2024 Hyundai Ioniq 5 N | UK Review

Superb in Spain - can it be excellent in England?

It’s easy to like a car at an international launch event. A carefully curated itinerary will take you to fantastic roads with little traffic, a circuit drive will feature cars in optimum specs, your mates will be there and the food will be great. It’s easy to think kindly on a car in this setting, which is probably why the events continue in a post-pandemic world. 

A UK drive though, even one organised by the manufacturer, is a very different - and much more representative - prospect. This is why two bites of the cherry is always a good idea. The roads are inevitably worse (and busier), there probably won’t be a track and you’ll be on your own in a car - not gossiping the miles away with a pal. It tends to be much more revealing, ahead of the inevitable group tests and whatnot. For a car as significant (and as initially impressive) as the Ioniq 5 N, another go couldn’t come soon enough. So we were there at 9:30am the Tuesday after a Bank Holiday. Our experience in Spain suggested this it was going to be very good indeed, wherever it was driven. Crunch time. 

Things don’t begin well. With the battery brimmed and Sport mode selected before moving off (it’s one of those cars), the range is showing 192 miles. And that’s not very many from an 84kWh battery - 2.28mi/kWh before our drive, against an official 2.93mi/kWh claim. Toggle it back to Normal or Eco and it’ll creep up a few more, but even seeing a low-200s readout from a £65k EV isn’t great in 2024. Our test returns a score of 2.7mi/kWh, and the range doesn’t fall away driving quickly, but it hovers around 2.5 for much of the drive. You can’t have everything, of course - a 650hp hot hatch that weighs 2.2 tonnes had to pay for it somewhere - but neither range nor efficiency is fantastic. And they sort of have to come up in discussion. BMW quotes 2.8-3.4mi/kWh for an i4 M50; Porsche says 3.53 for a Taycan 4S, or 3.47 for an 884hp Turbo.

The naysayers will take those stats immediately to the comments, no doubt. But for those intrigued by Hyundai’s first electric N, there’s still an awful lot to like. First is that it still looks absolutely brilliant over here, parked up among other cool cars at Caffeine & Machine and with UK plates on. For such a large car it manages to look compact and taut, the standard 5’s funky design embellished with bigger wheels and spoilers without going over the top. Likewise, the interior is still recognisably Ioniq, complete with a fairly lofty driving position, though the new seats grab in all the right places (where a regular car is much more about lounging). 

Any suspicions that this is a 5 merely painted orange and made faster are cast out pretty much immediately. It rides firmly (though not crashily), the big P Zeros throw up a fair amount of noise and the brake pedal is solid. Far from being drawbacks, however, they’re welcome reminders that this is a performance EV about the experience just as much as (if not more) than the numbers. It feels like a Hyundai N hot hatch, tightly wound and keen to have fun. 

The impression doesn’t subside at all when it comes to the first corners, the response between steering input and front axle perfectly judged and nicely telegraphed. It won’t fizz with feedback like the old front-drive stuff, but you’re immediately very confident placing a large, heavy, very grippy car exactly where you want. And very much enjoying the process, the car being neutral and willing. None of the three settings for steering spoils it with daft weight, which used to be a Hyundai N trait. It’s a welcome change, and surely indicative of how the details have been sweated.

The temptation to fiddle comes soon enough, which is certainly made easier with prior experience and the steering wheel now on the right-hand side. Toggling with the custom modes feels a lot less stressful the second time around, the touchscreen responsive to swipes and prods. Perhaps still not the safest activity in the world, if less maddening than before. And as with cars like the i30 N, Normal and a Custom setting for fun will cover most scenarios. You’ll not want anything beyond Normal suspension in the UK (Sport + is unbearable), the Sport head-up display looks cool, Normal or Sport for steering was good, then both motor and e-LSD were cranked to Sport+. Because why not? The only N Active Sound worth considering is Ignition (Evolution and Supersonic sound silly), plus the ESC can be slackened or off. There’s huge purchase from 275-section tyres.

Even on small, crumbling, congested roads that make Spain feel like another planet rather than another country, the Ioniq is a lot of fun. It’s always willing to pivot this way and that, the brake pedal is reassuring, it always feels like it’s powering out from behind (backed up by a warmer motor temp for that one), and the damping is extremely well sorted. Borderline brilliant in fact, given the weight. To say an EV feels lighter than claimed is a familiar refrain these days, but this car really does give the impression of something physically much smaller. 

The N E-Shift remains a highlight of the package, insofar as it brings entertainment to any part of the journey. It could so easily have been a gimmick, but so convincing is the build-up of power, the sense of acceleration, the gearshift jolts and the rev limiter that it soon becomes natural to use it like any other paddleshift. E-Shift is another aspect of the Ioniq 5 N experience to explore and learn, when so many other EVs seem determined to be one-dimensional. It goes on and off seamlessly at the touch of a button, imposing no penalty, and the (plasticky) paddles can return to adjusting regen. Something else to occupy yourself with, if desired. As with details like the steering, the sense is that people who really care about driving have spent a lot of time on the E-Shift, and the results speak for themselves. No other EV has raised a smile like this. 

While the A422 wasn’t the place to experiment with the N Track features, a brief go with the N Torque Distribution is interesting because it’s so tweakable. We’re used to just a more rear-biased setting for all-wheel drive, whereas this is fully variable from 10:90 to 90:10 in ten-point increments (there’s no pure front- or rear-drive mode). Again it’s something else to explore and experience, making little squiggles from roundabouts a bit easier. It’s just good fun. There’s a depth to the experience, a feeling that you would continue to learn this car over time rather than complete it in 10 mins. There’s scope to scare everyone silly with the performance or just appreciate the engineering going slowly, and everything in between. 

What the Ioniq 5 N feels like, in fact - and bear with on this - is old Japanese rally replicas. Obviously it’s about twice the weight and doesn't burble down a road. The key tenet shared is technology being deployed as an enabler for fun, complementing a sorted, agile chassis rather than disguising its deficiencies. Like those old cars, the Hyundai feels tough, four-square and ready to attack at any opportunity, lapping up punishment and furiously fast with it. It’s even quite loud and inefficient, for the full tribute act. A go in the rain should be revealing, too. If only it could be the same sort of size…

With the actual driving experience a far bigger part of the N’s appeal than sheer performance, it does almost seem a shame that it’s been made as fast as it has - with the efficiency and range penalties imposed as a result. This wouldn’t be any less satisfying as a driver’s car with two-thirds the output, because the joy is in how it steers, how it rides and how it changes direction (and doing the ‘gears’), rather than how quickly it reaches illegal speeds. Of course, EVs being unnecessarily fast is par for the course at the moment - Hyundai isn't alone. If the additional costs that come with more than 600hp can be managed, the Ioniq 5 N certainly still feels like a significant milestone; like the best performance cars of any stripe, it seems special even when the situation is anything but. And that counts for an awful lot. Bring on those rivals, electric or petrol-powered, as soon as possible. 

SPECIFICATION | 2024 HYUNDAI IONIQ 5 N

Engine: 84kWh lithium-ion battery
Transmission: 2 permanent magnet synchronous motors, all-wheel drive
Power (hp): 609 (650 with overboost)
Torque (lb ft): 567 (overboost)
0-62mph: 3.5 secs (3.4 overboost)
Top speed: 162mph
Weight: 2,235kg
MPG: 278 miles ‘maximum potential EV driving range’, efficiency 2.93mi/kWh
CO2: 0g/km (driving)
Price: £65,000

• 2024 Hyundai Ioniq 5 N | PH Review
• Hyundai i30 N | PH Used Review