The Hyundai Ioniq 5 is one of the best mainstream EVs on sale. If you don't want to get a Tesla, for any number of reasons, it may be the best option. The more I hear from owners, the more I believe that.
Take this new owner review from Carlos Vargas on YouTube. Vargas bought a used 2022 Ioniq 5 two and a half years ago, with 17,000 miles on it. He's added a cool 55,000 miles in the ensuing timeframe, and he's pretty clear that he loves the car. "Let's get into the nitty gritty about why I love this car, and why I have zero regrets," Vargas says in the video.
He loves the way his all-wheel-drive Ioniq 5 drives, and loves how quickly it charges. With a 10-80% time of under 20 minutes, Vargas says he pretty much never spends more than 20 minutes at any charger. It's got plenty of power, too, and despite 71,900 miles of constant use, the Ioniq 5 has had no major issues. Its one malfunction was the power charge door, which had to be fixed at the dealer.
That tracks with the opinion of both me and InsideEVs editor-in-chief Patrick George: Power charging doors are a dumb idea that should be phased out. I've never seen a gas car with a power gas flap, and you'd be stupid to try to invent one. Introducing a failure point on a critical component for no real benefit makes no sense, especially considering power doors take longer to use than manual flaps.
Still, the Ioniq 5 is proving to be a reliable car, even if Vargas skipped the 40,000 battery coolant flush that Hyundai recommends. That doesn't mean it's all good news, though.
Vargas, like many other people, hates Hyundai's software suite. The smartphone app is bad and buggy, the infotainment system is middling and the mapping system is bad. His car doesn't get major over-the-air updates, either, so it's not getting better over time the way many EVs are. It used to get map updates, but even those didn't include all of the new chargers. That's annoying because the Ioniq 5 will only precondition the battery if you set a fast charger as your destination.
He also called out another pain point: If you're expecting clear and consistent communication from the automaker itself, Hyundai doesn't really deliver.
Though his car didn't have the dreaded Integrated Charging Control Unit (ICCU) issue, the company didn't do a great job of communicating with customers during that saga, and its dealers are famously unreliable. Vargas says some dealers didn't even seem to know how to change the Ioniq 5's coolant, while others charged absurd prices.
It's a good summary, then, of what it's like to own an EV from a company that's still figuring out how to make competitive EVs and software-defined vehicles. Hyundai has solved the first part of that equation, but not the second; we're hopeful for the day when it gets there too, because its EVs tend to be outstanding in all other respects. (Then again, when put up against direct-to-consumer rivals like Tesla and Rivian, Hyundai and Kia's dealers can be a sticking point.)
Yet with the car itself being so good and so reliable, it's easy to look past those issues. For me, it's still one of the first EVs I recommend, and it's definitely one worth test-driving for yourself.
Contact the author: Mack.Hogan@insideevs.com.
