The diet Coke of EVs? 2020 Hyundai Ioniq Plug-in Hybrid PHEV expert review 4K

G'day, I'm Paul and that is the Hyundai Ioniq and I'm going to explain to you why it's a bit like Diet Coke. Come with me. Right, so this is a full-fat Coke. It's bad for you. It's got lots of sugar in it but makes you feel really good. That is a petrol car, right? This here is a plug-in hybrid. It still tastes like Coke but it has no sugar. It's not quite as good as water, which is a full electric, but it gets you through the day, especially if it's been a long day where you'll get home and mix it with a lot of alcohol. Anyway, the whole Ioniq range covers everything from hybrids right through to the full electric, but this one that you're looking at here is the entry level to the plug-in hybrid range. It is cleverly called the Ioniq plug-in hybrid elite and it starts from just under 42,000 Australian bucks. Now, if you want to speed things up a bit and you want to skip ahead, you can either go down to the comments section if you're watching this on YouTube, click on the links there, it'll jump ahead to the part of the review that you want, or if you're watching this on a website somewhere, the time codes are just up there. Make sure you subscribe to this channel by clicking the subscribe button and then click on the bell button. I know you hear it about a million times, but that will make sure you get a notification every time we drive something new. Okay, I guess the jury's out on styling, but I'm going to explain why it looks the way that it does. 0.24 is the coefficient of drag. That is the amount of resistance this car has as air pushes up on it. You could almost fall over it if it hit a pedestrian. That's how slippery this thing is. Not that you should ever hit pedestrians, but anyway, they have updated the styling here so you can see new lights and then on the premium model, it gets LEDs front and rear. So it is a stylish looking car, but the wheels, let's talk about the wheels. 16 inches, they kind of look a bit strange. I have a VP SS Commodore and it has wheels like this when I think Holden was trying to be aerodynamic and they didn't look great then and 26 years later, not a great deal has changed. But look in the general sense of things, this is why electric cars need to look like this because they are cutting through the air and not creating much drag. That maybe also explains why Hyundai only offers this in four colours. Blue, red, grey and white. It is a very basic colour palette. Here's something I found earlier. There are two holes for filling this thing with go juice. This one for electricity, there's your AC charging plug, but then there's one at the back for petrol because this is a plug-in hybrid, except this one, you can't open from the outside. You've got to press a button inside the car. Tell you what is not silly and that is the styling inside this cabin. They've actually done a really good job here bringing it forward and making this feel like it's worth its money because remember, these are kind of expensive only because of the batteries and all the other things underneath the body. So you've got to make this interior look good and it's a big step forward from the last IONIQ. So only journalists like this but Hyundai says this now has a soft touch dashboard. You know what actually, I'm going to buy a hardness tester and we will make this a test. How soft touch is your soft touch dashboard? One thing I don't need to buy though is a good infotainment system because that thing right there is fantastic. Hyundai's infotainment game has massively stepped forward and it is thanks to this. It looks really impressive, it's super high resolution and I'm going to walk you through everything there is to know about Hyundai's infotainment system. So 10.25 inch screen. Beneath it, just as a side note, you've got capacitive touch buttons. So what you do is just click with your finger and just kind of push a little bit and it activates. So they're really handy. The screen can be displayed in split screen and here on the home screen you'll see three main pillars and then you can swipe to get to the other menu items. The navigation first. So it's a really nicely presented screen, very high resolution and entering addresses is really easy. So you just click up here. If you want to type in an address, you just start typing it in. You'll see suggestions showing up here and then once you've found one, you just click on it and it will give you the different options. You hit start guidance and away it goes. Inbuilt traffic guidance there as well so it will reroute if traffic does become bad. Now the curious thing here as well is that you have the ability to look for points of interest such as charges because this is a plug-in hybrid and of course you've got the electric model as well. This will navigate you to the nearest charger where you can plug the car in and get that full charge which is really handy to know. And outside of that, the rest is all pretty straightforward. You get voice recognition as well but it only applies to Apple CarPlay or Android Auto when you