Video: Hyundai Ioniq 5 Vs. Tesla Model Y: Functional Vs. Funky

And this focus we've seen in the world of gas powered SUVs is now translating to the world of all electric SUVs. As more established brands enter the market to try and get a foothold. One of them is Hyundai, which has a new IONIQ 5 SUV for the 2022 model year. And so we thought, well, what if we compare it to our long term Tesla Model Y? It's one of the most popular electric SUVs out there. So to do that, we spent a week with these SUVs testing them as we normally do on back-to-back driving loops, evaluating their features and interior fit, other aspects of the cabin, and also taking them to the drag strip to get measured, acceleration testing and also going on a road trip to really see how they charged on the road in addition to charging at home. But before we take a look at what we liked and didn't like about these SUVs, let's take a closer look at the specific versions we tested. So we've really considered the Model Y, the standard for EV SUVs. We bought one last year and we even named it our best EV of 2022. And the car that we bought last year was a 2021 Tesla Model Y, long range all-wheel drive with 326 miles of EPA rated range. The Model Y is now $12,000 more than when we bought it because of price hikes over the past year. So if you bought our car now, it would actually be $72,000. Whereas the IONIQ 5 is just a little over $57,000. Our car has the optional third row, the tow package, we stuck with the standard 19 inch wheels, and ours has the optional blue paint And the IONIQ 5 we tested was a top of the line limited trim level with all-wheel drive and an EPA estimated driving range of 256 miles. And it also comes with a number of upscale features like heated and ventilated front seats, a panoramic glass roof, and dual 12.3 inch screens on the dashboard. And the price of this model is $56,000, but ours was a little higher because it had a few options. A thousand dollars for a matte finish paint and around $200 for carpeted floor mats, which brought the as tested price to a little over $57,000. But that's before any tax credits that a buyer might be eligible for are factored in. So, Joe, one of the biggest differences we saw between these two was in terms of their acceleration performance. Yeah, and we had some inclination of that would be the way it was by just driving them on the street. But once we got them on the track with our measure testing equipment we actually found that 0 to 60 mile an hour for both of these, almost exactly the same. You're looking at 4.7 seconds. And that was a lot faster than Hyundai said this could go. So I was really surprised to see 4.7 seconds 0 to 60. And the Model Y was exactly the same. So the difference though was where we ran it out past 60 miles an hour. So in quarter mile testing, the Tesla ran 12.7 and the IONIQ 5 ran 13.1. What really tells you that the Model Y is making more power though, is in its mile an hour speed at the end of the quarter mile. It was 10 miles an hour faster than the IONIQ 5. <v Mike>So we had more mixed feelings though on which SUV offered the better braking experience. Yeah, so it really came down to the regenerative braking modes and how each car lets you access those. And I really preferred the Tesla in this case because I can enter the regenerative mode that I like which was hold mode, and the one pedal driving, which Tesla says is the mode that will preserve the most range. And I liked how I can just enter that mode in the touch screen and then it just stays in that mode. And I can drive the car one pedal driving, which I really like more than just preserving range, but I like the control that I have and how smoothly I can drive with one pedal driving. I very rarely find myself using the brake pedal in this car, except when I really need to slow down quickly. Yeah, I also liked one pedal driving in the Tesla, especially because you can tie it to your profile. So like you can have it one way. Maybe your spouse or someone else driving the car can have it less so. So you can set it up how you want. Whereas the IONIQ 5, it's a selection based on paddles on the steering wheel, but the thing I liked about how Hyundai does it is that it offers a lot of variability. You can have a lot of coasting function if you don't like one pedal driving or you're new to it, and you're not sure you wanna stay in that mode. And then you can work your way up to it. You can raise it so there's more regenerative force all the way to choosing a one pedal driving setup. The one thing though is that we found it didn't stay in one pedal driving when you restarted. So that was something you always had to reselect. And we didn't really understand why that was setup that way. So another area where these SUVs we thought were pretty different was in terms of their ride quality. And that was really born out in the scores from our driving loops in them. The Tesla Model Y had half the points that