The Hyundai Ioniq 5 N Is the Best Performance EV We've Driven
Electric cars have faced an uphill battle convincing enthusiasts they’re worth our time. No matter how quickly they can sprint to 60 mph, how many records they can break, or how good they look, EVs have always lacked the core tenets of driving enjoyment we hold so closely. Road & Track doesn’t treasure the MX-5 Miata because of its acceleration time, we treasure it because its lightweight body, perfect shifter, excellent balance, and high-revving engine combine to satisfy all the feelings we value most.
No manufacturer has cracked that code for electric cars. How can they? EVs have no engine, which means no sound, no vibrations, and no shifting. There’s only so much steering and suspension tuning can do to create an exciting experience. For 99 percent of the time, electric cars are soulless, silent boxes on wheels, no matter how hard marketing departments try to tell us otherwise.
The Hyundai Ioniq 5 N is the first car to convince me manufacturers might have a chance at capturing enthusiasts’ attention. Not because engineers have honed the electric experience to make it exciting, but because it adds our favorite elements of combustion cars to the EV experience.
The N treatment: big tire, big power, wider track, new suspension
N to Hyundai is what M is for BMW. It’s the company’s performance arm, tasked with extracting the most fun from the standard cars in Hyundai’s lineup. So far N has hit nothing but home runs, with its first car sold in the U.S., the Veloster N, taking our Performance Car of the Year award in 2020. It’s since introduced the quicker and better-handling Elantra N, alongside the most enjoyable front-wheel-drive crossover on the market, the Kona N. In Europe it sells the equally fantastic i20 N and i30 N hot hatches.
N’s track record is overwhelmingly positive, but making a version of the Ioniq 5 worthy of the N badge is uncharted territory. It’s the performance brand’s first EV, with a platform and drivetrain distinct from its existing offerings. The brief is to turn the Ioniq 5 into something enthusiasts can enjoy—a huge undertaking for any EV, much less a two-ton crossover.
“We see electric cars, they go fast and straight,” Hyundai Germany marketing director Till Wartenburg says. “But they’re not really what we understand as driving fun. They haven’t won our hearts.”
For more performance, all the usual suspects are present. The Hyundai Ioniq 5 N gets a new battery pack and two motors, one for each axle, with the rear featuring the same electronically controlled limited-slip differential from the Veloster N and Elantra N, beefed up to deal with the extra torque. Exact specs have yet to be released, but Hyundai says the Ioniq 5 N prototype I drove at a recent track test at the Nürburgring Grand Prix circuit is making around 600 hp. There’s also a wider track, a heavily revised suspension, and 275 section-width tires on wheels shrouding four-piston, 15.7-inch front brakes—the biggest for any Hyundai product, ever.
Hyundai could’ve stopped there, turning the Ioniq 5 into a quicker version of what it already was. But it decided to take a different path, looking to its gas-powered N cars for inspiration on how to inject the same sort of driving enjoyment into its quick EVs. To that end, it’s added a virtual dual-clutch transmission called N e-shift.
N e-shift re-introduces shifting into the EV equation
The Ioniq 5 N has just one gear, but with N e-shift turned on, you’ll be convinced you have eight. Using paddle shifters mounted to the steering wheel, you can shift between them just like an Elantra N equipped with a dual-clutch. The simulated ratios work with a synthesized engine soundtrack and a tachometer displayed in the digital gauge cluster.
“Every corner has its own characteristics, its own Gear, RPM, and speed,” executive technical advisor (and former head of R&D) Albert Biermann says. “For us driving enthusiasts, these three things together give you a certain excitement of driving. In a normal EV, there are no gears, one of those three is gone. And that takes a lot of excitement and involvement away. But the Ioniq 5 N is not a normal EV.”
It’s not like you’re just hearing shifts while the car accelerates in a flat, linear fashion. The entire driveline has been programmed to work with N e-shift to convince you this car actually has gears. Hyundai engineers dialed specific torque graphs for each gear, with plateaus to make it feel like you’re approaching the end of the rev range, along with torque cuts every time you pull a paddle. I know it sounds hard to believe, but it feels like you’re driving a car with an internal combustion engine, not an EV.
Battery tech designed to survive a trackday
Hyundai also spent a significant amount of time and money attempting to solve a major pain point in the enthusiast EV space: battery degradation.
“There are high-powered EVs that officially can make a fast lap [on the Nürburgring],” Biermann says. “But they don’t give cars to the media because [the batteries] degrade by the Döttinger Höhe,” the turn just before the back straight.
The 800-volt battery’s cooling architecture is totally new, complete with more efficient radiator packaging and more venting up front. There’s a radiator specifically dedicated to cooling the battery, along with a stronger water pump to flow more coolant to the cells quicker. But Hyundai didn’t stop at the hardware level. The impressive bits come buried within the software.
Selectable battery modes for different kinds of driving
The Korean company integrated two different levels of battery preconditioning into the Ioniq 5 N for drivers to choose from: Drag and Race. Both adjust the temperature of the battery pack to optimize performance depending on the conditions where the driver plans to use the car. Drag will precondition the battery between 86 and 104 degrees fahrenheit to deliver a maximum burst of power for short-distance sprints, while Race will set the battery to between 68 and 86 degrees to maintain constant power through longer lapping stints.
