FIRST DRIVE: Hyundai Ioniq 5 N, 641bhp Hyper-Hatch! | Top Gear

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is in danger of disappearing completely, it's unlikely we'll see another Ford Fiesta ST or Focus RS. Renault sport has basically evaporated. We still have the Honda Civic-type car, which is good news, but it's now a £50,000 car, as is the It's time for a complete reinvention of what Hyundai considers to be the hot

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, which is why it unleashed their final vision in their very attractive SL hatchback crossover, the ionic 5 and as expected, this is the ionic 5n we have here. It's a pure electric hot hatch with 600 horsepower, in fact if I press this nrin boost button I get an additional 41 horsepower 641 horsepower per 10c burst now I should mention that this is a prototype vehicle, it's a pre-production car , but everything looks like work, including the launch control feature, which I'll turn on right now launch control, here we go, supposedly this car isn't going to hit 62 in 3.4 seconds and hit 167 miles per hour flat out, so to prove the fool and how fast this thing is, I have organized a small race that there is the Honda Civic Type R 324 horsepower, it is unequivocally not a slow car, but I have the feeling that it is about to have its right foot on the brake, Foot pressed on the accelerator, release the brake, even I can't understand that. bad three two one wow oh my god Honda is a dot in the background oh that was ridiculous we all know the way electric cars accelerate relentlessly without interruption Tor but yeah this one is fast the question is: Rowan in the Honda Civic?

Tarar has more fun with his manual

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box than I do in this, probably yes, but in a straight line this car is much faster, okay, so I had to stop because there are so many modes and settings in this car that if I tried to demonstrate them to you moving. I'm probably going to crash, so I'll start with the steering wheel. The

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button here is the

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mode which moves you through the normal Sport Eco, your standard

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modes, uh, to the right. Here it's marked NGB for nrin Boost, which is a bit of an embarrassing name, isn't it?

That's the extra 41 horsepower boost you get for 10 seconds. Down here we have a finish button that puts us into our custom mode #1. So that's the powertrain, the steering, the suspension, all dialed to their most aggressive settings, the default is sport ESC, but we're going to turn off the ESC completely by pressing and holding this button. Here it is done. I should say that the paddles right now are set to change the regen level, you have four levels of regen there, but if I press this other final button, that changes my speedometer to a rev counter. The importance of that is that if we go here to this screen, then we can start playing. with the noise this car makes now.

I've rehearsed this before. I look forward to browsing the menu. We'll press the circuit button in the settings and we'll go into active sound, so we're currently on ignition, which is kind of a simulation of an internal combustion engine. I can give you a REV. You can hear those little pops and thumps in the trailer. Here we have Evolution, so it says experience. The evolutionary future sound of electricity. Yeah, I'm not sure about that. It's kind of a quieter sound and then at the bottom we have super sonic acceleration to supersonic speeds with the powerful thrust sound inspired by fighter jets.

It sounds exciting, yes, it's squeaky, it's sparkling. It's not for me. I'm going to turn it back on. Who would do it? I've been thinking that the fake sound of the internal combustion engine is the one I prefer, what else do we have here? Shift NE now, this is very clever, it's essentially a fully simulated 8 speed paddle shift

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box that will cut off the torque when you hit the paddle it will change the sound the car makes, you can actually bounce off the rev limiter. I'm very interested to see how that thing on top works. Here we have the final launch control, of course, we used it for our acceleration run from earlier.

I'm going to exit this mode to n mode for our track setup so there are several switches to play with here the

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one is n pedal now n pedal is essentially a highly aggressive regen system that you can use on the track so when you lift off the accelerator Um, you immediately hit the brakes and it helps start the car and go, which is essentially a battery preconditioning mode, it helps with cooling the battery, it says the warning may make a little bit of extra noise, but who cares, it's designed to help keep the battery cool when you're doing laps on the track and then on top of that, here we have something called torque distribution now basically that allows me to shift between 100% front wheel drive or 100% rear wheel drive or anything in between or alternatively. you can press n Drift Optimizer at the bottom, now this interrupts a bunch of conversations at the back, modifies the ESC, plays with the suspension, basically creates the conditions that should make this an absolute Dole to drift.

Have I missed something I probably have? but to be honest, my brain has a limited capacity and is already overloaded. If we try this, this is, like I said, this fully simulated eight-speed flappy gearbox, um, which cuts the conversation. You can see when I upshift, that cuts. the noise there's a little chatter Interruption we're going to turn into this Double fork here second gear we've got the ESC off so I'll tell you which feature I was definitely most intrigued to try because ultimately with an electric car you only have one constant conversation, you just get all the torque, a flat line of acceleration at all times, but this actively interrupts it, why make it feel like a combustion engine car to give you more to do and I have to say it clearly. far, it's a lot better than I thought, it would be a lot better, you have something to do with your fingers, look, I'm in third gear and I'm hitting the gas instead of basically having all the torque when you want it. a much greater sense of your speed and the false noise, so the false noise is obviously a big part of this, the way it flashes and slows down, the way it changes pitch, it tells you how you're going, gives you a red line. chase the funny thing is they could have put the red line anywhere they gave us a modest 8,000 RPM they could have done something silly 11,000 RPM go chasing Gordon Murray but they haven't it's hard to describe why this feels better but it just gives you an additional connection between the human being and the car and there we go very happy to drift.

