Hyundai Ioniq 5 – Ultimate 80’s Futurism!
Some of us are old enough to remember the 1980’s. A golden era when it came to science fiction and iconic visions of the future. If you cast your mind back to the 80’s and asked someone to design the ultimate car of the future, we reckon it’d probably look a lot like the all new Hyundai Ioniq 5, Hyundai’s groundbreaking new electric SUV. Now available for electric car hire right here at Westwood!
The design of the Ioniq 5 is absolutely incredible. There’s nothing else like it on the road. Think what a DeLorean would look like if it never went out of production, went through a few design iterations and then they produced the inevitable family SUV. That’s kind of the vibe we get from the Ioniq 5. There’s no flux capacitor or Mr Fusion unit though, but there’s the next best thing, a great big battery and a set of motors.
Funky design aside, there’s some genuine genius gone into creating this all electric family SUV and quite rightly, it’s already been scooping up various ‘Car of the year’ awards.
If you’ve not seen an Ioniq 5 in the metal yet, you might be surprised that it’s much bigger than you’d think. The pictures are deceptive, it looks like it’s about the same size as a VW Golf. It is, in fact much, much bigger!
On the inside, the design is just as impressive. One of the advantages of designing an electric vehicle from the ground up rather than merely modifying/repurposing an existing, conventional chassis, is that full advantage can be taken of the opportunities such a design can present. An electric vehicle doesn’t need space for an engine, a gearbox or a transmission tunnel, so, in the Ioniq 5, they’re not there, just plenty of space. This gives the interior a light, airy cabin which is further enhanced by the light coloured materials as well as minimalistic controls and instrumentation. Rear seat passengers definitely don’t want for legroom!
Hyundai hasn’t gone full Tesla though and that’s a good thing! Research has shown that touchscreens aren’t as good as physical buttons and the Ioniq has a mix of both. It feels like they’ve got the balance just right too. Also like the Tesla, the Ioniq 5 is capable of extremely fast charging. If you can find a 350kW charger, the Hyundai can charge from 10% to 80% in as little as 18 minutes. Admittedly, they’re few and far between at the moment, but in only a couple of years, electric cars have gone from a relative rarity, to being pretty much everywhere andte infrastructure to support them has come on in leaps and bounds in order to support this
The Jaguar i-Pace, a previous car of the year award winner and the car which we’ve credited with finally bringing electric cars into the mainstream. The Jag showed that EV’s could have a decent range, be fast, large, luxurious and seriously desirable. The Hyundai Ioniq 5 does more or less the same, but now it’s a few years down the line, it’s all being done for far less money.
As many of you will know, Hyundai and Kia, the latter being owned by the former, are sister companies so many of their vehicles share components and/or underpinnings. Case in point, the e-GMP platform on which the Ioniq 5 is based, is the exact same platform used in Kia’s stonking EV6. Both cars are incredible, not surprising given they’re pretty much the same underneath, but manage to look and feel completely distinct from one another, both outside and in. We can only applaud that commitment to brand identity, giving users a true choice rather than just a single car on offer with minor cosmetic changes and a different badge. They’re siblings, not twins, but the advantages in terms of keeping development costs low, means that it keeps the end price low as well. You get a far better car for less, but there’s no compromise, just economies of scale.
So far, the Ioniq 5’s we’ve had delivered have gone straight out, the most recent (at the time of typing) was driven away the same day it was delivered brand new. We can’t say we’re surprised, this is a truly revolutionary car, with a daring futuristic look and the performance and quality to back it up!
