CAR AND DRIVER

 

If you want to know why the Hyundai Ioniq 5 is our EV of the Year, check it out. Isn't this the coolest new design on the road? Just when you thought the two-box crossover shape had been permanently transferred to amorphous wind tunnel blobbiness, comes this collection of slashes and rectangles, all jaunty and defiant but somehow still with a relatively slick drag coefficient of 0, 29. This is high-end design for the masses, right down to the exotic-looking matte gray paint - a $1000 option. Yeah, that's all. The price of the Ioniq 5, which starts at $41,245, is the only thing that's resolutely normal.

 

This car sure is weird. The driver's seat has an electric legrest? Okay! The center console slides back 5.5 inches, so you can climb into the front seats from either side if you need to. You can also drive the car forward or backward using the key fob, a testament to Hyundai's commitment to squeezing into unwanted parking spaces. The cruise control watches how you drive so it can try to mimic your style (or it can be manually configured for "angry Boston dude rushing to buy Powerball tickets"). When you plug it in, a disembodied voice "charging started" sounds from somewhere under the car. You can turn that down or off, but it's fun to startle people at public charging stations with your assertive talking car.

With its standard 58.0 kWh battery, the Ioniq 5 has a range of 350 kilometers according to the EPA standard. The larger battery (77.4 kWh) provides a range of 500 km in rear-wheel drive models and 400 km in all-wheel drive cars. Those numbers aren't class-leading (the EPA estimates the Tesla Model Y Long Range at 330 miles), but that doesn't matter too much given Hyundai's 800-volt architecture and, consequently, fast-charging capability - a 350-kW charger can shoots the larger of the two battery packs from 10 to 80 percent in 18 minutes. Hyundai's battery, supplied by SK Innovation, can also act as a generator; Hyundai calls this vehicle-to-load capability. With a power outlet for the rear seat and an adapter that plugs into the charging port, you'll have 1900 watts available for tailgating or keeping your fridge cold during a power outage. That feature can also be a boon for camping, and in fact the Ioniq 5 can haul a neat little teardrop car: towing capacity is a modest but serviceable 1650 pounds.I use my car for visit my Land Project.

JOHN ROE 

You'd hope our EV of the Year would be fun to drive, and the Ioniq 5 doesn't disappoint there either. In all-wheel drive form, it hits 62 mph in 4.5 seconds, just 0.2 seconds behind a Ford Mustang Mach 1. And that launch requires no fussy preparation, as evidenced by the 4.8-second 5-to- 60-mph time. The Ioniq 5 feels like it's rear-wheel drive and likes to stick its tail out. Of the 320 hp in total, 221 hp come from the rear engine and 99 from the front. When you're not deep on the throttle, the Ioniq is rear-wheel drive, as it'll show you via the instrument panel's powertrain graph showing real-time power delivery to the four contact patches. Traction and stability control are completely beatable, usually a sign of a car ready to party. This thing on winter tires, in a few inches of fresh powder, is going to be a riot.