[Auto] First drive: 2021 Hyundai Ioniq 5 prototype review

[Agent47]

 

Who among the established car makers has, in recent times, changed the way the world perceived their marque with but one brilliantly conceived product?

There certainly aren’t many. Audi and the mid-engined R8 supercar; maybe Fiat and the fine job it did reinventing the 500. Bentley’s Continental GT?

Well, here’s the latest member of that club. And one glance at the Hyundai Ioniq 5 will have you wondering whether this all-new electric crossover – an avant-garde but also staunchly traditional two-box hatchback with, of all things, Lancia Delta Integrale overtones – isn’t the most potent episode of perception-bending of them all.

We’ll come back to the design shortly, not least because all is not quite as it seems, but when was the last time a mass-market Hyundai stopped you dead in your tracks?

Design isn’t the only ambush that Hyundai has laid here, either: there’s also the timing. It was only on 23 February that the Ioniq 5 was revealed to the world, yet here we are in April with a pre-production example to become acquainted with on Warwickshire roads.

Get up very close and on this one you can even pick out patches where the disguise cladding fitted for public testing in Germany has worn through the shimmering metallic paint – although cars in mint condition should reach customers as early as late June.
The Ioniq 5 has effectively been Hyundai’s lockdown project, and the short timeline means that some dynamic elements are still to be signed off before the first ‘proper’ cars go down the line at Ulsan, the South Korean plant so colossal that you need a helicopter to appreciate its scale. So no star rating today.

As for the idea itself, there’s an awful lot to digest. Ioniq has since 2016 been the name of Hyundai’s Volkswagen Golf-sized liftback, famous for being the first car ever to be offered in hybrid, plug-in hybrid and electric formats. As it stands, that car won’t be replaced when its life cycle ends and Ioniq will become an EV sub-brand that’s more premium in nature and pricing than anything we’ve yet seen from Hyundai. Already an Ioniq 6 mid-size saloon is slated to launch in 2022, and an Ioniq 7 large SUV will follow in 2024.

All three of those will be built on Hyundai’s new E-GMP electric car platform, which brings super-fast 800V charging capability and is claimed to have the mass-market’s first integrated drive axle – meaning the driveshafts and wheel bearings are combined, to the benefit of ride comfort and handling stability.

As for competition, the Ioniq 5 is aimed squarely at Volkswagen’s ID 4, although Hyundai executives say the EV field is currently so incipient and dispersed that their car could end up stealing sales from everything from the Nissan Leaf to the Tesla Model S.
Back to the look of the thing. It’s misleading, because the Ioniq 5 is proportioned much like your typical hatch (the Giugiaro-style forward-leading C-pillar and angry clamshell snout hark back to the birth of the class) but is actually a much bigger beast than the Golf. At 4735mm, it’s closer to the BMW X3 SUV in length, and its three-metre wheelbase surpasses that of even the X5.

Approach it and it’s this stature that hits you, even before the mad rifling on the wheel-arch cladding, the fabulously eight-bit LED matrix lights with their 256 cubic ‘pixels’ or the ‘Zorro’ slash that gives the car’s flanks an arresting origami-like quality, all of which are carried over from the 45 concept of the 2019 Frankfurt motor show.
It goes on: there are flush door handles, the neat spoiler is actually a wing, with slots allowing air to flow through it, and the solar-panel roof is used to power the car’s ancillary electrical systems and can in certain circumstances charge the battery.

The Ioniq 5 has a combination of simplicity and detail that makes it hard to unhitch your gaze from its features, which is exactly the payback that Hyundai has earned from heavy investments in its design department. As far back as 2006, it hired Peter Schreyer (ex-Audi) to kick-start the brand’s transformation, and then, in 2015, Luc Donckerwolke (ex-Lamborghini, where he led the Diablo, Murciélago and Gallardo projects) joined the team. What you see is the result.