It’s time to replace my Prius hybrid with a battery electric vehicle (BEV). Later this month I will be test driving a Hyundai Ioniq 5 for a couple of days to make up my mind.

My only experience with Hyundai so far was a rental car we had in Italy two years ago, a compact and not an EV. In 2024 Hyundai was the 5th largest car maker worldwide, selling more cars globally than either Ford or Nissan.

In the EV race, Hyundai reminds me a bit of the Chinese car manufacturers, which (unlike Toyota or VW/Audi) don’t have a huge established base of ICE cars and therefore can move more nimbly on the transition to BEVs, without fear of hurting their existing products. For many buyers of these underdog brands, the BEV will be their first car of that brand, as it would be for me.

I have had two Volkswagens, four Audis, one Honda and two Toyotas as my main cars over the last 44 years (not all of them personally owned, e.g. some were company cars), but for me it was never about the brand but about the features and technology. I loved the Audi inline 5 cylinder engines and the ergonomics of their cars. I switched to Toyota after the last Audi turned out to be a disappointment on fuel economy and reliability.

Now that there are cars that don’t rely on fossil fuel (as hybrids still do 100%), I want to make a move. My new house has solar panels on the roof and a battery, with which I’m largely electrically self-sufficient. I have a 200V socket in the garage for charging at home.

More than 5 years ago, I test drove a Tesla Model 3 (before I knew that Elon was crazy). There were no Japanese BEVs other than the Nissan Leaf at the time, which was too small and and too limited in what it could do (no thermal management for the battery, really?). Years later Mercedes launched their first BEVs in Japan, as did VW with the ID.4 and Audi with the various e-tron models (Q4 e-tron) and finally Toyota and Nissan came up with the Toyota bZ4X and Nissan Ariya.

None of those really appealed to me:

• The bZ4X looks like an electric RAV4, which I never liked.
• The Ariya looks better but still too much of an SUV and too expensive.
• There was much to like about the ID.4, such as its looks and its size (not too small, not too large) but infamous software issues at VW/Audi are a huge turn-off, especially now that they may be dumping in-house in favour of Rivian-sourced tech that may see older models orphaned for updates.
• Audi: basically same as the ID.4 because the Q4 e-tron is the same platform, only more overpriced.
• Mercedes – I would kind of avoid them because of people who buy them for status, but their cars are also either not yet based on pure BEV platforms, with all the compromises that brings, or they’re large and very expensive.
• Volvo: see Mercedes

That leaves:

• BYD: Great technology, very competitive great prices, but from the PRC, which in a few years may try to invade Taiwan… See Tesla 🙁
• Hyundai: The Ioniq 5 has been on the market since 2021, has had a model update this year with a bigger battery and many other improvements. It will do over-the-air updates for its computers. DC charging is very fast due to its 800V architecture (usually only found in Porsche and other high end brands). It’s slightly taller than I would prefer but doesn’t look too SUV-ish and is only marginally longer than the Prius. Range is good, prices reasonable and equipment levels attractive. On paper it easily beats cars that cost 2,000,000 yen more, as long as you don’t care about brand image.

I’ll keep you posted 🙂

Next step: Test drive!

Links:
Hyundai Japan website