have your smartphone mirroring and I'm going to go into a bit more detail on that in just a second as well. Back here on the home screen, you've also got access to the radio menu. DAB plus digital radio is inbuilt so you get an absolute raft of stations there more than you could ever know what to do with and the music quality is fantastic thanks to the eight speaker infinity sound system. Back on the home screen, you also have for the plug-in hybrid model and also for the electric, a whole stack of driving data. So here you've got your range. As you can see here, we're down to zero because we have used all of that internal battery and we're now basically just using that internal combustion engine to move the car with the electric motor as a boost when required. When you hit that, you'll be able to select options for chargers. So you can see there's a charger there and it can also guide me to that charger should I want to go there. Energy information, this tells you how much range you've got and how long the car is going to take to charge. So if you just plug in on a standard plug, it's going to take 4.15 hours whereas if you plug in on an AC charger which is a slightly faster version of a standard domestic plug, it'll take around two and a half hours to charge. So that is really handy information to know plus your battery life there as well. Charge management is another fascinating thing. Obviously not that big of a deal for something with such a small battery like this but you are able to set off-peak charging. So if you do have cheaper energy rates after midnight for example, simply pop that into here and the car will then charge off-peak. You can also limit the amount of charging current that is coming through the car. So if you've got an extension cable or something you're not meant to be using, you can limit the amount of current that it's pulling out of that. Eco-driving, this tells you what your history is like. Now the fascinating thing here, we'll get to this in the driving section but this car is fairly bang on when it comes to its driving performance. In our previous driving loop, 85 kilometres with a full battery, the car averaged 1.9 litres per 100km. So it ran out of battery at around that 63km mark and then from there onwards it was using a mix of battery and also the internal combustion engine, 1.9 litres per 100km. That is pretty impressive stuff. And then energy flow, I think Toyota kind of mastered this with the Prius. You've got an idea of where your power and torque is coming from, where your regen's going. It is really clever in the way that it presents that information. Now the other interesting thing in here as well is the manual. So a lot of car companies will build the manual into that infotainment system but this one's a little bit different. It has a QR code. So just getting your phone out, you open the camera, scan it on the QR code, there it is there and it says open hyundai.com in Safari and then Bob's your uncle, you have the web manual on your phone for your car. So it is a really clever setup and it means they don't need to waste any space trying to integrate a manual into that screen there. The other great feature on Hyundais and Kias is the voice memo function. If you're out on the road and you come up with a great business idea like a new YouTube channel for cars, you can simply record it into here, it will stay there and then you can catch up with it later. And then you have the rest of your basic functions like phone, so obviously all Bluetooth pairing there, you can do everything that you can in most other cars except the voice recognition function which is a little frustrating unless your phone is paired and mirrored. And then outside of that you've also got specific functions and settings that I find fascinating. So for example in the display settings you have a blue light filter, so at night time it will reduce the amount of strain on your eyes by limiting blue light emissions. Here's a fun fact for you, did you know this is one of the first Hyundais with this big screen but it is also one of the first Hyundais with widescreen Apple CarPlay and Android Auto? Most modern cars these days that do have these big screens and Volvo jumps to mind here, you can't actually get a widescreen version of your smartphone mirroring, well Hyundai has solved that. Plug this in for your smartphone mirroring, it pairs up with the phone and then it displays your CarPlay option which is just there. Look at that, you are getting a full screen experience, so it is really beautifully laid out and this is something that you're not getting in much more expensive cars. And one more fun fact for you, Hyundai has killed the auxiliary plug, it's gone. It's kind of like the CD player, it's slowly becoming extinct from cars and they've gone in favor of Bluetooth and USB streaming for audio. Enough about infotainment, so you would expect given this is a base model, weird name, Elite for a base model, but anyway it is the Elite and it means it's the entry level. Hyundai has still thrown a lot of features at it, so dual zone climate control, you've