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00:00We named the Hyundai IONIQ 5 our 2023 Motor Trend SUV of the year, and then we spent a year driving one around – this one – to find out how this EV SUV would handle a year of rigorous use.
00:17Would it still feel as special a year on? What would we learn? Did we make a mistake? This is our long-term IONIQ 5 Year in Review. Let's get into it.
00:27In that year, we've done just over 22,500 miles, and we've spent around $3,000 in charging.
00:37Alex Lyons was the long-term editor who was tasked with driving this car for a year, and during that time he did some really cool stuff with it.
00:46The first thing he wanted to do was prove that it is indeed an SUV. So much of the rhetoric around this car when we announced it as our winner from the comments section was,
00:56that's not an SUV, it looks like a hatchback. Well, Alex wanted to prove those people wrong, and I think he did so by taking this SUV off-roading.
01:04He said it performed admirably. He did get a little bit of grit stuck between the bead of the tyre and the rim of the car, resulting in a puncture. That's just one of those things. That happens. That's not the car's fault.
01:18He also took it to his local car meet, where they went on a canyon drive, and Alex discovered that the IONIQ 5 can hang with sports cars.
01:26With its 320 horsepower, 446 pound-feet of torque, this IONIQ 5 can get from 0 to 60 in 4.4 seconds, and achieve a quarter-mile time of 13.2 seconds at 103.3 miles per hour.
01:39That's very impressive, as is this car's drag coefficient, which is just 0.28, that in spite of its supposedly very boxy styling.
01:48Speaking of aerodynamics, this car sorely needs a rear windshield wiper. When it's raining, or the roads are dirty, rain, dirt, moisture gets stuck to that rear windshield and doesn't naturally wash itself away.
02:03That's kind of troubling. This interior has handled a year of use really well, despite being a light-coloured interior.
02:12We noticed very few marks, and what marks there are washed away very easily. There is a tiny rattle from the headliner up behind me somewhere, but it's really nothing to worry about.
02:23Overall, we loved the interior when we first drove this car, and we still love it a year on.
02:28The one major complaint we have after spending a year with this long-term IONIQ 5 is, regrettably, the range.
02:36There are certain things this car does very well. We fast-charged it from 8% to 90% in just 28 minutes. That's seriously impressive.
02:44However, despite being EPA range-rated for 266 miles, we never managed to get more than 212 miles out of a single charge in this IONIQ 5.
02:58When we got it to a charging station, it had just 8 miles of range remaining. That's not that impressive.
03:04That doesn't mean that this isn't a fantastic car for city driving, daily driving, to and from work, and of course with the option to plug it in at work or at home.
03:13You're never really going to feel that range anxiety unless you go on a road trip, in which case you just need to keep that in mind and schedule your charges accordingly.
03:22All in all, we've had a fantastic year with our long-term IONIQ 5, a charming, characterful, and capable SUV, and a worthy SUV of the Year winner.
03:33To read more about our time with the car, head to MotorTrend.com.