the IONIQ 5 earned. And that even with having a smaller wheel setup than the IONIQ 5. The Model Y has our 19 inch wheels and tires, while the IONIQ 5 has 20 inch wheels. Ride quality, breaking it down, you have ride firmness and ride quality, right? So the firmness of the Model Y is undeniably stiffer. It is sprung like a sports car. And you feel that and you also hear it in the way that the tires impact the road. There's so much tire impact noise and harshness. I think overall quality though, like when you do hit a bump, it feels good. Like, the car's not sloppy. You're not feeling the wheels and the suspension and flex and everything feels solid. But when we're talking firmness, it is night and day difference driving these two cars. The biggest point spread that we observed in our scoring of how these drove was handling. And we set up a small handling course in an open parking lot and really saw the differences between these two. And it's the inverse of the ride quality. The Tesla beat the IONIQ 5 by a lot. It really wasn't even close. And on that course the Model Y really does have sports car-like handling. Sports car-like. You know, it's still an SUV. It's heavy, there's weight to it. But the sharpness in how it steers and how flat on that course. The IONIQ 5 was just kind of a mess. It was kind of sloppy, all over the place, door handles dragging on the ground. Like there was so much body motion and those tires just were not happy the entire way. So not that it makes any promises of being a sports car, but if you do want an engaging driving experience, I didn't get that behind the IONIQ 5 at all. Yeah and I think that experience translates to the street. You can feel it in the steering, just how responsive it is. Like even minor steering corrections in the wheel, you're feeling that right away in the front tires. It's moving with your steering inputs right away. But at the same time, it doesn't feel overly twitchy when you're at highway speeds. So they've got that figured out. So it's the right tuning at both low and high speeds. And like you were saying, if you're willing to put up with the ride quality or live in a place where the roads are mostly smooth, you get this great benefit in terms of the handling from the Model Y. We think home charging is a must for successful EV ownership, specifically level two charging. And the Model Y has always been one of those cars, well, we awarded because it does home charging so well. So did we see an advantage here versus the IONIQ 5? Yeah, we did see a pretty big advantage with the Model Y in our home charging test. We used a wallbox Pulsar Plus 48 amp EVSE on a 60 amp dedicated circuit. And we started the vehicles at a similar state of charge and then charged them for an hour. And the results were pretty different. The Model Y added 46 miles of range during the hour, whereas the IONIQ 5 added 38 miles. And they used similar amount of energy. The IONIQ 5 added 11.3 kilowatt hours in that hour. And the Model Y added 11.5 kilowatt hours. So there's a real advantage there with the Model Y that you're using the same amount of energy in a given time but you're getting more miles of range in that time. So you can drive farther once you unplug. But how did it look when we did our fast charging with these cars? Yeah, so the fast charging test. We had the availability of a 250 kilowatt supercharger which is the faster supercharger at the moment. And we also had a 350 kilowatt Electrify America DC fast charger within 10 minutes of each other. So same day, same range, same state of charge. We took them to the fast charger to see which one would charge faster from 18 to 80%. So both cars added around 160 miles of range. It took 28 minutes to do that in the Model Y and it took 18 minutes to do that in the IONIQ 5. And so, you know, what we judged the score was based on miles of range added per minute, and it was 8 1/2 miles of range per minute on the IONIQ 5 and about 6 for the Model Y. So a little disappointing but the other consideration here is in the Chicago area, which is being generous because Rockford is 90 miles west of Chicago, there are only two of these 350 kilowatt chargers that we use for the IONIQ 5 test. There are many more Tesla 250 kilowatt chargers in our area. So we also saw how these vehicles take a different approach with vehicle user interface. With the Tesla everything centralized in that touch screen. And while I thought the screen interface is pretty well done overall, at least in the current iteration, we've experienced continuous software updates during our ownership that's modified some elements of the experience. But right now I found it pretty easy to get it useful for the most part. Though Tesla, they've taken a few steps backwards, in my view, in terms of consolidating some features that are really easier to use with a physical control. One thing I noticed we were doing some of the driving loops in the rain and the automatic windshield