Spend any time round dyed-in-the-wool automotive lovers, and also you’ll undoubtedly hear how “boring” electrical automobiles are. The frequent criticism is that they lack a bodily engine “really feel” or an audible sound whenever you romp on the accelerator.
That is till the introduction of the 2025 Hyundai Ioniq 5 N, a completely electrical SUV with a collection of frivolous options and efficiency upgrades that make it behave and sound identical 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 mildew, and it scratched an itch I by no means knew I had, thanks partially to 2 ridiculously foolish options: “N e-shift” and “N Active Sound Plus.” When mixed, these lend themselves to the pure pleasure that the Ioniq 5 N brings to the desk.
More Go-Go Juice
When it debuted in 2021, the Hyundai Ioniq 5 was lauded for its distinctive, space-age seems, vehicle-to-load functionality, 800-volt fast-charging underpinnings, and distinctive tackle an electrical SUV.
Fast-forward to this yr, and Hyundai’s specialised N division, which focuses on bettering the efficiency and dealing with of a handful of choose Hyundai automobiles, reworked the complete automobile.
First, the Ioniq 5 N will get as a lot as 641 horsepower and 545 lb-ft of torque, which is sort of triple the horses and double the torque that the usual Ioniq 5 will get.
Triple the horses and double the torque
While the Ioniq 5 N is constructed on Hyundai’s Electric Global Modular Platform, that is the primary automobile to get Hyundai’s fourth-generation 84kWh battery pack. The chassis, cooling system, and motors have been utterly overhauled to tackle a lot energy and torque, and permit prospects to go from a monitor to day by 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 quicker once they’re pushed at their restrict on the monitor, and Hyundai needed to make sure that the Ioniq 5 N might deal with the extremes with minimal degradation.
That’s no small feat as a result of electrical powertrains are typically a lot heavier and generate extra torque, energy, and warmth when pushed laborious. For monitor efficiency, the engineers additionally needed to make it possible for the Ioniq 5 N might be charged shortly since lots of the track-focused options require a particular state of cost to entry. Hyundai says the Ioniq 5 N can go from 10 to 80 % on a DC Fast Charger (225kW) in simply 18 minutes.
Because the engineers juiced the efficiency, in addition 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 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 enhance of energy and torque, launch management, race modes, and specialised battery conditioning for numerous modes to make sure that you’re getting all the facility you possibly can from the battery and motors.
Admittedly, I didn’t get an opportunity to strive 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 monitor. After some digging by way of a LOT of car settings, you possibly can toggle these on and off, however there are quite a lot of situations that must be met to make them work, and it’s not precisely straightforward to determine.
Additionally, the opposite trade-off is that you simply get diminished 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.
Fake Sounds that Make You Giggle
So what else makes this automobile stand out? Fake inner combustion engine sounds and shifts.
Automotive fakery isn’t new. Automakers have been tweaking seems (faux vents, prolonged wheel arches that don’t do something, even horse heads hooked up to horseless carriages) and piping in audio because the creation of the auto. A automobile is a dressing up, and within the ICE period that costume got here with the bodily sensation of shifts and raucous engine sounds to match. It signaled, in huge clouds of fossil gasoline fumes, that you’ve arrived, and makes folks take a look at you and surprise, “Who’s that particular person revving to redline and rev-matching shifts?”
Automotive fakery isn’t new
The N e-shift makes use of the motor’s torque output to simulate shifts which you can management with two paddles on the steering wheel. When you pull the paddles to shift up or down, you’re 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 Active 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 type of a boosted EV sound.
These have been huge dangers for Hyundai to take, in response to Andre Ravinowich, senior supervisor of product planning at Hyundai. Even if 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.
When I put the Ioniq 5 N into the N e-Shift and Active Sound mode and chosen Ignition, the sound and the faux shifts introduced an incredible smile to my face. Paired with the seemingly infinite energy and torque provided by the electrical motors, I couldn’t cease grinning.
It’s identical to somewhat child making automobile noises as they push a Hot Wheels automobile round a monitor, however mixed with the driving expertise within the Ioniq 5 N, it simply faucets right into a pure fanatic pleasure. Even youngsters round my neighborhood stopped and regarded once I began the Ioniq 5 N up with the sound administration turned on. They’d pull out their telephones to take images and movies as I drove off, fortunately faking the inner combustion engine expertise and figuring out I wasn’t including a drop of carbon to the ambiance.
The Ioniq 5 N simply may be the efficiency EV that may change self-described “auto fanatic” minds in regards to the electrical transition. It’s that good.