There’s also an N Race menu, designed specifically for instances where you plan to take the Ioniq 5 N to a race track. There are two further modes here: Sprint and Endurance. Sprint is made for hot laps and setting times, giving the driver as much power as possible from the battery. Endurance prioritizes range over pure power, enhancing efficiency while still providing enough grunt to have fun on a closed course. It’s this mode you’ll use for things like 20-minute track sessions where fun is the goal, not outright lap times. Biermann says the team’s target, using this tech, is to lap the Ioniq 5 N around the Nürburgring twice before battery degradation rears its ugly head. And the car, as it sits now, can just about do it.
One unavoidable aspect of electric cars is weight. The regular Ioniq 5 weighs 4687 pounds. With the extra cooling apparatus, bigger wheels and tires, and over 40 reinforcement points added to the chassis, we suspect the N model will be even heavier. Hyundai knows this, which is why it’s spent a lot of time developing the regenerative brake system to enhance stopping power. The company claims regenerative braking alone on the Ioniq 5 N can generate 0.6 g of force, up from the industry typical 0.4 g. Not only does this take stress away from the traditional braking system, but it also helps to elongate battery performance over a stint of lapping, as it can feed energy back into the battery on deceleration.
The e-shift mode helps on track
In practice, the Ioniq 5 N is a revelation. You won’t find a more enjoyable experience from an EV on sale today unless you hop in a 30-hp electric go-kart. Much of that feeling comes from the tech obfuscating that I was driving an electric car. I was only able to run about seven laps on track, and I chose to spend most of those laps in the N e-shift mode, where paddles were required and there was a fake engine noise being pumped into the cabin. Not because it was the fastest way around the track (it is, in fact, the slower mode), but because having the sound of an engine, a tachometer to look at, and gears to shuffle through allows for an extra level of feedback that usually isn’t there in electric cars. I could better place the car, time my braking zones, and nail my accelerator application on corner exit.
Even with all that tech, though, it’s still apparent the Ioniq 5 N is an EV. The immediate cannon-burst of torque is always available to launch you out of bends when you put your foot to the floor. The weight is there too, but smart suspension tuning and power distribution means it’s still well-controlled if you really lean into the chassis. The car didn't fall apart at the limit, and didn’t exhibit any loss in power from lap one to lap seven. It’s tough to get a good gauge of the Ioniq 5 N’s true track capabilities with such a short time behind the wheel, but first impressions are good.
Things are equally impressive on the road. During a short jaunt through the German countryside, Hyundai let us carve through some lovely B roads to find out if the Ioniq 5 N’s gimmicks translate to fun away from a closed course. The best way to describe this car’s mannerisms are as a cross between an N car like the Elantra N and a BMW M car from the late 2010s. It blends the Elantra’s hooliganistic nature with the mature poise of a bigger, heavier performance sedan. You can feel the mass but it’s all down low, as the battery pack is in the floor. Engineers have dialed in a sublime balance into the chassis that inspires lots of confidence. It doesn’t feel totally natural; the torque split from front to rear seems to change depending on throttle application and steering wheel angle, making for some funky exits that don’t always feel the same from one corner to the next. But it’s still unlike any EV I’ve driven... in a good way.
On the road, the Ioniq 5 N is ridiculous
Playing with the different modes on the street feels far more gimmicky on the road versus the track. There are three different “engine” sounds to choose from: Ignition, Evolution, and Supersonic. Ignition sounds like N’s gas-powered offerings, while Evolution is more of an electric motor whine. Flip the Ioniq 5 N into N mode and select the Ignition sound, and you’ll be greeted with synthesized crackles each time you lift the throttle from the rear-mounted in-cabin speakers. Supersonic, the most ridiculous of the bunch, sounds like a turbine jet engine, with sonic boom sound noises entering the cabin each time you shift. An engineer later told me the sound was directly inspired by Top Gun: Maverick. They also told me the sounds have yet to be finalized, so an entirely different set of fake engine noises could make the cut once production begins.
Where the Ioniq 5 N sits in the market
Unlike the six-figure Porsche Taycan, one-trick-pony Tesla Model S Plaid, and the record-setting Rimac Nevera, we expect the Ioniq 5 N to be available for about the price of a new M3. Hyundai told us it wants to continue making fun performance cars for the people, avoiding a trip too far upmarket. So while this will be the most expensive N car ever, don’t expect it to be an unobtainable, six-figure affair.
Hyundai plans to reveal the production-ready Ioniq 5 N on July 13 at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, where we’ll learn about exact specifications and upgrades. Until then, engineers will continue fine-tuning the car’s software to perfect the wizardry going on underneath the skin. This car is, without a doubt, the only EV that should matter right now for enthusiasts. It doesn’t just push the needle forward for fun zero-free emissions. It sends the needle into another dimension. When it comes to fun, there’s no electric vehicle on the market that comes close. It approaches the idea of an enjoyable EV in a way that nothing else on sale does, and comes with the engineering to back up serious lapping sessions. It’s not just smoke and mirrors. The Ioniq 5 N is the real deal.
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