got USB connectivity, only one USB port though, so that controls your Apple CarPlay, Android Auto and charging of your phone, two 12 volt outlets and then a whole bunch of blank buttons. I really don't like blank buttons. Rear parking sensors, a reverse view camera with rear cross traffic alert, that is a really important feature in this day and age with kids running around everywhere. This is what the key looks like, so keyless entry and start and proximity as well, so it's a basic looking key, but it does the job. You also get a feature called AutoLink. This is the less useful version of AutoLink, there's two versions, AutoLink and AutoLink Premium. AutoLink Premium uses a SIM card so you can access the car remotely, whereas AutoLink, which is what's fitted to this car, is a Bluetooth module, so you have to be within range of the car to use it and it displays a lot of telemetry data that you can kind of get from the car anyway. It's that remote service that allows you to start the car and do a whole bunch of functions remotely that's handy, so a bit of a miss there, but whatever. Safety functions, you've got eight airbags plus autonomous emergency braking, which is the tech that stops the car if you don't, with pedestrian detection and that works all the way up to high speed, which is around 180 kilometres an hour. What about day-to-day life, how are you going to interact with this interior? Let's look at storage first. There is stacks of it, so plenty of storage in the glove box there, centre console, plenty of storage as well, cup holders galore, Diet Coke as well, and then storage for your phone as well. The upper spec models get wireless phone charging, so you don't get any of that here, but what about build quality? So Hyundais are generally pretty good, but I have noticed when we were doing our soft touch dashboard test that this is a bit nasty, so it's a dashboard cover and it's cut out at the back, so it's missing that rigidity, it's a little bit wonky. Same with this, just kind of feels a little bit wonky and not nice, which is not really what you want for a car that is around that $45,000 mark. Seats, normally cloth seats, you think back to a time when you were younger and, you know, leather seats were the domain of the rich and famous, but cloth seats have improved. Have a look at this, that is really nice material, it looks super luxe and it kind of looks like the type of couch you'd find in a premium home. Leg and headroom up the front here is good, my driving position feels really nice, stacks here, what about that second row though, let's check that out. I'm not the world's tallest guy, but it is tight back here, I reckon it's about as tight as your mate when it comes time to shout at the bar for their round of drinks, but anyway, it is pretty comfortable though, these seats are nice, over here you've got some creature comforts, there's an armrest, a couple of cup holders and then you've got ISOFIX points on the outboard seats if you want to have the kids in there. Air vents as well, this is really important for climates like Australia, you're going to be absolutely sweating bullets if you don't have air vents in the back. Have a look down here in terms of sweating, that's what I reckon was happening at Mercedes-Benz when they approved a driveline hub in the fully electric EQC. Now a driveline hub, the purpose of that is to put a driveline from the front of the car to the back and it's generally for cars with all-wheel drive or rear-wheel drive. In the case of electric cars, you don't have anything between there, especially in front-wheel drive ones, so in the case of the EQC where they've effectively carried over the chassis and you've got this big hump in the middle, this is what it should look like, either a flat floor or simply a little hump there to get you over it. Now this is another interesting thing as well, look at these vents here, you know what they're for? These are for cooling the battery, so they're not pushing air in or anything but they do vent the battery so you don't have stagnant hot air building up under there. It isn't going to make you hot but it is an interesting point and you'll find this on a lot of EVs or plug-in hybrids where you have to integrate a fuel tank and also a battery pack as well. In terms of storage around the place, Igor if you can pass me the Coke can, don't Coke, you've got storage in the doors there that is pretty handy. So look, in terms of space, it's not incredible back here but it is going to be fine for shorter journeys or if indeed you have someone that isn't a freak in the front seat. Let's talk about the boot space you're going to find under here. Here's a curious thing first though, there's this little bit of glass here so when you're looking in that rear vision mirror you look through this. It's a really weird design, you're not looking through this top section but anyway, 341 litres of cargo space in its current form and that expands to just over 1400 litres if you drop the seats. There's also this nifty cargo blind but what do those numbers really mean? I'm going to show you