen. There's so much stuff to go through with that and that's probably how we should start this video. In fact first hey cabin crew thanks for joining me for this drive in the Hyundai Onik 5N. Now let's dive into some of the things you can do with this vehicle. So first off you've got this custom screen where you can configure the throttle response, the steering feel, the suspension firmness, the limited slip differential, traction control and that acoustic profile and those are activated via these two buttons here. You've got a custom one and custom two button. Then up here on top of the wheel which I didn't talk about by the way but it's perforated leather wrapped with that blue contrast stitching. It feels great in the hands. So the drive mode button off to the left lets you work through eco, normal and sport drive modes and heard for a second. Going into eco cuts the noise altogether. Normal brings it back on. Then off to the right there's NGB, N-Grin Boost. That is the boost function bringing the power and torque up for a period of up to 10 seconds. Behind the wheel we have these paddles and typically these are just for regen braking settings but they actually can also function as paddle shifters for the simulation of an 8-speed automatic transmission in this car. Now going into this screen here. Going to performance options brings you to all the configurations for launch control and you can set it for power delivery based on the road grip level. The N e-shift that's the 8-speed automatic transmission simulation there. The active sound that's where we can hear from ignition, evolution or supersonic. We'll play with those a little more while we're in motion or you can turn it completely off. Then there's the battery preconditioning. Now this is for drag racing or track driving. If you need extra cooling for the motors and for the battery pack if you're going to be using them hard for a period of time that's when the preconditioning comes in. And pedal. Now this is for different levels of braking regeneration for on track really high performance driving situations. We'll play with that later. The N-Drift optimizer we're not going to play with because this is David's vehicle and I'm not going sacrifice his tires. Torque distribution. You can actually distribute or choose how much torque is going to go to the front or rear axle. I'm just going to scratch the surface in this video but I will play around with as many of these things as possible. I'm going to begin in the normal drive mode and we can see here I've got 81 percent charge left in the battery and the EPA rates this vehicle at 221 miles I think on a full charge. But David says he's been getting 250 or more miles per charge and right now it says we've got a range estimate of 185 miles. So with my belts on I'm going to turn back on this drive selector go into reverse. That brings up a high resolution camera system. Got a bird's eye view off to the right. Wide angle camera here and then you can even do a 3D projection and scan around the exterior of the Onik 5N. So I'm going to go into reverse with the normal and trajectory line view. Go forward on this which by the way I've definitely turned on the windshield wipers by accident because the stocks look very similar. And now let's do a turning radius test. I'll bring that camera system back up once more. Crank the wheel and find a pretty wide turning circle to be honest. I mean it's all-wheel drive. The front tire's kind of pushed out a little bit further there but I expected a slightly tighter turning circle. Turn signal sound now. Brings up a blind spot camera. That's a pretty loud signal. Not a bad noise but I'd probably want to turn that off if I was sitting in a light for a long time. Let's try the world-famous horn test next. That's a spicy one. Would definitely get people's attention. And what's getting my attention immediately is this ignition active sound which in normal is still plenty loud. It has a variation to it. Like as I apply throttle, it gets louder. As I back off, it mellows down. But this is an odd thing. It's a little like a CVT in this way. Not in the actual noise. CVTs never sound good. But if I have the same throttle input, there's obviously no gear change. And when I'm not in the e-shift function, I can't make the sound change. So it's just that consistent noise which honestly might get a little bothersome. And I may want to either try a different sound profile like Evolution. Fun. That's more like a regular EV trying to play around with noises. Actually, honestly, sounds like a little like a Formula One race car. Maybe a Formula E. Sort of a blend between the two. Then there's Supersonic. Spacecraft just warping. That's fun, right? These are all fun. Ignition is the most realistic