Distance: 473 km
Location: Scotland, England
Date: 22-23 September 2023
Up front: It’s got roomy elbow space and just enough legroom to feel like a small mid-size car even though it’s a compact hatchback. There’s enough room on the centre console armrest for both front-seat adults to use but the cupholders are in the way of the gear shifter. The elephant-grey interior is a bit drab but most of the materials are either soft-touch fake leather or soft plastics making up for the boring colours. The inside feels slightly dated in this final model year of the Ioniq.
The navigation screen only works with Apple CarPlay if the phone is plugged in—no wireless option here even though a wireless charging pad is available. The centre console is mostly piano black, but the British weather means that the sun never makes an issue of it. There are plenty of buttons for basic functions like air conditioning and music that don’t rely on the screen. The driver’s digital dashboard display is crisp with nice graphics, but it wouldn’t have hurt to just have used the old needle and dial to save a few quid. It is an economy car after all.
In the back: I had a six-foot-tall passenger in the car who was able to just about sit behind his front-seat configuration. However, I would not recommend adult rear seat passengers ride for trips longer than an hour. The compact classification means rear headroom is tight with a sloping sedan-like roofline, so installing rear-facing child seats means compromising on front-passenger comfort. The visibility in the second row is good, which can reduce motion sickness.
The boot is nice and rectangular with a deep floor, but that deep floor also means the half-foot high loading lip could make it physically challenging to load heavy or bulky objects. There is some storage under the false floor without the spare tire, but I’d rather have a spare tire for peace of mind. The sedan-like rear silhouette reduces rear storage space in the name of beauty and fuel efficiency, so I’d rather have the practicality of a true hatchback.
Driving: A petrol engine drives the front wheels while an electric motor powers the rear axle. This front-wheel biased configuration reduces understeer and increases confidence when accelerating on wet roads. Regenerative braking is intuitive and automatically kicks in when the driver depresses the brake pedal up to a third of the way, making it easier to learn to drive than a one-pedal setup. Well done to Hyundai’s tuning department.
Although it has a terrible turning radius, the steering wheel’s quick reaction makes the Ioniq feel nimble around town. It’s confident up to about 110 km/h on the motorway, but don’t expect too much beyond that. Fuel efficiency is stunning in this hybrid setup and I managed to exceed its official WLTP figure of 62.8 mpg over the entire trip by achieving 66.7 mpg driving as I normally would, making it competitive with the similarly-priced Toyota Prius.
