Pictured at minus 30 degrees Celsius, which is minus 22 degrees Fahrenheit over in the United States, the Ioniq 5 N is ready to pounce. Hyundai will take the camouflage off its first performance-oriented EV in July 2023, which means that retailers will get it for the 2024 model year.
Starring alongside the i20 N WRC Rally 1 in the featured clip, the Ioniq 5 N is an oversteery machine on snow. Chances are its oversteering antics will carry over to the road as well, more so considering that it has drift mode.
Hyundai refers to said feature as N Drift Optimizer. The system manages front and rear torque distribution, steering effort, electronic limited-slip differential, stiffness of the suspension, and torque rate. It’s also said to be friendly with drivers who intend to wag the tail out on purpose for the very first time.
The attached video was filmed at the South Korean automaker’s Arjeplog-based winter testing facility in Sweden. The prototype is running German license plates because Hyundai is rocking a technical center in Russelsheim, which is the home turf of the Opel brand.
Scheduled to become N’s first series-production vehicle with all-wheel drive, the Ioniq 5 N was developed primarily for driving fun with input from the motorsport division that oversees the Hyundai World Rally Team. Also spied testing at the Nurburgring, the crossover-bodied thriller is dubbed a year-round performance EV by the people who designed it, which it surely is given the way it handles in extreme arctic winter conditions.
Another strong point of the Ioniq 5 N is N Torque Distribution, a system that allows the driver to vary the torque level to the front and rear axles. Hyundai states that N Torque Distribution and the electronic limited-slip differential mentioned earlier work together to respond as quickly as possible in low-grip conditions.
The press release attached below does not mention any concrete numbers whatsoever, although we do know that somewhere in the region of 600 ponies are in the offing. Those are the words of technical advisor Albert Biermann, who took his BMW M expertise to the Hyundai Motor Group. It’s not exactly a coincidence that Hyundai’s performance sub-brand is called N, although bear in mind that N also comes from the South Korea-based Namyang research & development center.
Biermann estimated anything between 580 and 620 metric horsepower back in September 2022, when the numbers weren’t finalized. In mechanical horsepower, make that 572 at the least and 612 at the most. Considering that Kia squeezed out 576 ponies and 545 pound-feet (739 Nm) from the dual-motor setup of the EV6 GT, the peeps at Hyundai certainly improved on that because the Ioniq 5 N has to stand out in the crowd.
Oh, and speaking of standing out, check out that rear windshield wiper every Ioniq 5 owner would like to have on their pre-2024 cars.
After a 1:43 scale model of a Ferrari 250 GTO sparked Mircea's interest for cars when he was a kid, an early internship at Top Gear sealed his career path. He's most interested in muscle cars and American trucks, but he takes a passing interest in quirky kei cars as well. Full profile
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