Iain Curry’s best electric car of 2023: Hyundai Ioniq 5 N
It’s time for our editors to vent about their electric car experiences and expectations!
The Queensland heatwave and festive poolside cocktails have triggered my fun side, ensuring the Hyundai Ioniq 5 N is my pick of 2023’s EVs.
With sensible hat on we can appreciate EVs with efficiency, long range, fast charging and silky silent smoothness. But dammit, sometimes you just want your skirt blown up by a character-oozing car that’s bloody good fun to drive.
That’s the Ioniq 5 N.
It delivers the feels, is a technological tour de force and is the first EV I’ve driven that comes close to the emotionally-involving experience of a performance petrol car.
Okay, it costs $111,000. That’s about $120K on the road. But there’s 448kW and 740Nm on tap, electronic control suspension, 400mm front brakes, e-LSD, Alcantara interior and enough adjustability and customisation to keep a teenage gamer interested for months.
It’s over double the price of the highest-spec petrol-powered Hyundai i30N: a seriously good value benchmark hot hatch. But good grief this Ioniq 5 N would humiliate it on the track.
An N Grin Mode adds an additional 30kW and 30Nm for a ten second burst, upping the power to Porsche 911 Turbo S levels.
Speaking of supercars, the all-paw Ioniq 5 N cracks the ton in 3.4 seconds, and does so with the best artificial engine noise I’ve yet heard. It sounds like a four-cylinder turbocharged petrol screamer – totally false, of course, but I ended up not caring a jot.
Same with the false gear shifts, simulated up-shift jolts, popping backfires and pretend rev limiter. It’s so utterly convincing and involving you simply enjoy the experience while marvelling at the outright track ability of the thing.
Its clever suspension makes road driving – even over poor surfaces – perfectly tolerable, while the cabin is comfortable, spacious and loaded with technology.
It wins as an extrovert daily driver, then is ready for a track session, hill climb weekend or mountain road blast. Rapid charging, V2L and liveable 448km range seal the deal.
Show me an empty race track and I’d pick the Ioniq 5 N over a twice-the-price Porsche Taycan GTS. Sorry Germany, the Korean is that good, and is my winner of 2023.
Biggest EV surprise of 2023: God awful charging infrastructure
I’m not choosing a car.
I’m choosing the massive letdown that is failure to provide a reliable, good value and abundant EV charging network by now.
It shouldn’t be this hard. Governments have known EV takeup would surge – and championed it – yet charging infrastructure is Simply Not Good Enough. Not just Australia, but globally.
You’ll read plenty of comments from anti-EV loons on social media, but when they say EV chargers are nowhere to be found, out of service or with queues of 20 Teslas lining up, they’re not completely wrong.
Every EV owner will tell of out of order public chargers… forget range anxiety; it’s all about working charger anxiety.
Nearest public DC charger to my home was out of action for four months in 2023 – it required parts that appeared impossible to source.
Then I had a catastrophic holiday in France with a rental EV. Signing up for different apps just to use a charge point is a nonsense. It’s the 2020s. Make it tap and go for every credit card.
Months later I had similar dramas in South Korea. Six charge points and none would accept our credit or debit cards (we tried five different ones) – not great when it’s 1C, late at night and you have 12km range remaining in your EV.
It must improve for 2024 or negative EV press and EV rejection will only increase.
The electric car I’m most looking forward to in 2024: Volkswagen ID.Buzz
Close run thing between the electric Kombi and Volvo’s EX30.
Overseas reviews of the little Swedish SUV have been universally excellent, and at $59,990 plus charges it looks to be 2024’s smart money choice.
Unlike the ID.Buzz. No doubt it’ll be a six-figure offering when it arrives in Australia this year.
But it’s the EV I’m most looking forward to. I spotted a rental one at Avis in France and it gave me the excited tingles… something VW’s ID.4 and ID.5 simply do not.
A five seat MPV with versatile load area for bikes, boards and family members is my ideal at this stage of parenting life. Throw in camping accessories (or just a California camping variant) and I’ll be in clover.
Its striking cabin and giant glasshouse should make driving a relaxing joy, and I don’t think I’d ever tire of its retro good-looks – especially in profile with its tiny overhangs – and fun colours.
I just wish it didn’t have such a childishly daft name.
