Jimrpa
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- First Name
- Jim
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- Sep 10, 2020
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- Wayne, PA
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- 2021 Infinite Blue Premium Mustang Mach E ER AWD
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- Retied (formerly tried to herd highly technical, independent cats)
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This was originally intended to be my first-time observations driving a Tesla Model 3, but then Avis (not the Krill god, the rental car company - even though they’re pretty indistinguishable) happened, and the Krill (er, “agent”) at the Avis desk tried to stick me with a Chevy Suburban. She made it quite clear that I should consider myself lucky that I was getting her precious Ionic 5.
Anyway, on to the Ionic 5:
First Impressions:
It took me a while to get the car configured the way I want (basically, all the safety systems turned on, radio tone controls set to flat, and balance/fade to center, etc). It was mostly just getting used to a different set of names and “thought process”. Happily, the seats in the crappy interior were power and included fore and aft tilt (Hey, Ford Motor Company, did you hear that? Even the crappy Hyundai interior had power fore and aft tilt on their seats ?). The seats were rough and unattractive, but not terribly uncomfortable. I never found a good position for the steering wheel to feel comfortable (yes, I tried various steering wheel adjustments), so I just got it to the best I could and gave up.
After getting the vehicle configured, I was off to find a charger (because, of course, Avis gave me a car with 50% battery ?). So, first I try looking for a charger using the cars Nav system. It does display a list of chargers (after rooting around a bit), and I select the nearest one on the list. The navigation system guides me to the middle of some residential development, then proudly announces that “I’ve arrived!”. ? So, I pull up PlugShare and look for a nearby DCFC. According to PlugShare, there’s one in a Walmart parking lot not too far away, so I punch in the address (123 Any Street, Las Vegas) into the stupid nav system and it takes me to … an empty lot surrounded by a bunch of industrial warehouses (and by “empty lot”, no, I don’t mean “lot in the process of being developed into a future Walmart location”, I mean “empty lot where you could probably hang out and obtain all of your illicit drug needs.”.) So, the navigation system has proven itself less useful than the first iteration of Apple Maps, so I give up on it and use Apple Maps on CarPlay. Which promptly guides me to a nearby set of chargers at an outlet mall - which are, of course, all full ??). A few chargers later, I find an open EA charger and, after a false start, am able to charge the car. Of course, something weird about this car is that you open the charge port cover using a button on the fob (more later), which struck me as even stupider than our charge port doors. Then, instead of a little flap to flip down for the DC pins, there is a tight-fitting plug with no easy way to tug it off. But at least their charge port is in a Tesla-friendly location (it’s on the passenger rear quarter panel). Also, when I went to close it, it turns out that you can open it by pushing on it, just like ours. Charging didn’t seem that different than our cars. I think the maximum charge rate I saw was about 130 KW.
The car handled well and accelerated nicely. It has these stupid flappy-paddles that, instead of selecting gears, turn on and off the one-pedal mode (they call it “i-Pedal” and Steve Jobs is rolling in his grave). They have absolutely NAILED one-pedal mode. When the car comes to a complete stop, it’s like butter. I had no idea what the tiny “jerk” people complain about was until I drove this car. It came to a stop totally smoothly. (Hey, Ford Motor Company, check out Hyundai’s “i-Pedal” and use it as your benchmark for 1-pedal mode!) Sadly, I-pedal didn’t stick between key cycles. The default was no regeneration. This was sad.
Shifting gears was weird. I haven’t seen “three on the tree” since the Brazilian Ford LTDs (based on 1960s LTDs) in the early 1970s.the steering wheel conveniently hid the shift lever, so you always had to glance around to see it.
Hyundai used a clever optical effect to make their displays look larger than they actually are (the reality is that they’re TINY). They used a background color on the displays that was the same color as the huge grey plastic bezels surrounding them. Hence, the displays “faded” into the bezel and looked much larger than they actually were. The net effect of this was that you saw very small areas of maps on Apple CarPlay, and that there really wasn’t a lot of room on the instrument panel.
