Here’s Why The 641-Horsepower 2025 Hyundai Ioniq 5 N Is Proof The Future’s Gonna Be Okay

In the future, electric cars are expected to dominate our roads, and for the vast majority of drivers, this is a good thing. They’re smooth, quiet, incredibly refined, require very little maintenance compared to a combustion-powered car, and cost substantially less to run if you can juice them up at home or work. However, as an enthusiast, I can’t help but feel a bit bummed out. I’ve driven plenty of quick electric cars, but speed doesn’t always equal fun. Thankfully, the 2025 Hyundai Ioniq 5 N promises to be a bit different.

By now, you’ve probably heard all about how this 641-horsepower Hyundai can tackle the Nürburgring, how it lays waste to performance SUVs from Porsche and Lamborghini in a drag race, and how it might just be the performance bargain of the year on metrics alone. However, that doesn’t apply to most of us, most of the time. In an age of appalling congestion, roadside speed cameras, and lowered speed limits, can this 641-horsepower electric car still be fun? More importantly, what do normal people think of it? Time for me and my dad to find out.

[Full disclosure: Hyundai Canada let me borrow this Ioniq 5 N for a week so long as I kept the shiny side up, returned it full of electrons, and reviewed it.]

This Time, It’s Personal

My parents aren’t car people. To them, a car is a way of getting from point-A to point-B without breaking down along the way, and little more. In fact, they’ve only ordered a new car once: a red 2013 Hyundai Sonata GL that they still own. From road trips to St. Louis to collection from the airport after closing a continent of divide, it’s been automotive consistency. I was there when it was ordered, I was there when we took delivery, and it’ll stay in the family until the last grain of sand runs through its hourglass.

Sure, its roofline means it’s not the easiest thing to get in and out of, but compared to the majority of its contemporaries, the YF Sonata still looks good. Admittedly, not this exact one due to a barrage of body damage, but the new-for-2011 Sonata was a line in the sand for Hyundai. It signaled that the brand was no longer content with being the value play, but instead was looking to claw away market share from Toyota and Honda with style, features, and new technology like direct injection and optional turbocharging. Okay, so the new technology was packaged in an engine that had its share of thermal incidents, but growth often comes with growing pains. What matters for now is that a red, once state-of-the-art Hyundai was the car that picked me up from the airport the last time I flew home. Time to return the favor, with an orange 641-horsepower electric missile from the exact same brand. It’s not available in red, but this is close enough, right?

Taxi!

For the most part, air travel isn’t fun. You’re put in a tube for hours with little legroom and almost comically narrow seats due to operating efficiencies or whatever airlines do to boost profits. When you hop off a trans-continental flight, you want to get in something spacious and comfortable rather than some sort of stiff, highly-wound trackday machine. However, even though its a performance car, the Ioniq 5 N is more than suited the task.

Not only does it offer vast quantities of headroom and legroom, the cargo area is fully capable of swallowing a litany of luggage, and its smooth, quiet day-to-day persona suits it well for the airport run. In the hustle and bustle of the passenger pick-up queue, it’s a bubble of calm, and it maintains that serenity through downright abominable traffic. Serenity that makes an excellent first impression. The quietness, the surprisingly fuss-free ride in comfort mode, and absolutely outstanding front seats that offer a brilliant mix of comfort and support. It might be unusual to see manual buckets in a car of this type, but they’re heated and ventilated, with the latter function being just what we needed on a hot summer day.

From the no-nonsense connectivity to the pleasing unusually large sun visor vanity mirrors, the Ioniq 5 N is still a family car through-and-through, one that doesn’t sacrifice much, if anything, in the way of usability in pursuit of closed course shenanigans. Sure, range may clock in at 221 miles (355 km) to the 260 miles (418 km) touted for the regular Ioniq 5 long range AWD, but with an 800-volt architecture and observed DC fast charging speeds peaking at north of 220 kW, you’ll be back on the road in a jiffy after you run the battery down. Okay, so those potent 350 kW chargers aren’t everywhere, but neither is good gasoline, which is shocking considering we’ve had 100 years of combustion-powered cars. Ever been to a station that’s out of premium, or out of gas altogether, or just plain sketchy? Yeah, me too. It takes me back to a BP in rural Indiana from which my parents’ Sonata certainly didn’t receive its finest tank of fuel.