We removed the ESC but we're not in any of the fancy drift modes yet, we're just testing this gearbox and apologies. until there are pauses in my delivery here because I'm just trying to understand why I like this so much, you can tell it's fake, let's be honest, the noise is clearly coming through the speakers, but I tell you this, it's good. It's enough that when I focus on driving down this track and not throwing it into the Armco, I don't think it's fake, I'm just enjoying the noise, I'm enjoying being involved in it, I'm enjoying the little kick. the rear end when you downshift, okay, let's brake hard here to second, throw it in with a little bit of understeer there.

Hit the accelerator and what's really interesting is that there's actually a rev limiter, there it is, I'm bouncing around. removes the rev limiter in a second it cuts torque and stops you from going faster, they've really worked every angle on this, okay, Color I'm impressed, next we're going to get into the final Drift Optimizer, so there you go You have to stop putting your foot down hard. hit the brake and then activate the Final Drift Optimizer and there we go, now we're going, you can't use the ne shift on this so there's no gears to play with, it's just a brake pedal and your right foot right away You can feel like this is 100% rear wheel drive, there's obviously an electronic babysitter looking out for you, but you can feel right away that there's a lot of power going to the rear axle and it wants to drift all over the place, so let's give it a try, this is the hair tight. pin AKA drift corner here at speed, yes it works and I tell you how it's a bit like CT mode off on a Ferrari, where it makes you feel like you're doing it all yourself, but in reality you're not, it's taking care of you . keeps you within limits that could end in a crash.

It's a shame you can't use the paddle shifters when you're in this special drift mode because that will give you something else to do that would create that experience even closer to a combustion engine car or a hot hatch with a DCT gearbox. here we came to our hairpin turn again, throw it early on the throttle, that was a big angle. I'm increasingly sure the angles are getting bigger. The review at this moment is taking place between my ears can see it. I really didn't know what to expect when I woke up this morning. I thought there is a lot to understand with this car.

There are a lot of complicated electronics, but does it work on the track? It's good? fun so far yeah okay so the last thing we need to test and this is the torque kick n now essentially this is replicating the clutch kick and you twist in you need to be on the throttle pull both paddles and then, when you release them oh it gives you a bunch of words and kicks the car sideways oh I quite like that actually the cool thing about this is that you can be completely precise about where you want the car to go sideways sides, which is pretty much everywhere right now oh this This is an animal, an absolute animal, here we go, let's try some more of that Tor kick feature, so activate the throttle kick.

Ah, it was meant to happen, wasn't it, it was meant to happen. Look, it's my job to find the external parameters of a car's behavior and that's where I did it, but it's a lot of fun because you twist the accelerator, you hold the paddles, the torque is interrupted and then when you release the paddles, it gives you all that torque and more to kick you sideways. Excellent as an automotive journalist. for Precision Driving when a photographer tells you he wants it x amount of side on this corner here we go, interrupt the conversation, let him go, so what's up with this car?

So I've spent too much time playing with my electric toys to check how it works. Drive around this track well it's heavy I mean no surprises right it's a 2 ton electric hot hatch does it feel like that? It feels lighter, the suspension is aggravated but not too much, when I turn here you can feel all that mass leaning outward ah, but you have so much power that understeer isn't really a problem because you just direct it with the throttle as long as you have ESC off or you're in this Ultimate Drift Optimizer mode you can just hit the throttle harder, tighten the line and that's it, my word these things are just tricks, that's the question, aren't people going to buy this car, will you take it to a race track and actually use this stuff?

When I was thinking about this video, my response. It was unequivocally no, no one is going to buy a big 65 70 Hyundai electric hot hatch and take it to a race track, but now I've changed my mind, they could be a mix of tricks, please don't use them on the road or in the ssb car. Park it because this is a big, heavy car that has some pretty serious angles, but take it to a race track, play it because this car has genuine agility and, best of all, a proper sense of humor, speaking of tricks, this one It's the Arath 500e, it's a bit mini. 149 horsepower electric hot hatch that seems to think it's some kind of V8 muscle car, it's pumping all the sound out of a speaker under the bottom of the car, give it a REV, whatever you think.

I'm not so sure, I think you probably will. show that to your mates and then turn it off for good, but it does raise an interesting point about where to draw the line with all this synthesized fun that makes one electronic gimmick acceptable and another totally embarrassing, something to think about, but back to the Hyundai ionic . 5n, so it has Sledgehammer straight line performance, we already knew that, but it takes all these electronic tricks to a whole new level. I'll be honest, I was prepared to write this off as a phony because it's not funny, but honestly, once you understand. in all those modes it's a lot of fun it's a proper hot hatch a

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hatch even this is not as we know it by word woo great job hyai really good hyai's final split hats off this is something completely different something completely new to you Lo I've pulled it out of the bag again.