Covid-19 messed up a lot of things for everybody over the past two years, including the annual Continental Car of the Year award. It’s now 27 months since the Kia e-Soul was named Car of the Year for 2020. The prizes were presented in November 2019.
That win took some motorists by surprise as the e-Soul is an electric car and back at the end of 2019 there weren’t that many electric cars to be seen on Irish roads.
This week the Continental Car of the Year winner will be announced and the ‘words on the street’ is that it could be Kia again with their EV6 or maybe the Hyundai Ioniq 5, which I drove last week.
I have a vote, but it’s a secret ballot and all I can safely say is that half of the 34 eligible cars this year were electric.
From that list it looks like the Ioniq 5 and the EV6 are definitely the favourites. The Mercedes S Class is truly class, but at a price of approximately €150k, I think it’s fair to say that the Merc is probably outside the budget of most Irish motorists.
The Ioniq 5 is Hyundai’s first pure electric car. It’s a car that has been designed as electric only, unlike their Kona and its namesake Ioniq, which are also available as hybrid models.
The Ioniq 5 is based on the Hyundai ‘45 concept’ which was shown at the Frankfurt motor show in 2019.
The first question the neighbours ask when they see me driving an electric car, is what’s the range? Officially it’s 480km for the top of the range version, but of course much depends on the time of year you are driving and whether you are using air conditioning, lights, etc.
Truth be told, I prefer Hybrid cars where there is no range anxiety. But it looks like there is no reversing on this road to our country becoming a truly green island full of electric cars.
It’s a really solid motor. My wife was impressed with the ‘drawer-type’ glove compartment. The passenger side also gets a vanity mirror, a hand-grip over the door, but no hand-grip on the driver’s side.
The exterior colour was grey and the interior was similar, but it’s a bright grey. In many electric cars I have driven the dash area always seemed to be minimalistic. But I think the dash in the Ioniq 5 is the nearest I have seen to a regular petrol or diesel car. Only one button on the dash and that’s for the radio volume.
In most electric cars there is a button to choose drive, reverse etc., and it’s normally located between the driver and the front seat passenger. In the Ioniq 5 you choose the drive functions via a stalk, located to the right of the steering wheel.
There are four trim levels, Executive, Executive Plus, Premium and Premium Plus, with prices starting at €37,995 for the Executive with the smaller 58kwh battery where is the range is around 380km.
Hyundai say that the Ioniq 5 is redefining the way people look at electric cars.
Road tax is only €120. You get a decent boot, but no spare wheel.
Kia and Hyundai, who are both South Korean companies, have been described as ‘corporate sisters.’ Coincidentally both of their Irish headquarters are based in Dublin 12. But who will be Number One this year, will it be the Ioniq 5 or the EV6? Watch for result on Twitter on February 11th.
