Test Drive: Hyundai Ioniq 5 N

As I mentioned in my Tesla Model S Test Drive, I'm on a mission to see if an electric vehicle could be a realistic choice for my next car - something that serves my commuting and family hauling needs as a daily driver but can be tons of fun when I find some curvy back roads. Yesterday I took the Hyundai Ioniq 5 N out for a spin. The quest isn't over, but the Ioniq raises a completely different set of questions than the Tesla.

My first impression jumping inside the car was how performance-oriented the whole interior is. The steering wheel (at least compared to the Tesla) looks almost like an F1 wheel. There are buttons for driving mode, launch mode, paddles for "shifting," engine sound - all the things that affect the driving feel are right at your fingertips and don't require going through the screen. The dash display behind the steering wheel has several options that all look like a great mix of traditional driving with modern technology. They also nailed the mix of buttons and touch-screen interaction in the main center screen. While playing with the buttons and screens, I noticed there's a race mode with more adjustments you can make to how the car drives, as well as a lap timer! Clearly this car was built for serious enthusiasts.

Getting the car set up to drive, I was surprised to find that the seat and steering wheel position adjustments were entirely manual. I'm sure the manual seats come with the territory with the very race-inspired seats in the Ioniq 5 N. They were indeed great for tackling curvy roads but I wonder if they'd start feeling a bit cramped after a long commute.

Once I got going, I was immediately impressed with how the steering and suspension felt so connected with the road. The acceleration was also plenty fast. It certainly isn't the insane acceleration of the Tesla, but a few seconds of full throttle will still produce grin-inducing G forces that rival any normal sports car.

After finding some curvy back roads, I switched into "N Mode," which decreases the traction control and stability control, turns on the "N Active Sound+," and turns on "N e-Shift." Now I have to admit, when I tried the different simulated engine noises earlier in the drive, it felt a bit gimmicky. But when combined with the paddle shifting to simulate the experience of upshifting and downshifting through a (totally pretend) RPM range, it was nothing but pure driving fun. Braking into a corner, downshifting, carrying some speed through the corner, then accelerating out and jumping back up through the gears was an absolute joy. That audible feedback of power and the active participation in choosing a "gear" were a huge part of what was missing in the Tesla. The fantastic suspension and steering feel complete the package to create a genuinely great driving experience.

For as fun as this car is, the question I'm now left with is actually whether it can serve all those other needs as a daily driver. I could see those seats and that suspension all feeling a bit tiresome after 30 or 60 minutes in traffic every day. Is sacrificing everyday comfort worth it for what you get on those occasional weekend joy rides? I suppose in some sense, the very fact that that's the question I'm left with is already a credit to the Ioniq 5 N. As my daughter and I approached the dealership at the end of the test drive, I told her I had been wondering whether the lack of fun in the Tesla was a problem that would plague all electric vehicles. She summed it up perfectly - "apparently not."

Test Drive: Tesla Model S

I recently came across a Road & Track article about the best electric sports cars and it got me wondering whether my next car should be an EV. For a long time I've assumed electric vehicles were for people who just want to get from point A to point B, but maybe I've been too quick to dismiss them.  Only one solution - time to test drive some electric vehicles myself! Yesterday I drove a Tesla Model S - my first time driving an electric car of any kind. Some things went just as I expected, but there were some interesting surprises for me too.

The first surprise came before I even got in the car. I chose the Model S because, to me anyway, it has the sportiest looks of any Tesla. The thing I didn't realize until seeing it up close is just how big the car is though. Sure it has a sporty shape, but the size makes it look more like a Porsche Panamera. In fact the dimensions bear this out - 197.7" long for the Tesla compared to 198.8" for the Porsche, and both identical "width without mirrors" of 78.2".

Inside, everything feels high quality and comfortable, except for the visual weirdness of having that huge screen dominate the center of the car. Ergonomically, it was also weird having to use the touch screen for so many functions that would otherwise be one-touch buttons or knobs in a normal car. Even choosing between forward, reverse, and park was done via the touch screen! You don't realize how much all the little knobs and things are a part of the normal tactile sensation of driving until they're all gone and all you have is a screen.

