I became an owner of Hyundai IONIQ 5 in January 2023. The main reason behind the choice of the vehicle was both its technology which was widely also promoted by different Youtube and other reviews, as well as the thought that I am producing much more electricity with the solar installation at home than I can make use of. This was not my first EV - as I had a BMW i3 (with 94Ah battery) before and was quite enjoying it. As I like cars which look a bit "off", IONIQ 5 seemed to be quite a great car for me.
When I was choosing the vehicle, I had my choice narrowed down to two cars:
Volvo X40 Recharge
Hyundai IONIQ5
The last steps of the choice were made easy for me as the vehicle was to be company vehicle (as it was mostly to be used for business) which put a price cap on top of it and after test driving both, the Volvo dealership was really passive in negotiating the prices, the car seemed to be fairly limited in the available "gadgets" and the consumption seemed to be much higher than IONIQ 5 one.
Overall my electric car preferences are about having the fun, the gadgetry and also pleasurable driving experience which for me reduces the list of vehicles I would like to have for longer periods of time to a quite short one.
I had a chance to test drive the IONIQ5 with one of the first versions which showed up at local dealership (I think this was end of 2021 or early 2022). As I ordered the one I ended up getting a "new version" which didn't have some of the glitches I observed on the test one I drove a year before (e.g. seat and steering wheel regulation for taller people was fixed as well as some other smaller glitches).
Overall the car didn't feel like Hyundai (I have been driving electric Kona (2020 version) on a few occasions, which in my opinion is "undrivable" car and should be avoided at all costs. The suspension and drive quality was really good.
There weren't too many "bad things" about owning the Hyundai. I have to admit the most pressing for me were:
squeaking of the rear luggage compartment door. I am pretty sure this had to do with the all glass top of the car which reduced the overall rigidity of the vehicle frame;
while the suspension was quite good (actually really good for daily commute), it was made like this at the expense of vertical softness. Which meant the car became very wobbly at high speed curves (high speeds = >120kmph). Normally people wouldn't notice it I guess and thus that wouldn't be a problem for anyone else;
The UX of Hyundai somehow was very Hyundai like... I honestly found it to be very boring and quite irritating soon enough...
Lack of Apple Wireless CarPlay in the car (I installed the adapter, but as the battery issues started I disconnected it as I thought perhaps the car doesn't disconnect power to USB port and this leads to the issues described below in the "ugly" section).
While the bad things were not so bad in the end, the ugliest part of owning a IONIQ5 for me was the "unexpected" death of standard 12V battery which I encountered 3-5 times over less than a year of ownership. As this was as random as it gets, I didn't find a way to predict or understand what was causing this and this always left me worried (especially when I was outside the country and my wife was left to use the car for example to drive children to school).... This was also one of the main drivers for me to put the car up for sale and luckily sell it before major price drop in the electric cars at the end of 2023...
I think the majority of conclusions I could make only once I got into two month rental of Volvo XC40 electric version between saying goodbye to Hyundai and before getting into my next "longer term" electric rental of BMW iX... And to summarise them:
All modern cars (not just electric) have software glitches, some are smaller, some are more annoying...
Somehow it took me a while to understand this, but for me Hyundai UX was a bit too overcomplicated. Especially when getting in the Volvo afterwards (which had this dumb simple Volvo like suspension whcih characterises for me both Volvo and Teslas and which I don't really like) I had to admit the overall UX in Volvo is much more geared towards "get in and drive". Like an iPhone vs Android battle. Everyone will find their own things to like dislike, but it is a personal choice in the end.