DNA

However, before my dad even rolled into town, it was time for the Ioniq 5 N to have its own family reunion with an example of the first Hyundai sold in North America — one that America never got.

In 1983, three years before Hyundai set foot in the U.S. market, it planted some roots in Canada with a little car called the Pony. Back in the 1970s, Hyundai wanted to grow beyond building Ford Cortinas under licence and make its own car. To get the job done, it hired Sir George Turnbull, the man at the helm of the Austin-Morris division of British Leyland when it launched the Marina. He put together a team, and with Marina expertise, Mitsubishi engines, a few Ford Cortina bits, and styling by Giugiaro, the Pony was born. In 1982, it was re-styled, and that re-styled one was the model that made it to Canada for the low price of $5,795 in loonies, or about $16,098 in today’s Canadian tender, adjusted for inflation.

For the first full sales year of 1984, Hyundai planned to sell 5,000 Pony compacts, but ended up shifting a remarkable 25,123. Instant success, and popularity that’s carried through to the present day. Last year, Hyundai outsold Honda, Nissan, Mazda, Tesla, Acura, Mitsubishi, GMC, Buick, Cadillac, every individual German car brand, and every individual Stellantis brand in Canada. I wonder what the Pony would say if it could talk to its descendants?

It would certainly recognize the Ioniq 5 N. It carries all the right creases, the folded paper kink of the C-pillar, the squares in the false upper grille, the reinterpretation of the classic character line down the flank, enough to distinctly tie it to the top of the Hyundai family tree without instantly seeming like the Millennial equivalent of a PT Cruiser. Honoring the past without drowning in pastel rose pools of nostalgia is a tricky balancing act to pull off, and the Ioniq 5 N does it well. Then it adds more aggression than the circle pit at a local hardcore show.

We’re talking massive flares, a Hot Import Nights-loud set of skirts, bigger air intakes, a functional rear wing, and plenty of signature red accenting. It’s a tremendous visual treatment that thoroughly transforms an ’80s inspired design into a boy racer’s cyberpunk fantasy, and it’s made better by the fact that the powertrain has the guts to back up the looks.

Hyperreality

I’ll give you a quick list of cars that have less power than the Ioniq 5 N: The Porsche Carrera GT, the Ferrari 458 Italia, the C6 Corvette ZR1, the Lamborghini Murcielago LP-640, the McLaren F1. This Hyundai makes the same amount of horsepower as the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren 722 Edition, so long as launch control or the N Grin Boost button is engaged — 641. We’re talking supercar power in a 12/7ths-scale hatchback.

Of course, there’s nothing new about outrageously powerful electric cars, but this Hyundai’s profound acceleration still mashes your head back hard enough to grow three extra chins. It’s worth noting that Car And Driver clocked this thing from zero-to-60 mph in three seconds dead, and through the quarter-mile in 11.1 seconds at 123 mph. Lamborghini Urus Performante, who?

However, beyond the bewitching, wig-splitting acceleration, the Ioniq 5 N takes on a role as something more. In performance cars of the past, engagement was a side-effect. Wanted big power in 1999? A manual gearbox was pretty much the only thing that could handle it. Hydraulic power steering was the norm, noise isolation just meant more weight, and you were always having to work to extract the most from fast cars. These days, engagement has to be a conscious engineering decision, and Hyundai had it at number one with a bullet. Oh yes, it’s time to talk about the controversial topic of fake shifts.

Have you ever cried at a film? Even though it’s only acting, suspension of disbelief can make it seem like the real thing, and it’s the same deal with most modern ICE performance cars. Those pops and bangs on the overrun are programmed in. That throttle curve probably isn’t linear. That steering was tuned by a team of experts to let through only the feedback the engineers wanted. The fact is that most modern cars are so highly engineered that no feeling, communication, sound, or sensation happens on accident, so what difference does it make if shifts are simulated or real?

