Video: 2025 Hyundai Ioniq 5 N Up Close: Transformed Into a Track Machine

Let's check it out. The IONIQ 5 N does have that distinct IONIQ 5 shape, but pretty much everything else is different. It's longer, lower, wider and a whole lot meaner looking. The front styling is nearly entirely different. You get some nice luminous orange accents here and on the lower lip spoiler, a lot more aerodynamic bits as well. And air intakes for cooling because this is a performance car, you come along the sides, you get unique 21 inch wheels. Up front you have 15.75 inch brakes, those are colossal. Fender flares, more aero bits, more luminous orange accents as well. And as you come along to the back, there's a checkered flag motif to really emphasize the performance nature of the car. And then there's also this massive rear spoiler and also this rear diffuser as well. (crowd chattering indistinctly) There's a lot going on in the interior of the IONIQ 5 as well. You get these really great performance seats. They have fun little N logos that illuminate. You get an all new steering wheel design with lots of different controls for things, like, the N Grin Boost feature. We'll get to that in a second. More N mode controls here, paddles to control various regenerative braking features as well. But what's great about this for me is as performance oriented as this is, this is still a very roomy, very utilitarian cabin. You get lots of great storage down here, a nice tray for wireless device charging, USB charging as well. And Hyundai realized you're probably gonna be driving this car aggressively, so they actually increased the knee padding on the center console, which is something I appreciate as well. It's a really good looking interior. I'm really happy with the way this turned out. The front seats are actually mounted a little bit lower than in the regular IONIQ 5. That should help with more feel as you're doing your performance driving in this car. Really great layout, really happy with it. Nice physical controls as well. Good size touchscreen, digital instrument panel. Very happy up front but we should check out the back now. In back, this is really the spiritual successor to the Veloster and my dearly departed Veloster N. Very comfortable overall in terms of space. There could be a little bit more padding here, but it's nice that these back seats recline a little bit for more room. You get USB charging, some checkered flag detailing as well on the center console. I have a great amount of head room, I have a ton of leg room, kinda hard to put my feet too far forward before they get stuck under the front seat. But there is a decent amount of leg room and with the flat floor that the EV architecture allows for, I can move my feet around, there's no tunnel cutting into foot room laterally. So overall, very comfortable in back, big fan. This is a performance car that's still very useful. (crowd chattering indistinctly) Styling is all well and good, but the IONIQ 5 N really walks the walk when it comes to performance as well. It has a larger 84 kilowatt hour battery pack compared to the long-range IONIQ 5 77.4 pack and it makes in its dual motor setup, 601 horsepower in normal driving. And if you activate the N Grin Boost, that goes up to 641 horsepower. (crowd chattering indistinctly) That's a lot. Hyundai says the IONIQ 5 N can go from 0 to 60 in an estimated 3.4 seconds. But what's just as important for EVs is charging time. And fortunately for buyers, Hyundai has given this the same basic fast charging capabilities of the regular IONIQ 5, giving you, according to Hyundai's estimates, 10% state of charge in your battery to 80% state of charge in as little as 18 minutes in ideal conditions. There's a lot that factors into that, but in theory this is a very fast charging EV when everything works in your favor. You know, back to the performance aspect. We're not just talking about straight line speed with the IONIQ 5 N. There's a lot that goes into performance and being a good track car. There's so much that goes into it that I'm actually going to have to consult my phone to give you the list of every feature Hyundai has packed into this car. We've already mentioned N Grin boost, which gives you a brief increase in power. There's the N Pedal system, which optimizes the regenerative braking for better turn in and improved cornering as opposed to efficiency. So you're not gonna see as much extended range from the regen braking, but it's gonna make cornering this a lot easier. There's N Torque Distribution, that gives you 11 different ways to configure the torque distribution between the front and rear. N Drift Optimizer is fairly self-explanatory, but if you wanna drift this car, it will help you do that. It will simulate a clutch kick, it will make it more controllable for you when you're in the drift. Really nice feature if you wanna have fun on a track. There's N Launch Control that has three different settings depending on what you're doing for various conditions and pavement types. There's N Race mode which gives you both endurance and sprint settings, so you can prioritize the amount of laps you wanna do or your best lap time. Let's see, N battery preconditioning. (crowd chattering indistinctly) Again, pretty self-explanatory. It preconditions the battery for the performance driving you wanna do, whether that's drag strip driving or track driving. N Brake Regen is separate from the N Pedal system, but it returns energy to the battery pack while reducing the load on the front brakes and the rear brakes to help reduce brake fade during performance driving. 'Cause this is going to be a fairly heavy car no matter what and we don't want the brakes to fade while we're driving fast because we'd like to be able to slow down. (crowd chattering indistinctly) There's also N Active Sound Plus. Now one of the flaws of an EV is just, it's not gonna give you those same performance cues of an internal combustion car. So you have to, you know, pay attention to more things in front of you instead of just listening and knowing things, like, gear and so on. This simulates that to help induce those feelings. Same with the N e-shift, which will simulate Hyundai's excellent eight-speed, dual-clutch automatic for better performance characteristics while you're going fast. And I know you've noticed the theme where everything starts with an N, the last feature is just called track state of charge, no N, but that helps you track efficiency, pun intended, while you're doing track driving, so that you can keep an eye on how your battery is performing. Now, that's all well and good. I can't wait to drive this thing. I really wanna get it out on a track and see what it can do. Hyundai says it's going on sale in March. We don't have any information on pricing yet. Expect it to be more. We also don't have official range estimates, but it's gonna be less, it might not be the lowest range IONIQ 5, but it will be towards the bottom for sure. Now for more details on the IONIQ 5 N and everything else here at the 2023 Los Angeles Auto Show, you can find it on cars.com.