The same pure electric, the same high power, the same high top speed, the Hyundai IONIQ 5 N has no trace of imitation and is full of originality.
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Maybe it won't participate in the price war for the sake of sales, maybe it will be willing to be in the niche because of this, but it will make the niche happy, and it will let the public experience the gentleman's style of "harmony and difference" of the brand......
When I was invited to experience the Hyundai IONIQ 5 N in Seoul, the World Car Of The Year was announced at the New York Auto Show, and the IONIQ 5 N won the Performance Car of the Year award. IONIQ has won consecutive awards since its launch. It has made history in the world car of the year, and in 2022, it won the three awards of the world's car of the year, the world's electric car of the year, and the world's design car of the year, which is the first triple crown since the award was established 18 years ago.
Unfortunately, as one of the founding judges of the World Car of the Year, I have never been able to vote for the IONIQ 5 N, because the rule is that the judges can only rate the models they have test-driven. This pretty much excludes all the Chinese judges, unless someone has gone overseas to test drive it before. Usually at the end of the previous year, the committee organizes a test drive experience for the judges at the Los Angeles Auto Show. I think this absence is indicative of two points, one is that IONIQ 5 N is certain to lose the potential points given to it by a number of judges in China, and that it still won the Grand Prix, indicating that it has received the highest international recognition outside of the Chinese market. Second, it's worth going to Seoul to experience this car!
The fact that the entire day was arranged in an enclosed venue is related to the fact that the IONIQ 5 N belongs to the modern high-performance N brand. The N is to Hyundai what the M is to BMW, and the development of the IONIQ 5 N was carried out under the leadership of Albert Biermann, the former head of M. N comes from three words – it was born at the Namyang R&D Centre, cultivated at the Nürburgring and founded on the philosophy of "Never Just Drive".
The performance of the IONIQ 5 N, which can only be used at the Hyundai Motor Group Driving Experience Center, which cannot be satisfied by the open roads around Seoul, gave me the opportunity to enter Asia's largest driving experience park of 1.26 million square meters for the first time, which opened in September 2022.
For me, the modern IONIQ belongs to the quintessential "familiar stranger". At the 2019 Shanghai World Expo, when it was just a concept car, I was there to see it. The feeling at the time was "doubt". Because it's so different from the concept of electric cars, and even if it's a gasoline car, I think it's "retro" - a standard to somewhat stereotypical "hatchback box", contrary to Tesla's ultra-low drag styling concept, and a lonely retrograde, even its brother Kia EV6 on the same platform, is streamlined and rounded. Can the edges and corners of IONIQ become a reality?
As a result, in 2021, it was mass-produced and marketed, and it was faithful to the "original". This makes it the most original electric car ever made since Tesla. Anyone who sees it will never forget it. The IONIQ is also immediately reminiscent of the petrol hatchbacks that dot the countryside and cities. Time doesn't pass, it just passes.
The design features of the Hyundai brand are not subject to any power, and the sharp profile of the IONIQ on the sides is in keeping with the Elantra. The almost completely closed front face and the digital headlights and taillights are responsible for clearly transmitting the "electric" signal. The headlights on both sides are a stroke of genius. In the automotive world, there are countless round lights and square lights, and in today's advanced LED technology, IONIQ just reinterprets the classic beauty at the right time. It is estimated that many car designers will be ashamed when they see it: "How could I not have thought of such a concise and physical solution?"
The N version naturally has a more performance-oriented look, unlike the sportswear N-Line, which is only visually appealing, and the N is equipped with special equipment, such as a larger front grille, higher-performance braking systems, a more professional rear wing and diffuser, a wider wheel base, and the resulting longer (+8 cm), wider (+5 cm) and lower (-2 cm) three-dimensional body. Whether it is sky blue, porcelain white or khaki, the soft car paint has a delicate texture and affinity for Korean style. And when they echo the black of carbon fiber and the red of racing, they all show the strength of performance without reservation.
The pre-test drive instructions listed a set of numbers: 650 hp, 770 Nm, 3.4 seconds and 260 km/h, which are the performance parameters of the IONIQ 5 N, which will be released to the Chinese market at this year's Beijing Motor Show. The top speed is close to the Porsche Taycan I tested in Germany, but the IONIQ 5 N doesn't have the kind of two-speed gearbox that the Taycan has, because the motor revs at 21,000 rpm and can reach a single gear ratio. During my test ride in the high ring, I recorded a top speed of 264 kilometers per hour, and there were four passengers in the car at the same time, which shows that its performance indicators are excellent.