ICE motor noise. You could be forgiven to maybe just want to turn that off just for commuting. And of course, even with the sound off, you're still getting the thrill of performance from a stoplight. It's just wild. Even in the normal drive mode, even with just 601 horsepower and just 545 pound-feet of torque without hitting the NGB button that raises that up to 641 horses and 568 pound-feet of torque from this dual electric motor system. Got an electric motor in each axle and a larger 84 kilowatt-hour battery pack compared to the standard Ioniq 5. There is just plenty of power everywhere and, of course, delivered instantly. I want to talk about the regen braking. So we've got different levels for that. Hit the right paddle and it decreases the regen braking to the point of having zero. So if I take my foot off the throttle there or the accelerator rather, I'm just going to kind of coast. This would be great for highway commuting. And then if I apply more regen braking here, I can go up to a level three and not going to be a full one-pedal drive experience, but it does cut that velocity considerably. And then I can actually hold this paddle for a max level that scrubs it even more. And then, as I said, there are even greater levels of regen braking for high-performance driving situations, but these for around town are going to be plenty. And now I want to quiet up and listen for the cabin volume at these speeds. Again, with no sound amplification via the speakers. Wow, that's so quiet. Even on these 21-inch wheels, I hear no tire noise and the wind noise is very low. This is a supremely well-insulated cabin and the ride compliance here in the normal mode with these adaptive dampers is excellent, just absorbing the imperfections in the road. There are not a ton of them on this surface, but I experienced some back there and just took them in stride. And these seats, despite looking pretty aggressive, are very comfortable as well, holding me well in place, bolstering, not being too aggressive. Wow, this would be a great way to commute, but now it's time to play around a little bit. So I'm going to hit this button and pull up the end custom mode. Everything is pretty much as aggressive as it gets here. And then I'm, of course, going to bring back on the sound and ignition is just the one I think I like the best. So here we go. Pitting my foot. Whoa. Yeah. The Onyx 5N is fast. And that ignition noise is much louder here. Wow. Feels super stable at high speed corners. The weight being so down low. G-force. It's just great. The noise does add to the thrill too. I mean, I've pulled really heavy Gs in silent electric vehicles and it's fun, but this is way more entertaining. And now I've got to try the e-shift function so I can use these paddles here. The conditions have been met. I'm in the right modes. I can pull this paddle. Okay. The simulated cracks of overrun are really fun. Oh, I got a shift light indicator. Oh, gosh. That's terrific. I like that so much more than I thought. Oh, wow. Yes. Okay. A transformation has taken hold and the i5N has become an enthusiast hot hatch. Now, I've got to try something, right? This is all simulated, of course, but can you redline it? Okay. Wow. For one, it's not even letting me downshift at a place where it would shift into the red line. That's a good start. It cuts power. It cuts power and bangs off the rev limiter. And then it cracks with overrun. What a treat. It forces you to drive it correctly to shift at the right time. Wow. Oh, this is not just a game. They really tried to make this as true to the experience of an internal combustion vehicle shifting as possible. Oh, my gosh. And it's fast. The shifting is the next level. That is something we've never experienced from a performance EV before. That introduces the sort of enthusiast DNA that has been completely missing from the electric vehicle arena until now. And I just realized I haven't even hit the NGB button. Oh, right. You can't NGB and e-shift. That's what I mean about all the rules, but okay. I still have 10 seconds to try this. Okay. Yeah, that's quite a bit more thrust. I think I'll do it again. Nope, I have to wait. Two, one. Now I can do it again. Now I can do it again. Okay. Spicy meatball. Now here's a question. How quick is the IONIQ 5N to 60 with just 68% charge left in the battery? This is the real world function of this test. You don't always have 80% or more charge in your battery. So how quick can you get 60 in a stoplight? Well, I've got my race box set up to find out and I'm going to activate launch control, hit the NGB button, hold my foot on the brake, pin the throttle. That's fun. Let go. Wow. And whip it there in 3.20 seconds. And there's character to this quickness. But the 5N's pack of tricks goes