wipers were not activating for me. So I kept fumbling for the mist button on the end of the turn signal stock when I really would've liked to just easily set the wiper how I wanted. And also I got used to having a lot of the information that would normally be in an instrument panel right in front of you on that left side of the screen. But in some other Tesla products, like the Model S, they do give you that digital cluster right in front, and that's not here but I think I would've preferred it if something like that was. But in the IONIQ 5 though, it's kind of more traditional in terms of giving you a center screen and a digital instrument panel. Yeah, it's normalized. It's the normal EV that we've been waiting for, right? Mostly, anyway. Automakers tend to view the EV as kind of a halo vehicle. So let's introduce this new wild crazy screen technology, gear selector, or drive selector. You still-- have park, reverse gear selector. Yeah, exactly. So it's refreshing to get in the IONIQ 5 and just, here's an instrument panel. Here's a separate media screen, touch screen, and also a head-up display, which is nice. The Tesla though, it does some great things with its screen. Does some really goofy things with its screen. The update you mentioned, it just updated to fix what it broke right before this test. And we went like five months without having these features at the surface that we really wanted. And now it's back, which was nice. But it was really annoying to have this feature and setup that we loved and then a software update wipes it out. And now it's back. So that's just, I'm really annoyed by that. And the ability for that vehicle to do that. I can't get used to this speedometer in the upper left-hand side of the screen though. We've driven this thing thousands of miles now and I'm not used to it. So to get into the IONIQ 5 with the traditional instrument panel and a head-up display with all that information right in front of you, it was refreshing, except for the fact that the driving position just doesn't work with the instrument panel. I couldn't get it right. Yeah, that was one thing I also noticed that when I had the steering wheel positioned where I wanted I couldn't see the speed read out. I couldn't see the range remaining. I was kind of always ducking under to see it. And so I ended up driving with the steering wheel positioned a little higher. So that was kind of an odd thing. The thing I noticed about the head-up display which I liked having here, which is something that Tesla doesn't give you. Normally I like to set it really low but it wouldn't lower the actual view at your windshield level low enough for me. So it was kind of like right in front of my face and it was distracting. So I ended up turning it off. So I didn't get the benefit a lot of the time of what it can do, the different information it can show. It has an augmented reality element to it that gives you a little bit more information. So I liked having the head-up display, but I just wasn't able to put exactly where I wanted to. So there's also some significant differences between these SUVs when we're looking at in-cabin storage and cargo space. With the Model Y I thought it really had a very traditional setup in terms of a front center console with cup holders, some storage areas. But I was a little surprised in a sense because this is a company that is all about challenging everything that the conventional automotive industry is doing and how it builds its cars and how it updates its cars. But this is just like what you see in many other vehicles. Whereas the IONIQ 5, it really had a pretty unique setup that we haven't seen something like it in anything else. Yeah, so with the EV platform you have the affordability of open space. You don't need a transmission tunnel or drive shaft tunnel. So you can do more things with that space. Hyundai has, Tesla hasn't really, at least in the front. So our car is a 2021, but it has the updated center console. So we talk about how the software and the user interface can be updated. Sometimes Tesla will update the hardware too. So our car has the updated center console that doesn't have the clam shell type opening. It has a kind of traditional covered storage with an updated wireless charger pad that works much better than the old one did. Compared with the IONIQ 5 fill, you know, the covered storage is nice. It is pretty sizeable inside the center console and it is nice that you can close it and hide things. The IONIQ 5, it's an open space and it just makes the interior feel so much larger. Like it feels like a class larger vehicle when you're sitting in the front. And our car, the top trim level, the position of the entire center console can move too. So you can move back forward to give you more space for well, for me, it's generally a diaper bag that I'm carrying with for the kids, but a backpack or purse or something too that you can put up there. So when looking at