Once on the road, the two immediate things I noticed were how quiet the cabin was and the odd feel of the regenerative braking. The silence without the engine noise was to be expected but it gave the weird sensation of having my my ears clogged and needing to pop at first. One surprising thing about the lack of engine noise, though, was that it made it hard to tell what my speed was at any given time. I had to constantly keep my eye on the speedometer and frequently found myself accidentally going 10+ MPH faster than I thought I was going.  As for the braking, the dealer told me the whole idea with EVs is letting the regenerative braking slow the car for you (while converting the kinetic energy to charge the battery) without you ever having to touch the brakes. This means that as soon as you come off the gas pedal, the car starts slowing down quite a bit. It was a little weird at first but I actually got used to it quicker than I expected.

One thing I really liked about the driving setup was how configurable it was. I could change the ride height, suspension stiffness, steering feel, and acceleration profile. Any car I'd be using as my daily driver serves as both my commuter car and my back roads fun ride so it would be great to be able to switch back and forth between comfort and sporty settings.

After getting used to the car a bit, I made my way to some curvy roads where I could get a better feel for the handling and acceleration of the car. This is where the biggest surprise of the whole day came in - the "insane" acceleration mode is freaking fast. The Tesla takes off like a rocket ship and just keeps pulling harder and harder until you reach the limits of your own bravery. I've been fortunate to drive some pretty fast cars - Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Porsches - but this was a face-distorting mind-bending level of acceleration I had never experienced before. There was also plenty of cornering grip. I'm sure the amount of grip you need to launch that car 0-60 in less than 3.5s means getting it around a tight curve is a piece of cake.

However, for all this abundance of torque and grip, something was missing. Driving curvy back roads just wasn't that fun in the Model S. It's possible that one culprit is actually having too much power. Exiting a corner and getting on the gas was reduced to the briefest jolt of acceleration and then, once pegged at whatever max speed I was comfortable with on that road, waiting around for the next corner to eventually come. It also didn't help that the braking and turning were lacking of any real "feel" of connection with the road. It started making the Tesla seem a bit like a one trick pony. It was great at the jaw-dropping acceleration, but nothing else really inspired any joy of the driving experience.

As I headed back toward the dealership, I tried out Full Self Driving for the first time. I was ready to spring into action if anything went wrong, so I don't know that it really saved me any mental energy compared to just driving myself. There was also a moment where a rookie driver was in the shoulder doing who-knows-what and I would have changed lanes to steer clear of them. The Tesla instead just happily carried on passing directly by the rookie driver before changing lanes. It's a little thing, but it was interesting getting some first-hand experience of what it feels like to hand those decisions over to the car. The Full Self Driving did get me all the way to my destination without any intervention on my part, and I have to admit I arrived back at the dealership feeling like it was a pretty cool piece of tech.

In the end, the Tesla Model S felt like just that - a cool piece of technology. It felt like a car made for people who love cool tech, not a car for people who love driving. It was like driving an iPad - the fastest-accelerating iPad you can imagine, for sure, but still an iPad nonetheless. The big open question for me now is - are these just Tesla problems (or even just the Model S? Should I have tried the lighter-weight Model 3 instead?). Or, are they problems with sporty electric vehicles in general? Fortunately, there are now quite a few sporty electric vehicles on the market to help answer this question. I'm hoping to try out as many of them as I can get my hands on. Watch this space.

nakhon100, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Return to United Karting

This weekend I made my second visit to United Karting for a few sessions of arrive and drive with their rental karts. It was a gorgeous day and three really enjoyable track sessions.

One pleasant surprise compared to last trip was how well I knew the track layout. I found it slightly challenging to learn the track my first time there so it was nice to be able to jump in and know where I was going right away this time.

The biggest thing that stood out to me this trip was how different my karts were in each of the three sessions. The first kart was relatively neutral and it was fun inducing a little trail brake oversteer to get the kart rotated into each corner. The kart in the second session must have had more worn rear tires or something because it was much looser through the corners. As soon as I attempted a little trail brake oversteer, I got the kart so sideways that I spun out! The looser kart must have worked out for me though because I ended up shaving over half a second off of my personal best time. The third session, by comparison, felt like the slowest kart all day by far. I managed to get slightly better than my first session's time, but nowhere close to my best lap of the day during that second session.

