Why I wouldn't buy another Ioniq 5
Discussion
I am on my third EV as I commute into London daily. I had a BMW i3s for 1 year then a Polestar 2 for two years. I purchased a Hyundai Ioniq 5 Namsan Edition on 1st July.
Many aspects of the car are great. It is very comfortable which is high up my list as I use it for commuting. However the following are driving me mad and I wish I had fully experienced them before parting with £58k.
1. No rear wash wipe. I test drove a car in the dry and assumed it wouldn't be an issue. It is! The Polestar didn't have a rear wiper but the air passing over the car kept it clean and dry. The Ioniq 5 just throws dirty water up at the back window.
2. Cameras instead of door mirrors. Again, the test drive car had mirrors. I can't believe how ridiculous door cameras are. The resolution in poor light is awful. You can't adjust them to see the rear wheel when parking against a kerb. The perspective is really odd. I don't trust them. An engineering solution to a problem that never existed.
3. You can't pre condition the car on a timer unless it is plugged in to the charger. I didn't look into this before I purchased. I read that the car can be pre conditioned and wrongly assumed that it would be the same as my Polestar which was capable of being warmed up via a timer regardless of being plugged in.
Had I known any of these before buying then I probably wouldn't have gone ahead. Put together, they make the car deeply flawed. My mistake and I am only posting this here to help anyone else make a mistake that they may regret.
Many aspects of the car are great. It is very comfortable which is high up my list as I use it for commuting. However the following are driving me mad and I wish I had fully experienced them before parting with £58k.
1. No rear wash wipe. I test drove a car in the dry and assumed it wouldn't be an issue. It is! The Polestar didn't have a rear wiper but the air passing over the car kept it clean and dry. The Ioniq 5 just throws dirty water up at the back window.
2. Cameras instead of door mirrors. Again, the test drive car had mirrors. I can't believe how ridiculous door cameras are. The resolution in poor light is awful. You can't adjust them to see the rear wheel when parking against a kerb. The perspective is really odd. I don't trust them. An engineering solution to a problem that never existed.
3. You can't pre condition the car on a timer unless it is plugged in to the charger. I didn't look into this before I purchased. I read that the car can be pre conditioned and wrongly assumed that it would be the same as my Polestar which was capable of being warmed up via a timer regardless of being plugged in.
Had I known any of these before buying then I probably wouldn't have gone ahead. Put together, they make the car deeply flawed. My mistake and I am only posting this here to help anyone else make a mistake that they may regret.
So coming up to two years since I posted my initial dislikes of the Ioniq 5. I have done 21,000 miles.
The dislikes I mentioned in the first post still stand. I would add the following to the list of dislikes:
Monstrous depreciation. £58.5k to £23.5 k in less than two years and only 21,000 miles.
The 12v battery has been incredibly unreliable and has been replaced once. Hyundai and the dealer does at last seem to have found a fix.
It's best features are its size and comfort.
This has been my third EV. I had a BMW i3s followed by a Polestar 2. The Hyundai has been the worst of the three.
I am replacing it with an Alpine A290 GTS.
The dislikes I mentioned in the first post still stand. I would add the following to the list of dislikes:
Monstrous depreciation. £58.5k to £23.5 k in less than two years and only 21,000 miles.
The 12v battery has been incredibly unreliable and has been replaced once. Hyundai and the dealer does at last seem to have found a fix.
It's best features are its size and comfort.
This has been my third EV. I had a BMW i3s followed by a Polestar 2. The Hyundai has been the worst of the three.
I am replacing it with an Alpine A290 GTS.
This was a company purchase with cash. Benefits of the write off against the higher rate of corporation tax but even so, a low depreciating ICE car would have made better commercial sense although I did benefit from the very low BiK.
An earlier poster has commented that the N addresses most of my issues and I think this is a good point although it moved the price point on again from £58.5k to c.£65k. The N wasn't available in July 2023.
I also recognise that my car was probably the very last car in the UK to be sold at full retail!
. I ordered in May 2023 with no discounts available. By the time I took delivery in July there were discounts widely available and of course those have got greater in the last two years.
I agree with the comments about the dash being low tech. I found the rest of the internal appointment to be reasonably good. I had a boot rattle which I believe is common, eventually stopped with some felt stick on pads. I also found the suspension struggled to damp correctly under specific conditions relating to a rough road and firm braking. It could be a bit disconcerting. I think it was the price of having a generally comfortable ride.
An earlier poster has commented that the N addresses most of my issues and I think this is a good point although it moved the price point on again from £58.5k to c.£65k. The N wasn't available in July 2023.
I also recognise that my car was probably the very last car in the UK to be sold at full retail!
. I ordered in May 2023 with no discounts available. By the time I took delivery in July there were discounts widely available and of course those have got greater in the last two years.I agree with the comments about the dash being low tech. I found the rest of the internal appointment to be reasonably good. I had a boot rattle which I believe is common, eventually stopped with some felt stick on pads. I also found the suspension struggled to damp correctly under specific conditions relating to a rough road and firm braking. It could be a bit disconcerting. I think it was the price of having a generally comfortable ride.
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