The Hyundai Ioniq is a cheaper and more spacious alternative to the Toyota Prius. Although it isn’t ground-breaking by any stretch of the imagination; this solid entrant by Hyundai into the EV market will likely open up more people to the reality of owning an EV. This should compete heavily with the against the Nissan Leaf, and it’s range may even have enough to attract a few existing Nissan customers over.
The Hyundai Ioniq has an output of 139bhp that allows it to launch from 0-100km/h in just under eleven seconds. Hyundai claims that the Ioniq will take you up to 250km on a single charge; however, we found the real world range to be around 180/190km, which is still a respectable return.
The Ioniq does suffer from road noise at higher speeds. For urban driving the electric engine is near silent. The aluminium rear suspension supplies good grip on the road making city driving a pleasure.
The interior of the Ioniq has a good quality finish and everything is well laid out for a nice intuitive setup. The infotainment system has a few too many buttons but displays real-time driving data and is quite pleasant to use. Hyundai use soft-touch plastics for most of the upper surfaces of the dashboard that add to the interior.
The standard trim Ioniq comes with 15 inch alloy wheels, rear parking sensors, Bluetooth, DAB radio, climate control, automatic emergency city braking, seven airbags and hill start assist.
The Ioniq comes fitted with autonomous emergency braking, hill-start assist control, lane departure warning system with lane keep assist, keyless entry and a tyre pressure monitoring system. It scored five stars in the NCAP rating.
It has excellent room to the back (although taller than average individuals may find their heads brushing against the roof), a small but usable boot, and it could save you a packet on fuel and tax bills over time.
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