Good value for an EV for a family
Right at the top of this review, I'll say that I had a 2018 Tesla Model 3 before this car as my family-of-five's only vehicle. We got that car in 2018 because it was about the only EV we could afford with enough of a battery to be our solo car.
I'll start with the good: This car is comfortable and smooth. The range is better than what its EPA rating suggests (I am getting more than 300 miles on a full charge, even for the AWD version of the SEL). Our family of five fits comfortably and I think a lot of people on the fence about EVs will be happy with this car 98% of the time. Charging at home is easy and there's no reason that this car will not be able to take care of your daily driving. The per-passenger space is fantastic. Charging is easy with the NACS port, though I did have a little trouble at one Tesla charger. Hard to tell if that was an Ioniq problem or a Tesla problem, though. If you want a hatchback SUV with comfortable seats for adults in the back and over 300 miles of range, this is the car for you.
Here's the bad: The infotainment system leaves something to be desired. I owned a 2018 Tesla Model 3 before this car, and the navigation and infotainment was better in that car on day 1 than the system in this car 8 years later. I realize that Tesla costs a lot more and puts a beefier computer in the car with part of that increased cost. However, some of the problems I have with the infotainment are based on menu design, not speed or feature set. Multiple times, I have found that some items are not where I expect to find them. For example, I needed to find where the charging limits are set. They are not in the EV menu directly on the Home screen. Instead, I need to dig through the menus to find where the limits can be set.
I know that I can use Apple CarPlay for the infotainment, but the problem I see there is that the wireless CarPlay drains the battery very quickly (not Hyundai's fault), so I need to get a cable to plug my phone in for that privilege. In addition, my wife's iPhone just refuses to connect to the car, either via CarPlay or Bluetooth. These are small issues, but if they were solved, it would go a long way to making the use of this car smoother.
The app integration is only okay. I can unlock my car, but because I didn't pay the $13k more for the Limited trim, I cannoth use my phone as a key. This is a very annoying upsell that is just a software-blocked feature. This was a non-issue in the Tesla. The phone app worked, it was fast, and I never needed to carry a key fob with me to use the car.
Lastly, and especially in comparison to Teslas: The undertrunk and front trunk in this vehicle may as well not exist. I used to be able to put a whole cooler in the undertrunk of my Model 3, and the front trunk could hold a few full bags of groceries. The front trunk in the Ioniq 5 might be able to hold one cereal box. It's perplexing because I can see a lot of empty space around the front trunk cutout, as if it could have been made bigger but was not. Maybe there's a sound engineering reason here, but that engineering problem was not present in the Model 3.
Bottom line: If you want an EV that drives well, has plenty of range, and has lots of storage (even without the undertrunk and frunk), this car is great. Hyundai needs to work on software, but that's not really why most people buy a car.
Recommended
Verified Owner
