Hyundai Ioniq 5 N overview: faux shifting, actual enjoyable

Spend any time round dyed-in-the-wool automotive lovers, and also you’ll undoubtedly hear how “boring” electrical automobiles are. The widespread criticism is that they lack a bodily engine “really feel” or an audible sound while you romp on the accelerator. 

That’s till the introduction of the 2025 Hyundai Ioniq 5 N, a completely electrical SUV with a set of frivolous options and efficiency upgrades that make it behave and sound similar to a dinosaur juice-burning scorching hatch, one which brings a giggle of pleasure each time you drive it. 

For the holdouts, the Ioniq 5 N is simply the factor to interrupt the mould, and it scratched an itch I by no means knew I had, thanks partly to 2 ridiculously foolish options: “N e-shift” and “N Energetic Sound Plus.” When mixed, these lend themselves to the pure pleasure that the Ioniq 5 N brings to the desk. 

When it debuted in 2021, the Hyundai Ioniq 5 was lauded for its distinctive, space-age seems to be, vehicle-to-load functionality, 800-volt fast-charging underpinnings, and distinctive tackle an electrical SUV. 

Quick-forward to this 12 months, and Hyundai’s specialised N division, which focuses on bettering the efficiency and dealing with of a handful of choose Hyundai automobiles, reworked your complete car. 

First, the Ioniq 5 N will get as a lot as 641 horsepower and 545 lb-ft of torque, which is almost triple the horses and double the torque that the usual Ioniq 5 will get.

Whereas the Ioniq 5 N is constructed on Hyundai’s Electrical International Modular Platform, that is the primary car to get Hyundai’s fourth-generation 84kWh battery pack. The chassis, cooling system, and motors had been utterly overhauled to tackle a lot energy and torque, and permit clients to go from a observe to each day driver, with out destroying the automobile or its elements.

Brakes, suspension, tires, and different elements on shopper vehicles have a tendency to interrupt down a lot sooner once they’re pushed at their restrict on the observe, and Hyundai wished to make sure that the Ioniq 5 N may deal with the extremes with minimal degradation. 

That’s no small feat as a result of electrical powertrains are usually a lot heavier and generate extra torque, energy, and warmth when pushed exhausting. For observe efficiency, the engineers additionally needed to guarantee that the Ioniq 5 N could possibly be charged rapidly since lots of the track-focused options require a selected state of cost to entry. Hyundai says the Ioniq 5 N can go from 10 to 80 % on a DC Quick Charger (225kW) in simply 18 minutes.

As a result of the engineers juiced the efficiency, additionally they needed to stiffen the chassis, suspension, steering rack, and physique panels to deal with the added G-forces. Hyundai additionally changed the usual brakes with high-performance variations and added wheel vents to maintain them cooler. And so they reworked the regenerative braking system so there’s much less brake fade as issues warmth up. 

The N group additionally added drift options, a button on the steering wheel that provides a 10-second increase of energy and torque, launch management, race modes, and specialised battery conditioning for varied modes to make sure that you’re getting all the ability you may from the battery and motors.

Admittedly, I didn’t get an opportunity to attempt these options, as a result of I’m a accountable human, and I solely drove the Ioniq 5 N on public roads and never on a closed observe. After some digging by means of a LOT of auto settings, you may toggle these on and off, however there are quite a lot of circumstances that should be met to make them work, and it’s not precisely simple to determine. 

Moreover, the opposite trade-off is that you simply get decreased vary in comparison with the longest-range Ioniq 5, which will get an EPA-rated vary of 303 miles. The N model will get simply 221 miles of EPA-rated vary. 

So what else makes this automobile stand out? Pretend inner combustion engine sounds and shifts. 

Automotive fakery isn’t new. Automakers have been tweaking seems to be (faux vents, prolonged wheel arches that don’t do something, even horse heads connected to horseless carriages) and piping in audio because the creation of the auto. A automobile is a fancy dress, and within the ICE period that costume got here with the bodily sensation of shifts and raucous engine sounds to match. It signaled, in massive clouds of fossil gasoline fumes, that you’ve arrived, and makes folks have a look at you and marvel, “Who’s that individual revving to redline and rev-matching shifts?” 

The N e-shift makes use of the motor’s torque output to simulate shifts you can management with two paddles on the steering wheel. While you pull the paddles to shift up or down, you are feeling the automobile simulate a shift, pop and gurgle on downshift, rev-match and turbo spin on upshift, and also you get the head-bob as a bonus.

N Energetic Sound Plus makes use of audio system contained in the automobile and out, to pipe three totally different sound choices into the world: Ignition, which seems like a raucous, blipping, redline-limited, inner combustion engine; Supersonic, which seems like a robotic model of a fighter jet; and Evolution, which is sort of a boosted EV sound. 

These had been massive dangers for Hyundai to take, in line with Andre Ravinowich, senior supervisor of product planning at Hyundai. Even when the shifts and sound are faux, he says “it’s bringing that sense of connection to driving and engagement to EVs […] it’s simply again to what makes driving enjoyable.” Hyundai’s N group noticed it as a technique to “develop a persona of a efficiency EV,” Ravinowich notes.

Once I put the Ioniq 5 N into the N e-Shift and Energetic Sound mode and chosen Ignition, the sound and the faux shifts introduced an amazing smile to my face. Paired with the seemingly limitless energy and torque supplied by the electrical motors, I couldn’t cease grinning. 

It’s similar to a little bit child making automobile noises as they push a Scorching Wheels automobile round a observe, however mixed with the driving expertise within the Ioniq 5 N, it simply faucets right into a pure fanatic pleasure. Even children round my neighborhood stopped and seemed after I began the Ioniq 5 N up with the sound administration turned on. They’d pull out their telephones to take photographs and movies as I drove off, fortunately faking the interior combustion engine expertise and realizing I wasn’t including a drop of carbon to the environment.

The Ioniq 5 N simply may be the efficiency EV that can change self-described “auto fanatic” minds in regards to the electrical transition. It’s that good.