The vehicle had our equivalent of adaptive cruise control, lane keeping assist, lane centering assist, and speed sign recognition. It did not have a “hands-free” mode, like BlueCruise, but you could take your hands off the steering wheel for about 1 minute before it began whining at you. It had cute animations on the instrument panel of the vehicles around you that it was able to sense, so you could see someone coming up and overtaking you on your left or right. I suppose you could ALSO see those if you looked outside and/or at your mirrors. Speaking of which, it had blind spot sensors, but the indicators weren’t in the mirrors, they were on the instrument panel. A set of segments would light up red just beyond the rear quarter panel of the car on the side the obstacle was on.
It had lane change assist, but I didn’t understand the value (maybe I’m too stupid). All that happened was, you turned on a turn signal and, if the lane you were signaling to change into was clear, it would be highlighted in green on the instrument panel.
I think it had a power meter, but I’m not sure what the utility was. It was just an animation next to the car that changed blue or red depending on which way the animation was moving. There was no scale or anything.
The center console was useless. It was divided into three areas - The armrest, which didn’t have a large compartment beneath it. It did have a very small compartment in the lid though, much like my old escape. I liked that small compartment. It had a set of stand-alone cupholders with two USB-A ports, just in front of the armrest (but not connected to the armrest - these were a separate module). Those USB-A ports were charge only. No data. Then, about 8 inches forward of the cupholder module was a final small bin with another USB-A port on it. THIS was the port that handled data, and you had to use to drive CarPlay. There really was no convenient place to stick your phone (I ended up just keeping my phone in one of the cupholders).
Final thoughts:
I really wanted to drive the Tesla Model 3 just so I could shut my buddy (who is a Tesla Fanboy) up. The Ionic 5 isn’t a bad car, but there are a lot of little things I just didn’t like - screen sizes, cheap interior, useless nav are the highlights. This is the 3rd EV I’ve driven. So far, I still like the Mustang Mach E the most, followed by the BMW i4 (why no frunk BMW - WHY???), followed by the Ionic 5
Anyway, on to the Ionic 5:
First Impressions:
- Very cheap interior. If you’re a fan of hard plastics, and the finest in synthetic burlap seat coverings, have I got the car for you! The interior aesthetic seems to be mid-90s Geo Metro.
- Only USB-A outlets; no USB-C outlets. Ok, so I had to stop by a gas station and buy a USB-A to USB-C cable, and the station attendant admonished me that they were non-returnable if it didn’t work. It worked, which leads us to…
- No wireless Apple CarPlay. That’s right - in this technological tour de force, this pinnacle of Hyundai’s engineering prowess, they haven’t implemented Apple CarPlay.
- The in-car navigation system is a piece of junk. (I’ll explain in a moment.) This is why I had to get Apple CarPlay running, even though I don’t even like Apple CarPlay. I needed a reliable navigation system.
- No way to figure out what model you have. I had to resort to a Hyundai VIN decoder to figure out I had a MY23 SEL.
It took me a while to get the car configured the way I want (basically, all the safety systems turned on, radio tone controls set to flat, and balance/fade to center, etc). It was mostly just getting used to a different set of names and “thought process”. Happily, the seats in the crappy interior were power and included fore and aft tilt (Hey, Ford Motor Company, did you hear that? Even the crappy Hyundai interior had power fore and aft tilt on their seats ?). The seats were rough and unattractive, but not terribly uncomfortable. I never found a good position for the steering wheel to feel comfortable (yes, I tried various steering wheel adjustments), so I just got it to the best I could and gave up.