Of course, the fake shifting had little effect on my dad, who seemed puzzled why it was a thing at all, and preferred the smoothness of a single reduction gear eliminating any shifts. In normal operation, he has a point. Sometimes it’s just nice to glide along on quiet electricity, but loving cars and loving driving isn’t rational. In real-world driving, the duality of the Ioniq 5 N is its killer app. For those in the household just looking for a quiet, comfortable commuter car, it’ll do a brilliant job. For those who are looking for emotion, pace, involvement, and calculated mayhem, it’ll happily indulge.

Shouldering The Weight

So, the Hyundai Ioniq 5 N is fast enough to tear your face off, shockingly involving in the corners and touted to hold up on track, but some of you are still probably wondering what this performance BEV weighs. Well, I’ll tell you, it’s 4,861 pounds. While it doesn’t exactly feel like a light car, it’s easy to forget that this extra-large hatchback weighs more than a new Ford Ranger. That’s mostly due to how neutral the chassis remains. See, in the past, most automakers tuned their cars to default towards safe, predictable understeer, because wrapping your customers around trees and telephone poles wasn’t great for business, even if slight oversteer was preferable from a performance driving perspective. Now, though, we have electronic stability control as a safety net, and Hyundai’s leaning on it to let the arse end of the Ioniq 5 N hang out like a terrier on freshly-polished linoleum.

Want a drift mode? The Ioniq 5 N has one, along with a more general slider so you can perfectly select your preferable front-to-rear torque split, up to and including making the whole car exclusively rear-wheel-drive. You can even force the electronically controlled rear limited-slip differential to open up and then slam its clutches shut with the force of a Grizzly’s jaw, kicking the rear of the car sideways in a hilariously juvenile fashion. It’s a reinterpretation of the classic clutch dump for the electric age, a ridiculous, abusive feature that exists solely because it’s fun.

However, before you lay waste to a set of Pirellis as soon as you leave the lot, there’s one big overarching thing to know about the Ioniq 5 N — it’s made to actually handle racetrack duties. Want a wild 0.6 g of regenerative braking, special cooling programs for track use, 400 mm front discs, three different launch control settings, and enough heat exchangers to keep everything happy for full lapping sessions. It can even handle multiple laps of the Nürburgring Nordschleife without de-rating, and if you want another EV capable of that, you’re looking at cutting a six-figure check.

Beyond all the electronic modes, the fundamentals are remarkably solid. We’re talking fast, communicative steering, predictable brakes, and suspension that, even in its stiffest mode, keeps a grip on body motions without rattling your teeth loose. It all adds up to a package that would rather goad you into seeing how hard you can throw it down an on-ramp rather than simply being content with ballistic acceleration, and in the real world, with speed limits and traffic cameras, that’s what matters.

Something Great

The Hyundai Ioniq 5 N is so much more than just another absurdly quick electric car. Many EVs are capable of great things, but this feels like the first one that’s meant to be fun on all manner of roads and courses from the beginning. In the future, we’ll still have our dirty, lightweight little sports cars for the weekends, but if the weekdays look like this as far as engagement goes, they won’t be monotonous at all. Plus, for the people in our lives who care more about pragmatism, cars like this will get compliments for their spaciousness, their quietness, and their smoothness that you can turn back on at the press of a button.

Welcome to the new paradigm. One in which manufacturers start to realize that enjoyment still matters in the electric age, and Hyundai genuinely seems to be leading the charge. Sure, it would be nice if more special track modes were compatible with other special track modes, like having the fake shifts work with drift modes to limit wheel speed, but especially for a price tag of $67,495 including freight, or $80,149 in Canada, the Hyundai Ioniq 5 N is incredibly compelling. Even my dad, who isn’t a huge fan of his Sonata and is understandably skeptical about the purported universality of electric vehicles, liked it quite a bit. On the other end of the driver spectrum, if you’re a performance car diehard, the Ioniq 5 N might just make a believer out of you, and that’s something even Tesla hasn’t quite been able to crack.

(Photo credits: Thomas Hundal)

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