If I was competing with others for fast lap or just trying hard to set a personal best time, I might have been bothered by the inconsistency in the karts. As it was though, I actually really enjoyed making the adjustments in things like braking point and turn-in to get the best out of each different kart.

I know I wrote this last time, but it stands out to me just how much UK maximizes track utilization. Almost as soon as one session is over, they have the next group on track so you're never sitting around waiting and wondering what's taking so long (which is my consistent gripe with Autobahn).

Finally (also much unlike Autobahn) I had no issue with traffic in any of the sessions. The wide track and the layout itself make it relatively easy to find a way around slower karts. Plus, with such a long track and only 5-8 karts on track at a time, everyone ended up pretty spread out and I had tons of open track the whole day.

Overall it was a great way to spend an afternoon and I'm hoping it won't be another year before I make it back there again.

For more pictures, check out the loveofdriving Instagram feed!

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Loveofdriving on Bluesky

Loveofdriving has joined the over 19 million Bluesky users!  Go join bluesky yourself and follow my feed at https://bsky.app/profile/loveofdriving.com.  Only downside - so far there isn't a great Blogger widget to embed the loveofdriving feed in the blog sidebar.  Hopefully that's coming soon.  In the meantime, here's my first Bluesky post:

Put in a few laps at United Karting today!

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— loveofdriving (@loveofdriving.com) November 16, 2024 at 4:14 PM

Forza MX Racing Simulator

I recently discovered the best possible reason to be early for your flight - the Forza MX Simulator! The return flight from our recent family vacation to Cancun, Mexico involved getting to the airport extra early because we were carpooling with another family on an earlier flight. I figured it wouldn't be hard to kill a couple hours in the airport, and it turned out the Cancun airport did in fact have some pretty good shopping and dining. The best part though, was this sim racing rig where you could get 12 minutes of racing for only $24!

The car choices ranged from sports cars like the Porsche 911 GT3 all the way up to a modern F1 racecar. There weren't a ton of tracks to chose from but I believe there was Watkins Glen, Road America, Circuit of the Americas, and Spa-Francorchamps. They also had several different sim setup options depending on your familiarity with racing sims.  I opted to turn off the brake assist and the racing line. The hard part was choosing a track and car. I wanted a track I knew fairly well but would also be fun to drive. I opted for Spa and, just because it was the fastest option, the modern F1 car.

The first thing I noticed with the sim was just how weird it was getting used to the viewing angles involved when you have three large screens wrapping around in front of you. I'm so used to video games at home where you need to fit everything you want to see onto a normal-sized TV that's at least five feet away. This means, at most, you have to look from one edge of the screen to another to see through the approaching turn. You barely need to move your eyes, let alone your head. That first set of turns at Spa on the Forza MX sim, however, looked like everything was on mega-zoom and it was very weird having to turn my head noticeably to the side to see through the corner.  This was something I got used to after a minute or two, but the three-screen setup never really felt like the awesome game-changer I expected it to. Of course, I was only doing solo hot laps and not racing other cars, so I'm guessing if I was trying to navigate around other cars on track the added visibility to each side may have felt like more of an advantage over my home setup.

Another interesting feature of the sim rig was the moving seat. I have to admit this felt a bit more like a gimmick than something that genuinely immersed me in the driving experience. Turning side to side rolled the whole rig in each direction, and hitting the brakes hard pitched the whole thing forward. It didn't really feel like a true replacement for the G forces you'd experience driving a car. More importantly, it didn't produce any sensation that actually mattered for car control. It would have been a totally different story if you could feel through the seat of your pants the rear end of the car stepping out with oversteer.

The best feature of the racing setup that really was a big upgrade over my home setup was the steering wheel, which was some version of the McLaren GT3 wheel from Fanatec mounted onto a Fanatec direct-drive podium base. I think this was my first time driving a direct drive wheel and the sheer power of the force feedback in the steering wheel was outstanding. The build quality of the wheel as a whole was also great, with the shift paddles having a very satisfying solid click to them when shifting. After finishing my laps, my hands were feeling tired from wrestling with the wheel around Spa similar to how they felt my last time out karting, which was pretty cool from a simulator.