After getting the vehicle configured, I was off to find a charger (because, of course, Avis gave me a car with 50% battery ?). So, first I try looking for a charger using the cars Nav system. It does display a list of chargers (after rooting around a bit), and I select the nearest one on the list. The navigation system guides me to the middle of some residential development, then proudly announces that “I’ve arrived!”. ? So, I pull up PlugShare and look for a nearby DCFC. According to PlugShare, there’s one in a Walmart parking lot not too far away, so I punch in the address (123 Any Street, Las Vegas) into the stupid nav system and it takes me to … an empty lot surrounded by a bunch of industrial warehouses (and by “empty lot”, no, I don’t mean “lot in the process of being developed into a future Walmart location”, I mean “empty lot where you could probably hang out and obtain all of your illicit drug needs.”.) So, the navigation system has proven itself less useful than the first iteration of Apple Maps, so I give up on it and use Apple Maps on CarPlay. Which promptly guides me to a nearby set of chargers at an outlet mall - which are, of course, all full ??). A few chargers later, I find an open EA charger and, after a false start, am able to charge the car. Of course, something weird about this car is that you open the charge port cover using a button on the fob (more later), which struck me as even stupider than our charge port doors. Then, instead of a little flap to flip down for the DC pins, there is a tight-fitting plug with no easy way to tug it off. But at least their charge port is in a Tesla-friendly location (it’s on the passenger rear quarter panel). Also, when I went to close it, it turns out that you can open it by pushing on it, just like ours. Charging didn’t seem that different than our cars. I think the maximum charge rate I saw was about 130 KW.
The car handled well and accelerated nicely. It has these stupid flappy-paddles that, instead of selecting gears, turn on and off the one-pedal mode (they call it “i-Pedal” and Steve Jobs is rolling in his grave). They have absolutely NAILED one-pedal mode. When the car comes to a complete stop, it’s like butter. I had no idea what the tiny “jerk” people complain about was until I drove this car. It came to a stop totally smoothly. (Hey, Ford Motor Company, check out Hyundai’s “i-Pedal” and use it as your benchmark for 1-pedal mode!) Sadly, I-pedal didn’t stick between key cycles. The default was no regeneration. This was sad.
Shifting gears was weird. I haven’t seen “three on the tree” since the Brazilian Ford LTDs (based on 1960s LTDs) in the early 1970s.the steering wheel conveniently hid the shift lever, so you always had to glance around to see it.
Hyundai used a clever optical effect to make their displays look larger than they actually are (the reality is that they’re TINY). They used a background color on the displays that was the same color as the huge grey plastic bezels surrounding them. Hence, the displays “faded” into the bezel and looked much larger than they actually were. The net effect of this was that you saw very small areas of maps on Apple CarPlay, and that there really wasn’t a lot of room on the instrument panel.
The vehicle had our equivalent of adaptive cruise control, lane keeping assist, lane centering assist, and speed sign recognition. It did not have a “hands-free” mode, like BlueCruise, but you could take your hands off the steering wheel for about 1 minute before it began whining at you. It had cute animations on the instrument panel of the vehicles around you that it was able to sense, so you could see someone coming up and overtaking you on your left or right. I suppose you could ALSO see those if you looked outside and/or at your mirrors. Speaking of which, it had blind spot sensors, but the indicators weren’t in the mirrors, they were on the instrument panel. A set of segments would light up red just beyond the rear quarter panel of the car on the side the obstacle was on.
It had lane change assist, but I didn’t understand the value (maybe I’m too stupid). All that happened was, you turned on a turn signal and, if the lane you were signaling to change into was clear, it would be highlighted in green on the instrument panel.
I think it had a power meter, but I’m not sure what the utility was. It was just an animation next to the car that changed blue or red depending on which way the animation was moving. There was no scale or anything.
The center console was useless. It was divided into three areas - The armrest, which didn’t have a large compartment beneath it. It did have a very small compartment in the lid though, much like my old escape. I liked that small compartment. It had a set of stand-alone cupholders with two USB-A ports, just in front of the armrest (but not connected to the armrest - these were a separate module). Those USB-A ports were charge only. No data. Then, about 8 inches forward of the cupholder module was a final small bin with another USB-A port on it. THIS was the port that handled data, and you had to use to drive CarPlay. There really was no convenient place to stick your phone (I ended up just keeping my phone in one of the cupholders).
Final thoughts:
I really wanted to drive the Tesla Model 3 just so I could shut my buddy (who is a Tesla Fanboy) up. The Ionic 5 isn’t a bad car, but there are a lot of little things I just didn’t like - screen sizes, cheap interior, useless nav are the highlights. This is the 3rd EV I’ve driven. So far, I still like the Mustang Mach E the most, followed by the BMW i4 (why no frunk BMW - WHY???), followed by the Ionic 5
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