Hyundai Ioniq 5 Buyer Pays Over MSRP, Finds Out Car Has No CCS Port and Can't Fast Charge

Imagine you get a Tesla Model Y or a BMW iX3, and while on a trip, you discover that it cannot use any direct-current fast charger (DCFC). That’s not something you want to find out while being far away from home.

But someone decided to pull the trigger on a relatively cheap but still marked-up Hyundai Ioniq 5 and went through this exact scenario. They found out that the car (which is known for its 800V architecture and the ability to extract power from the grid at a rate of 350 kW maximum) cannot use any fast-charging stall because it simply does not have the required CCS port. They’re stuck with Level 1 charging!

This person claims they paid CAD54,000 (USD39,478) for a Hyundai Ioniq 5 Essential after the CAD10,000 (USD7,310) rebate was applied. So, the price of the BEV originally was CAD64,000 (USD46,788), which put it at nearly CAD20,000 (USD14,621) over the MSRP without the rebate.

We looked around and found that a Hyundai dealer from Montreal is right now selling a Hyundai Ioniq 5 Essential for CAD36,587 (USD26,748), so this person should have certainly done some more research before pulling the trigger.

But their misfortune attracted the interest of other Ioniq 5 owners and enthusiasts who were in disbelief. Some even said that the customer might have missed the CCS port being covered by a piece of plastic. That was until the unlucky person published the pictures showing their BEV without the part that enables fast charging. Instead of a port, it was just a piece of hard plastic.

In today’s BEV market, most, if not all, customers expect their vehicles to come with a fast-charging functionality. Some may replenish their batteries at a faster rate than others, but this option is deemed as something standard, a must-have, so to say.

Sadly, the Ioniq 5 Essential doesn’t come with the 800V architecture and the bigger 77.4 kWh battery like the Preferred Long Range Model. This entry-level version has a 58-kWh nominal (53-kWh net) battery pack, and the maximum voltage is limited to 522.7V. Technically, it should still be able to fast charge, but not at the rate of the 800V vehicles.

Even Hyundai itself says that the Ioniq 5 Essential should be capable of fast charging, but the carmaker also says the Preferred trim is the one that comes with a couple of extra “Performance features,” which include the “EV Ultra Fast Charger, a heat pump, and the battery heating system. So, the Essential trim might not perform very well in the cold Canadian weather besides not having the CCS port. It also does not have the cool vehicle-to-load (V2L) functionality, which enables owners to use the car's battery to charge other devices.

Weirdly enough, the buyer said they talked to the selling party, and they confirmed that they thought the car came with a CCS port as well. So, someone is either lying, or there is just some misunderstanding involved.

Until a solution is found, it appears that the buyer might have had the misfortune to stumble upon one of the vehicles brought by Hyundai into Canada so it can adhere to the old rebate rules regarding the price limit for new BEVs. Now that the limit is higher, the Essential trims are not needed. But the cars might have remained in some dealer’s stock, which might try to offload them onto unsuspecting buyers.

For now, this customer is stuck with an Ioniq 5 that can only benefit from AC charging. Maybe the dealer will fix this and swap the Essential with a Preferred – it’s the same car but has those “Performance features” needed for the Canadian market.