What you are about to read is not just an explanation of why the updated Hyundai Ioniq 5 is an InsideEVs Breakthrough Awards Editor's Choice. It is also a dissenting opinion on the final ruling.
The 2026 Nissan Leaf took home the Car of the Year Award after a 4-to-1 vote. I was the one. I made the case for the 2026 Hyundai Ioniq 5 to win the top prize instead. Don't get me wrong; I love the new Leaf as much as the rest of my colleagues. But Hyundai's crossover is still the EV I recommend to most people shopping for a new car in America right now. And this year, it got even harder for me to recommend something else.
(This story is part of the Breakthrough Awards, our series on 2025's best EVs. Only one will be our Breakthrough EV of the Year. Read the other stories here.)
Gallery: 2026 Breakthrough Awards Editor's Choice: Hyundai Ioniq 5
The Ioniq 5 has been good since it burst onto the scene way back in the summer of 2021. That's a lifetime ago in EV development years. But even then, many EVs were somewhere between rough-draft experiments, vanity projects and glorified compliance cars, which is still unfortunately the case for many.
The Ioniq 5 stood apart, with its striking retro-futuristic looks, around 300 miles of range on some trims, class-leading DC fast-charging speeds and everyday practicality. It was one of the first cars to truly match the Tesla Model Y in many ways, and best it in others. Almost five years later, that is somehow still the case.
(As a side note: the Breakthrough Awards look at one car to represent an entire automaker conglomerate. The Ioniq 5 stood for the whole Hyundai Motor Group family, though we debated the merits of the Hyundai Ioniq 9 and Kia EV6; the former was eliminated for its similarity to the Kia EV9 last year, and the latter due to its lower sales volumes.)
Hyundai deserves a great deal of credit for not resting on its laurels. For 2025, the Ioniq 5 got significant upgrades: Bigger batteries with up to 318 miles of range. The same under-20-minute DC fast charging as before, now with a Tesla-style North American Charging Standard plug—and Tesla-beating performance on that plug, too. A revised interior with more physical controls and a better use of overall space.
By the way, that influenced my vote here too. Unlike a Tesla, which has a polished software ecosystem that still takes some getting used to, there's no learning curve in an Ioniq 5. It's as user-friendly a car as they come. Anyone can get into one after driving a Toyota RAV4 or whatever.
That's a big net positive for EV adoption. And it still feels like a nicer car than its badge might imply, and does things better than some "luxury" cars in our testing. "The ride and handling on the Hyundai was just substantially better" than another contender, the Cadillac Optiq, Staff Writer Suvrat Kothari said.
2026 HYUNDAI IONIQ 5: WHICH ONE WE'D GET
2026 Ioniq 5 SEL
The Ioniq 5 lineup is pretty robust these days. But the middle-child SEL is the Goldilocks model. At $39,800 for the RWD model (318 miles of range) and $43,300 for the AWD one (290 miles of range) you will be hard-pressed to find an overall better package in the U.S. EV market right now.
It's even made in America now, at Hyundai's $7.6 billion Metaplant, once meant to take advantage of EV subsidies and help the Korean automaker take the lead in our country's electric-vehicle race. Thousands of new jobs and a high-tech manufacturing ecosystem in Georgia for decades to come.
Hyundai did everything right here. For its trouble, it got drop-kicked in the chest. A new administration came along that ended those EV subsidies, got rid of the emissions and fuel economy rules driving a more electric future, slapped the company with stiff new tariffs and then deported several hundred workers at the site.
But Hyundai is nothing if not tenacious. After all that, it still pulled a fast one on us, making the Ioniq 5 an even better deal for 2026. Its price tag is now almost $10,000 lower across the board. This means you can get something like an Ioniq 5 SEL for around $41,000, or an Ioniq 5 SE for around $38,000. Both offer up to 318 miles of range in rear-wheel-drive form.
That's ultimately why the Ioniq 5 got my vote. At those prices, it bleeds into Nissan Leaf territory. The Leaf is a great EV, but its nicer trims with options can get into the low-$40,000 range. So, for about the same price, Hyundai offers something bigger, more powerful, more fun to drive, with more range and much better fast-charging.
It is now one of the best new-car deals in America, agnostic of powertrain, and without many of the more compact Leaf's inherent compromises.
Plus, there's now an Ioniq 5 for everyone. An Ioniq 5 XRT for people who need Subaru-like all-weather capability, and an Ioniq 5 N for folks who are on a first-name basis with their local traffic court judge. It has evolved into one of the most robust EV families for sale in the U.S. and one that is capable of meeting a lot of people's different needs.
Even so, the Ioniq 5 isn't perfect. "If you just want a normal car, and you don't want to learn all the things about Teslas, you get an Ioniq 5," Deputy Editor Mack Hogan said. But the experience with the whole ecosystem is nowhere near as cohesive as you'd get with a Tesla. "Hyundai designs the whole system for all of its cars, and then puts the same one in the Ioniq 5, more or less." He had a worse experience with EV route-planning than I have had with my car using the same hardware and software, but both of us will attest to the baffling decisions its navigation system makes.
If Hyundai wants to continue leading the way, we hope to see improvements in things like software and automated driving features. Its infotainment system and smartphone app are decidedly old-school, and there's no hands-free highway driving tech like General Motors' Super Cruise or Ford's BlueCruise. An Ioniq 5 with those things would be a nearly perfect EV.
But this is surmountable. And while it could be argued that the updated Model Y does many of those things better, Tesla's current brand baggage means I don't have to recommend a Hyundai to someone with the same kind of qualified caution.
This past year was a highly successful one for the Korean automaker, even if it left the arena with the kinds of battle scars that prove victory doesn't come easy. And it's my hope that, unlike Tesla, Hyundai will find a way to keep this EV momentum going. I have no reason to believe it won't—and that gives me continued hope for the whole field.
Right now, if you can find a better EV for the price than the Ioniq 5, buy it. I'm just not sure that you will.
Contact the author: patrick.george@insideevs.com
2026 Hyundai Ioniq 5