As far as how the actual driving went, Spa is a long track and it took some time to get familiar with the turns and the rig and the car. The funniest part was just how quickly the F1 car decelerated. I would err on the side of caution for an upcoming corner, brake a little too early, and before I know it I'm barely creeping forward and still have 50 or 100 yards before the actual turn. By the end of my time, I was getting more aggressive in the corners, which did result in some satisfying fast turns but also resulted in a few off-track excursions that totally killed my lap times. Luckily the simulator was more forgiving of taking an F1 car through a sand trap than the real thing would be.

If I was doing it again, I think I would have chosen a slower car like the Porsche GT3. Although it was fun going blazing fast in an F1 car, there was so much grip and speed that you never really felt like you were balancing the car at the limit through the turn. It was brake-turn-accelerate all so quickly that you were out of the turn before you really had a chance to feel the edge of adhesion through the steering wheel. I think a slower car with less grip, relatively speaking anyway, would have given me a chance to see what the wheel's force feedback was capable of from a "feel" standpoint.

Overall it was a really fun experience. It must have looked fun to passers-by in the airport because the Forza MX stand was deserted when I started and by the time I finished there were a bunch of people waiting in line to try it for themselves. It's hard to say where I'd rank the "love of driving" aspect of it compared to other racing video games or real life track days, but as a way to kill a few minutes in an airport in definitely can't be beat.

60k Mile Giulia Check-in

I ticked over 60,000 miles in my Alfa Romeo Giulia this past week. It's been four years and 41,000 miles since I bought it and it seems like a good time provide a "long term test" update on what I think of the car.

A lot of what I liked about the car when I first bought it is still true now. It's fun to take the car out on some twisty back roads and play with the quick acceleration and nimble steering. The car sounds great when you're winding it up. The "manual mode" on the automatic transmission is even really responsive and fun to play with. Obviously it's not quite the same experience as a true stick shift, but the pros of having an automatic for a daily driver outweigh the cons of missing that three-pedal action, at least for me.

One of the fun things about the car which I'm surprised hasn't faded yet is how unique it is. Even though the Giulia has been on the market in the US for seven years, you don't see a ton of them on the road. I still have people come up to me at gas stations, coffee shops, etc. that complement the car and ask me how it is to drive. Some people have never even heard of Alfa Romeo at all and think my car is way more expensive than it is. Given all the BMWs and Audis I see around that, in M or RS trim, surely cost twice what my car did, it's funny that my car is the one turning heads. I guess if you look at the sales numbers, I think there have only been around 50k Giulias sold in the US so far, which is about how many BMW 3 series were sold in 2021 alone.

The biggest thing I was worried about when I bought my car was reliability, because most of the people I spoke to who had heard of Alfa Romeo knew their poor reputation in that area. It hasn't been totally perfect - I had the sunroof get stuck in the open position and the whole sunroof had to be replaced (covered under warranty). But, cars in this segment tend not to be stellar when it comes to reliability anyway, and so far the Alfa has been on par with my BMW 330 I had before this or the Mercedes C320 before that.

Another downside I've noticed having owned the car longer is that the back seats are quite small for a four-door car. The rear leg room on the passenger side is kind of tight, but the rear leg room on the driver's side is really a squeeze even for my 4'5" daughter. I pretty much never have to take multiple adults anywhere in my car so it hasn't been a big deal so far, but I could see it becoming more of an issue down the road as my daughter and her friends get taller.

The biggest downside of the Giulia to me is where it falls short of being a true performance car. The same kinds of issues I discovered on the autocross track also show up if you really start pushing the car hard on back roads. The brakes don't inspire confidence, especially as they get hotter and hotter. The suspension can react in strange ways to bumps, creating kind of a wiggle in the back end that makes the car feel unsettled. And the steering, although very responsive, doesn't transmit much feel for the road or the tires' level of grip.

In the end, although the Alfa Romeo Giulia isn't perfect, I'm still glad I bought it instead of any of the alternatives in my price range. It's neat having a car that you don't see very many of on the road. And as long as you aren't using it for motorsports or really going ten tenths on the back roads, it's a fun car to drive. Hopefully it'll keep treating me well until I can get my next dream car.