the cargo numbers of these SUVs, behind the second row, and with the Tesla Model Y's third row folded, they were pretty similar in terms of measured space using our own measuring techniques so we can have comparability across these vehicles. But there's a pretty big difference in the front trunks and how sizable they are. The Model Y is big, it's nearly three cubic feet. Whereas the IONIQ 5 has about a 1/2 cubic foot bin that I don't know if I'd wanna put anything of real value in it because it's it's tucked just under the hood, but it's not set off from everything else that's underneath a hood of a vehicle. Like it's right next to the reservoirs for various fluids. Whereas the Model Y, you don't see any of that stuff. It's all closed off. You just have a nice sizeable bin. And I found the usability of the frunk in the Model Y to be usable in everyday life. Like you can actually put stuff in there, like a a suitcase. In the IONIQ 5, maybe a wallet. <v Mike>So these SUVs had pretty different exterior styling and that affects their visibility. Yeah, the Model Y it's not known for its great visibility out the back. It's decent when looking forward but it's natural visibility when you're looking in the rear view mirror, you're looking over your shoulder, the aggressively sloped rear roof line and the small hatch window don't give you a lot of visibility out the back. The IONIQ 5 though, it's just a normal car, right? It doesn't have that crazy sloping rear roof line. It's got a very upright shape and the natural visibility is really good. Yeah, I noticed that in the Model Y, the rear window, it only gives you a sliver of a view of what's behind you. I was losing sight of small vehicles that were pulled up right on the rear bumper. And that was kind of shocking to see in a relatively new vehicle, just kind of that type of lack of view out. Now these do have some supplemental visibility aids, electronic aids that help. But even those are done differently too. Yeah, the Model Y's blind spot monitoring system is not a traditional blind spot monitoring system where you have little amber lights that illuminate in the side view mirrors when there's something in your blind spot. I really like those. Just having that image in your periphery of being able to instantly look over and see. 'Cause you just naturally look over at your mirror anyway before you change lanes. What the Model Y does is it gives you an image of your car or a graphic illustration of your car in the screen, and then it shows other cars around it. And if you get near something it turns red and it beeps and it yells at you. There's also a feature that was added late last year with the system update where there's a blind spot camera image. So you turn on your turn signal and in the corresponding turn signal, that camera shows its image in the main touch screen, but it's low in the touch screen. And it's actually a feature that we saw first on Hyundai vehicles, the blind spot camera. And it's done better in the Hyundai. And the Hyundai has a traditional blind spot monitoring system that will show you there's a car in your blind spot, in the mirrors as well as the head-up display, which is a nice touch. And when you use turn signals, you see the image from the camera in the mirrors showing you an image of what's in your blind spot. Although the seating position irregularities that we talked about earlier, that prevented me from actually seeing the camera display because the steering wheel was stretching over the instrument panel. So the Model Y really excelled at delivering the sporty driving experience. It did well from a home charging aspect. And it had good front and rear cargo space. But it came up short against the IONIQ 5 when we were looking at some more practical focus things. Whether it was ride quality, kind of normalized interior, in-cabin storage, and visibility. And it also came up short when we were looking at our kind of judging its value. If you buy the Model Y now it's $72,440. And the IONIQ 5 is around $57,000. Where I expected the Model Y to do better in our testing, it didn't really. Looking at range and efficiency, the Model Y has an advantage on paper, but in our testing it just didn't play out that way. It was the most efficient in our driving loop and it did have more predicted range. It was also the closest as far as range predictions. But it wasn't enough. It wasn't enough to make you feel like you have this much more of an EV for the money. So when all the scores were added up, it was the Hyundai IONIQ 5 that came out ahead as our winner, proving that even a brand that has been building gas powered vehicles for decades and decades can build a compelling EV that competes and beats one of those standard bears in the class. So we know that different things matter to different buyers in choosing an EV. So if you wanna read all the scores that went into determining our winner, check out the full article here at cars.com/news.