2025 Hyundai Ioniq 5 N Is a Cool Electric Track Star

• The Hyundai Ioniq 5 N is the brand’s first electric vehicle with the performance-oriented N badge slapped on it.

• The 4,861-pound mid-size crossover offers 641 hp and all-wheel drive at a starting price of $67,475, a big jump from the Ioniq 5’s starting price of $41,800.

• It’s on sale now.
  

“This vehicle is different from any other electric vehicle ever,” said Till Wartenberg, Hyundai’s vice president of N brand and motorsport.

He wasn’t kidding.

When you think of crossover utility vehicles, even electric crossover utility vehicles, you think of practical, cargo-hauling, comfortable carpoolers. You don’t think of Weathertech Raceway Laguna Seca.

Yet there we were, launching down the front straight of Laguna Seca’s recently repaved road course, in line behind three-time Pikes Peak winner Paul Dallenbach, driving about as fast as seemed possible. In a crossover utility vehicle.

“This car needs a little bit of explanation,” Wartenberg said.

Indeed, it does.

The N brand, wherein N stands for Namyang, site of Hyundai’s tech center in Korea, started with the Euro-spec i30 N back in 2017. Other models followed, from other passenger cars to WRC entries. And now, this.

At its very core the Ioniq 5 N rides on the same basic architecture as the Ioniq 5 crossover that Hyundai sells as quickly as it can make them. Kia sells something almost exactly like the Ioniq 5 as the Kia EV6. And Kia did something similar to the Ioniq 5 N with its version of the platform last year when it introduced the EV6 GT.

That introduction took place at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, where we also drove it around that track’s outside road course, down its drag strip, and all over the Nevada desert. That car had 571 hp, completed the 0-60 mph run in 3.4 seconds, and did surprisingly well around a road course.

Hyundai acknowledges the Kia with polite applause, then launches into its own description of its higher-performance Ioniq 5 N, noting, among other stats, that it gets to 60 mph in 3.25 seconds, for instance.

“Hyundai’s first N brand electric performance vehicle, Ioniq 5 N, elevates benchmarks for electrified performance, racetrack capability, and driver engagement,” Hyundai said.

Specifically, the Ioniq 5 N offers numerous electronic controls calculated to squeeze every ounce of performance out of this seemingly staid suburban transport pod: N Battery Preconditioning, N Race, N Pedal, N Brake Regen that gives up to 0.6 g of slowing force, N Drift Optimizer that keeps you sideways longer, N Torque Distribution, N Launch Control, N Grin Boost, N Active Sound +, N e-shift, and Track SOC.

IONIQ 5 N rolls on Hyundai’s Electrified-Global Modular Platform (E-GMP), then adds the above N motorsport technologies and draws on previous N experiments like the RM20e, RN22e, and N Vision 74.

“These allow Hyundai to maximize its performance capabilities and ensure it meets the three N performance pillars of ‘Corner Rascal,’ ‘Racetrack Capability,’ and ‘Everyday Sportscar.”