@Rene the wing mirror thingy is an absolute nonsense but it’s an added extra at about £1,000 so no chance of getting by accident. I wasn’t sure what you meant by “i never felt like i was actually in control, more like the car “let me drive it”. Another thing that impressed me was the satnav. My XC40 satnav was always a bit too late with instructions. I lost track of the number of times I was in the wrong lane when approaching a round about but with this one it was always well in advance. That leads me onto the heads up display HUD, absolutely brilliant, I’ve never had it in a car before but what a great addition.
Yeah, but that’s only recently – with the Ioniq 5, they’re bundled in the max tech pack (and they were in the “Zen pack” in this model, a spec that don’t exist anymore).
It’s hard to explain what i mean by not feeling like i’m in control. It felt disconnected. Genuinely having trouble explaining what i mean. It’s more like asking the car to do something, as opposed to telling it. Does that make sense?
A few things i didn’t like, most of which are fixable with a little extra investment:
The key. Boy, why they thought that thing is a great idea in an “executive” car is beyond me – the demonstrator yesterday had 10k miles, the key was mankier (scratched etc) than a 90s tamagotchi in a 4 year olds hands – and made from worse/cheaper plastic, too. Fixed with a cover, i suppose.
Reflection: already looked for dash covers, the bezel reflects distractingly (imo) in the windscreen. Fixed with a dash mat/cover (hyundai officially makes one, just not on sale here). Lots of complaints online about that too.
Android Auto. We thought something was broken yesterday, didn’t even occur to us that the car has a wireless charger but no wireless AA/Carplay. Fixed with a dongle, still slightly disappointing.
We didn’t try the sat nav, we tend to just use google maps – we just drove it from the dealership home.
I will say, i expected more bings and bongs – turning off lane holding assist (very easy) and speed assist thing (less easy, still not too inconvenient) seems to have removed all bongs from the car. Didn’t have anything beeping at me.
The gear selector is.. there. I don’t like rotating gear selectors (not in the ID stuff/Explorer, nor here), but i’ll live.
We also couldn’t get the remote parking to work, i assume the “start button” on the key (the one labelled “hold”) was broken. Wouldn’t surprise me with that cheap and nasty piece of.. work.
Plenty of stuff we couldn’t or just didn’t play with, for example i’d have liked to try a dark theme for the screens, i’m sure it has one. We also didn’t try the relaxation seats, mainly because we didn’t even know it has that feature. In general, we didn’t play much with the infotainment, since the car was the managers daily for 10k miles now, so we didn’t want to screw with his settings.
That all said: we actually fell in love. It drives great, it’s going to be a proper good longer distance rig (long wheelbase), it’s comfy while not being wallowy (it actually isn’t far off the GTE in “firmness”).
We’ll have the bright interior, with a white exterior. We’re already set, if the car is available as is on 9th of Nov, we order it on the first day we can. We’re a bit concerned by the fact that the facelifted model is supposed to come out this year still – with, i assume, a hefty increase in AP (if it even is available), or the Ioniq 5 type skew with 4 different packs (Zen, Tech, Tech Max and whatnot).
HUD.. We have one currently, i don’t care for it personally. I still look at the dash for my routing/speedo, it’s something i can’t get out of. After almost three years, i still don’t look at it.
Prior: SEAT Ateca Xcellence Lux 1.5 TSI DSG MY19, VW Golf GTE PHEV DSG MY23
Current: Hyundai Ioniq 6 Ultimate
Next: we'll see what's available in 2028.