much deeper than just straight line speed and some noise. So here on this serpentining road, I want to get a feel for the chassis, the braking, steering. The suspension having been firmed up a lot now makes the 5N feel very eager on its feet. Quick reflexes, of course, the low center of gravity helping it stay planted in the curves. Can't really get away from the near 5,000 pounds of weight. I feel that more noticeably in the braking. These are strong Brembos and the pedal is solid, but, you know, there's almost 5,000 pounds to slow. I can help that by going into the N pedal mode. Whoa. The moment I hit that, the regen force got so much stronger. So here's I carry a lot of speed into this curve. Wow. The slowing is significant, such that, I mean, I barely had to graze the braking pedal. That is a great lever that you can pull to give you more confidence in hustling the I5N. You're on a canyon road, but I imagine even more so on a racetrack. Just fighting the force of physics, disguising that weight. And the other handling-related dimensions are so well-sorted by this N division, whose head, Albert Biermann, came from BMW's M division. So you can feel that developmental proficiency hustling this vehicle through the curves. The weight of the steering is just right. The dialed-up resistance feels very natural as it builds through curves. This is a thoroughbred performance machine. No doubt about that. But wait, there's more. I should say other, because I can't customize the torque distribution like I would like while also using the N pedal strong braking regeneration, nor can I use the e-shift while doing either of those other things. Alas, right now I'm just going to use torque distribution, which allows me to play with distribution from 50-50 front to rear axle to maximize front axle torque and feel a little bit of understeer, shove the nose out of corners. So I'm going to maximize the rear axle torque now. Oh, wow. Yeah, that's very noticeable how it just applies torque to the back end. I feel the shove instantly. And then as I rotate through a corner, flying a little bit of throttle here and the back end sidesteps. Now, unlike the sound profile or the simulated gear changes, the torque distribution customization isn't unique to the IONIQ 5M. Like the Tesla Model 3 Performance has that tool, but it has been refined by comparison in this vehicle. Now let's get into some numbers for this IONIQ 5M. I didn't share with you that Hyundai quotes the zero to 60 of this vehicle at 3.3 seconds, but we've already seen with just 68% charge in the battery, 3.2 seconds to 16. I think with 80% or more charge, you'd be looking at 3.0 or 3.1 seconds to 60. The top speed is 162 miles per hour and the MPG equivalent rating is 74 combined. I mentioned that the EPA rates this vehicle at 221 miles of total range, but David, the owner of this vehicle, has seen even more than that. The starting price for the IONIQ 5M, $67,475. And within the Hyundai Kia portfolio, that's nine grand more expensive than a fully kitted out limited all-wheel drive trim of the regular IONIQ 5. And it's about four grand more expensive than the little less powerful Kia EV6 GT. And then competitors in this all-electric performance small SUV slash hot hatch space include the Ford Mustang Mach-E GT Performance that costs $62,000, makes 480 horsepower, gets to 60 in 3.8 seconds, and has a range very similar to this of 224 miles. Then there's the Tesla Model Y Performance that's much less expensive, $54,000 for that one, makes 470 horsepower, gets to 60 in 3.7 seconds, and has a much better range of 285 miles. So yes, the IONIQ 5M is the most expensive. And you know what? It's worth every penny to me, because I would self-label as an enthusiast. And while the Tesla Model Y Performance and Ford Mustang Mach-E GT are great to drive, they lack the texture of an enthusiast product. In this vehicle, all the different levers that you can pull, the customization, the simulated shifting more than anything else, and how true that is to an actual internal combustion driving experience. I mean, banging off the rev limiter, not being able to downshift into the redline, that's wild. That's enthusiast-grade stuff, and we've never seen that before. And while I wish we had a price point for one of these vehicles in the 30s to 40 range, that's down the road as technology gets less expensive. For right now, this is what we've got, and enthusiasts need to appreciate what we now have access to. And all that is wrapped up in a I hope you guys have enjoyed this POV Drive Review, and once again, I want to thank David, the owner of this vehicle, for letting me get behind the wheel and really just experiencing what I've longed for in this electric vehicle segment. And Grin Boost, let's go!