Hyundai’s electrifying hatch is IconiQ, iNsane, and I love it

You would not mistake this for one of my usual “family car” review vehicles. Except perhaps if your family was sponsored by Red Bull.

3 min read

January 1, 2025 - 9:32PM

The genius of the Hyundai IONIQ 5 N is how it uses computer trickery to fool you into thinking you’re driving an old-school hoon-mobile.

Motoring

Don't miss out on the headlines from Motoring. Followed categories will be added to My News.

You know you’re driving something special when they tell you not to worry about scratching the wheels because an ex-V8 Supercars legend had just shredded a set of tyres at Queensland Raceway the previous weekend.

Yep, having taken out pretty much every significant “car of the year” title around the world in 2024, Hyundai decided it was time for the blistering IONIQ 5 N’s toughest test – a week ferrying around the Tomlinson tribe in suburban Brisbane.

From any angle, you would not mistake this for one of my usual “family car” review vehicles. Except perhaps if your family was sponsored by Red Bull.

But is is the silly season after all, and literally everyone in the motoring world wants to get their hands on this, Hyundai’s genre-melting EV that has been lighting up race tracks and almost singlehandedly changing the minds of old-school revheads who believe electric cars can never match the thrill of combustion-engined cars.

Hyundai has accepted the challenge and left absolutely nothing in the tank, so to speak, taking the clever – and bigger than it looks – IONIQ and giving it 478kW/770Nm of silent but deadly grunt, driving through all four wheels (or just the rears if you’re in drift mode).

That’s all well and good – EVs are quick, that’s old news – but the genius of the IONIQ 5 N is how it uses computer trickery to fool you into thinking you’re driving an old-school hoon-mobile.

The tech is called N e-Shift and N-Active Sound+ and it’s groundbreaking in the world of performance EVs, harnessing the instantaneous throttle response of the electic motors but synthesising “gear shifts” and piping engine and exhaust noise into the cabin.

The result is astounding.

Hyundai’s nerds have created a Matrix-esque experience where the car literally tricks your brain into thinking, responding an behaving like you’re driving the world’s most ridiculously modified hot hatch.

I knew it was a fake exhaust blurt between “shifts”; I knew a computer was telling the motors to shudder to make me feel like I’d just changed gears; I knew I wasn’t actually wringing the thing’s neck in “second” before launching hard into “third” – but I didn’t care. I believed it, and I loved it.

The track-focused cockpit of the Hyundai IONIQ 5 N. Picture: Thomas Wielecki

As Cypher, Keanu Reeves’s traitorous crewmate tells Hugo Weaving’s Agent Smith as he tucks into a digital steak, ignorance really is bliss.

As well as performance stuff, which is really all this car is about, it actually does a lot of the work of a five-door hatch really well, too. It’s way bigger than it looks, with heaps of room for my family of four in the huggy sports seats.

Ignoring all the crazy track-day buttons on the dash and steering wheel, the IONIQ 5 N is packed with all the latest mod cons you would expect.

This one had a lovely big panoramic sunroof with a cover that opens forward and backwards from the centre, which my little boys got a kick out of.

In full auto mode, you wouldn’t hesitate letting your mum have it for the day. It’s predictable and not really that racy in normal mode, all the important controls are where you expect them to be and it works really well for the boring everyday drive.

But the aggressive styling, colour flashes, extra wings and beefy wheels and tyres drew a lot of attention during my short time with the car.

Most people who like cars seemed to know what they were looking at and I was delighted to get a few questions from older rev-heads around town.

While it’s one of the world’s most epic performance vehicles of the moment, the asking price is steep unless you’re taking advantage of all that racing tech.

It would be hard to justify it as a pure family car, especially when that sort of money would get you into a nice Land Cruiser – or his and hers Kia Carnivals.

But nobody’s buying this car for the family. It’s basically a supercar! And if you’re comparing it on performance, you won’t get anything close to the IONIQ 5 N’s driving experience for anywhere close to this money.

How’s that for “boy math”?