in just a second. Under the floor is where you keep your charging equipment. There is no spare tyre, it's just a tyre mobility kit. All right, let's go for the big bag. Put that one in there, that just sort of fits under there. Get this little bag, that'll slide in next to it and then we've got this guy too and there you go, Bob's your uncle, you have managed to fit a decent amount of luggage in your Ioniq. So we've hit the road in the Ioniq. Before I tell you anything about how it drives and all the stuff under the bonnet, I want to point you towards this, paddle shifts. So these have become a very popular thing in all kinds of cars including SUVs which I find a little bit strange but they have a very different purpose here. When I pull back on this, I can pull back up to three times and what it does is instead of shifting gears, it is changing the regen level and the regen level is how much energy I'm putting back into the battery every time I let off the throttle. It's using the car's momentum and its inertia to generate power to then cram back into the battery and this is such a clever system because if you don't want it to brake hard, you just pull the plus. If you want it to brake a little harder, you pull on the negative. Genius. But unfortunately that's where the genius ends because it is a really, really clunky system. As you roll off the throttle in most electric cars, there's a bit of a gradual reduction in speed and the deceleration is uniform. Here when you roll off the throttle, there's nothing, nothing, everything and then all of a sudden it starts slowing down, gets to the point where it gets to around 10 kilometres an hour and then it just stops slowing down. Again, in a lot of modern EVs, they're actually allowing the car to come to a full stop under complete regen which means you never have to use the brake pedal. This just is one step too far back and it really hasn't been engineered well enough to make this a smooth driving experience with regeneration. Let's talk about what is under the bonnet. There are two drivetrains here. There is a petrol engine, so that's a 1.6 litre naturally aspirated four-cylinder petrol engine. It produces 77 kilowatts of power and 147 newton metres of torque. So that's a pretty modest engine in that sense but it mates with an electric motor that produces 44.5 kilowatts of power and 170 newton metres of torque and that produces a combined power output of 104 kilowatts of power. So that means that when you do need to get up and go, you have the assistance of the internal combustion engine and also the electric motor or it can simply run on a full electric mode for about 63 kilometres but the end result of that is when you do need to give it a little punch, give it a kick, everything comes to life and you get that surge so you're not just stuck with a lacklustre small power output petrol engine. I wanted to explain a question that we get asked a lot and that is combined power output. What the hell does it mean? Okay so this is under the bonnet of the Ioniq and it's pretty straightforward. Here you have the plug-in hybrid system which is a petrol engine, this is an internal combustion engine, 1.6 litre and immediately next to it is an electric motor. These two combine at some point to give you maximum power and also maximum torque but they also work independently of each other as well. How do you come up with a maximum power figure that isn't simply these two combined? Because this is 77 kilowatts of power, this is 44.5, one would assume that you simply add those together and you have your peak power. Well you don't and I'm going to quickly explain why as simply as I can. This is a power curve, down here we have rpm which is engine speed and then here we have kilowatts of power which is a metric of power production. This is kilowatts, you can also do horsepower but it's all very much the same thing. With our internal combustion engine it tends to produce most of its peak power at the top end of the rev band so it climbs something like this and then drops off as it reaches its peak. Its peak is 77 kilowatts of power. Our electric motor on the other hand produces most of its peak power right at the bottom end of the rev band and then it tapers off so it looks more like this and this is not to scale by the way so engineering Nazis just chill out and the way this works is we need to figure out what the peak is. The peak is going to be when these two are at their highest points so it could be here it could be here wherever the peak is it's going to be what the biggest number is so in this case it's going to be around here somewhere where you add this number and this number together and that gives you the peak of 104 kilowatts of power. If the electric motor was to produce its peak somewhere around here that number would be much higher but it doesn't which is why your peak occurs when we have the highest power output figure for both of these engines slash motors so hopefully that explains what the difference is there. Same thing here with torque so this produces all of its torque down low this produces torque a