When I tried to accelerate to 100 km/h, I didn't have the discomfort of the rollercoaster-style "separation of soul and flesh" that is common in high-performance electric vehicles, and the IONIQ 5 N behaved like a gasoline supercar, powerful and controllable. Its 650 hp/770 Nm only appears for 10 seconds when the upper right boost button is pressed on the steering wheel (609 hp/740 Nm in normal cases), but the efficient cooling system allows for frequent re-activation. The manufacturer claims that the IONIQ 5 N can run two full laps on the Nürburgring Nordschleife without any performance degradation. This is believable, because the protection guidelines are to stop and rest every 20 minutes of full run, by which time it is almost three laps old – according to a commercially available car by the German magazine Sport Auto, the IONIQ 5 N can take a turn in the green hell in just 7 minutes and 45.59 seconds.
Albert Biermann, former head of BMW M, has developed the IONIQ 5 N with a sense of fuel performance, reminiscent of the BMW M3. I saw that there are shopping guide media abroad to compare it with AMG A45 S, probably because the price is similar. I disagree. A look at the size of the IONIQ 5 N shows that it has surpassed the gasoline midsize sedan, and even the M3 looks short in front of it, and the power performance is slightly inferior.
The main difference is the drive. The feeling of the front and rear wheel drive of the fuel engine cannot be replicated in a dual-motor four-wheel drive car in any case. It seems that this inference is also wrong. Because the motor is so easy to control, computer language can command it to do whatever it wants. The IONIQ 5 N's in-car offers settings that you can't imagine, and there's nothing you can't get. The drive can be arbitrarily matched between pure front-wheel drive and pure rear-wheel drive by simply pulling the torque ratio cursor on the touchscreen with your finger. Its drift optimization settings are designed to help you practice and enjoy drifting. Its manual shift mode accurately simulates the reaction and control of a gasoline engine with an 8-speed dual-clutch transmission, including the behavior of the engine when it reaches the red limit zone and the fuel is cut off. The impact of the manual shift made me completely unable to point out the difference between the real gasoline performance car, and even the sound, the backfire of the exhaust tailpipe when downshifting, and the explosion vibration......
As for the feel of the steering handling and the performance of the chassis suspension, it is a pity that the track can only follow the guidance and the speed is controlled conservatively because of the lack of buffer zone on the track. The rider was very indulgent during the test ride, and I think he had already practiced muscle memory driving on this track. There is one place that impresses me deeply, in a corner that is close to a hairpin, I clearly feel that he stepped on the acceleration with all his strength as soon as the front wheel reached the center of the corner, and this big guy carrying three people and weighing more than 2.2 tons actually firmly bit the line and rushed to the straight without a trace of slippage. An electric car that replicates the driving experience of a petrol car 100 per cent, and the IONIQ 5 N is probably the first and only one in the world. But it doesn't lose its inductance. Just need to change the sound, adjust the mode, and it can freely travel through the time and space of oil, electricity, and fantasy. Reminiscent of Sega's game characters, Supersonic mode simulates the sound of a driver roaring at high speeds, and responds with a thosmotic plosive sound that breaks the sound barrier whenever power shifts.
All of this is based on the IONIQ 5 standard for practical electric vehicles. N's adaptive suspension and driving mode can be adjusted very daily, perhaps only the enlarged tires and the 2 cm lower ground clearance will make it a little more than the ordinary IONIQ 5 when encountering ordinary roads in the urban area, which needs to be left to the domestic market to find an opportunity to investigate. Some of the invincible things are space, and here's where the square box comes in: there's plenty of headroom and legroom in the rear, a comfortable riding position, and a large and practical trunk. With a wheelbase of less than 3 meters, the IONIQ has no regrets about winning 5 times.
I have been asking the factory whether the IONIQ 5 will be produced in China, and the answer I got is no, and the Chinese market will first land with the N brand. With the current state of competition that is more popular than cutting flesh and self-harming, "bowing into the game" does not seem to be very constructive. It's better to watch the fire from the other side and wait for the result. The IONIQ 5 N's mission is to build an image. Losing money is not enough to take it, showing product performance and brand concept is the core.
The situation in the Chinese market is that people are accustomed to the standard-answer imperial examination system, so much so that buyers and sellers are keen to "cross the single-plank bridge", and according to the principle of "I have it, I am better", the benchmark is always foreign famous cars. In fact, this view is also wrong! In this land, the real winners are also creators and creators, not imitators. Even if they were imitated, it was only when they began to create that success came knocking on the door. This is the real view of consumers, which is no different from consumers in other countries, and the so-called global is hot and cold.
The IONIQ 5 and IONIQ 5 N inspired me to be a brand, to start a school, to put originality first. Selling imitation products can never build brand value, because what buyers yearn for is the brand that is being imitated. In the end, they know in their hearts that they don't know whether the products they buy are good or not, and the brands that are imitated by it must be very good. The IONIQ 5 and IONIQ 5 N follow a path of their own, providing consumers with their own solutions, but the starting point is the eternal satisfaction of user needs.
"Gentlemen are harmonious but different", from Confucius, the Chinese sage. We would like to encourage you!
The author of this article is Xia Dong, a kicking car gang