little later so you're going to reach a peak not at the start of the rev band but slightly later. If you have any questions let me know if we've mucked anything up let me know but keen to hear your feedback either way. So what's the point of adding all this extra weight? I mean you've got batteries you've got a whole extra system there to worry about well it's fuel economy because it means if you predominantly travel on electricity alone and that's under 63 k's a day you're going to use zero fuel but if you're doing a longer journey this becomes a really efficient proposal because the first 63 k's are petrol free and that means you get a combined fuel economy of just 1.1 litres per 100 kilometres and that is roughly what we've achieved during our testing. The big difference between a hybrid and a plug-in hybrid is that you can charge the battery on a plug-in hybrid using AC so that's alternating current electricity and it's pretty straightforward you can either charge it at home on a standard 10 amp circuit or you can actually plug in a faster charger which is a 3.3 kilowatt charger and that all charges an 8.9 kilowatt hour battery so to put that into context a Tesla battery in a Model 3 for example is about 79 kilowatt hours so this is about a tenth of the size of a full electric car which is why you're not getting that massive amount of range but equally you're not getting a smaller amount of range either because it's not a super heavy battery like it is in a full electric car. Let's put all the electric car mumbo jumbo to the side you are getting a really impressive package here because it looks well I guess it looks a little bit like a weird electric car but it looks fairly normal inside the cabin it's fairly normal but it drives absolutely beautifully so Hyundai does a custom ride and handling tune for Australia and that means you are getting a car that is super super compliant over bumps 16 inch alloy wheels and fairly chubby tires mean it's not crashing over everything and the compliance is sensational and that is regardless of the type of road you're throwing at it Hyundai has done such a good job here making this feel like a nice car to drive the steering is bang on point it's nice and light it's an electrically assisted unit it doesn't have that sporty feel to it and nor does it need to it's perfect for parking and making tight maneuvers turning circle of 10.6 meters curb to curb means you won't have to do 50,000 point turns to get this around in a tight straight visibility out the cabin is great we've got decent sized wing mirrors now out the back there I mentioned earlier that it has like a porthole that you see through so you've got two levels of visibility at the boot they both work fairly well I think in the Prius it's a little bit compromised but here in the Ioniq I can see clearly out the back there without any dramas being an electric vehicle it is dead quiet so right now we are in EV mode so even with the battery down to simply 11% it will still motor along with the engine off so right now it is dead silent and it is barely making a whisper so that is one of the big advantages of driving an electric car so far so good but Hyundai's done something that annoys the absolute crap out of me there is a dual clutch transmission lurking under here I cannot fathom why you would bother putting a dual clutch transmission in a car like this it does not need quick gear shifts yes a dual clutch transmission is more efficient than a torque converter but why do you do this to people you go and get this package that is really nice and then add a clunky dual clutch and you can hear it on occasion clunking along as it goes up a hill you get that slight sort of fidgety lag as it moves off the line it really is just a disappointing inclusion in what is otherwise a really good car to drive so Hyundai Ioniq plug-in hybrid in one of the four colors it's available in do I love it no not really I don't love the gearbox dual clutch gearboxes just annoy the crap out of me I don't like the regen mode it's pretty nasty at times and it needs some refinement Hyundai just buy a Tesla and copy what they do with regen that will solve your problems immediately but if you put that stuff aside if you can take advantage of that 63 kilometer electric driving range and charge it each night you could potentially have a car you barely ever switch on just runs on electricity the whole time so from that point of view it's good it's affordable and all that kind of stuff do you agree with our verdict did you buy one of these what do you think of it let us know in the comments below make sure you don't forget to subscribe and like this video I know you hear it on a thousand videos but it will help our channel grow and we would really appreciate all your feedback head to the website to look at this full review as well and let us know what you want us to review next and which color you'd like to see this in that isn't available at the moment uh I think someone's about to get arrested that guy's been there all morning uh and I think all night as well and he's now getting questioned