Tested: 2025 Hyundai Ioniq 5 N Is a Great Pretender
Let’s ponder the definition of an honest machine. Is a Ford Mustang Dark Horse honest when its exhaust is in loud mode and its gauges are set to emulate a Fox-body’s cluster? Is a BMW M5 honest when part of its engine soundtrack comes from the stereo system? Do we generally agree that a CVT is better when it pretends to shift between the defined ratios that it doesn’t actually have? Automotive artifice has been around as long as cars have—witness the 1899 patent for the Horsey Horseless, a car with half a wooden horse affixed to its front end so as not to startle the actual horses that were still common on the nation’s roadways. The 2025 Hyundai Ioniq 5 N and its simulated internal-combustion soundtrack is just the latest example in a long line of cars attempting to evoke some earlier, romanticized automotive ideal. And if the 5 N is the Horsey Horseless, then we’re the stubborn equines spooked by the smooth silence of EVs and longing for a touch of familiar gasoline-powered commotion.
The premise sounds a bit asinine: The 5 N aims to enliven EV motoring by electronically mimicking a drivetrain it doesn’t have. Its N Active Sound + and N e-Shift features conspire to deliver a driving experience that replicates an internal-combustion car with an eight-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission. And it’s ruthlessly accurate in its emulation—flat-foot it heading uphill in eighth gear, and it’ll bog and refuse to accelerate. Downshift too quickly when dive-bombing a corner, and it will deny you the gearchange until wheel speed matches available virtual rpm. It’s so good at the charade that you can quickly forget that this is not, in fact, an internal-combustion car. Devotees of mechanical honesty, welcome to your existential crisis—because this whole contrived circus routine actually works.
2025 Hyundai Ioniq 5 N
Lapping Laguna Seca with the Ioniq 5 N playing its true self—no sound, no gears—you notice it’s a quick but aloof machine in the manner of its EV cohorts. There’s good feedback through the wheel, but g-forces and tire noise are your main resources for determining whether you’re going too fast or not fast enough. With the simulated engine noise and virtual eight-speed enabled, suddenly you have a frame of reference—maybe you’ll get into fifth gear on a straight and brake for a third-gear corner, the wail of the revs helping your middle ear agree with the g-forces assailing your inner ear. More sensory feedback equals more fun, and auditory cues are a practical advantage in a car that gathers speed like a Supermarket Sweep contestant gathers groceries.
In our instrumented testing, the Ioniq 5 N hit 60 mph in 3.0 seconds and nearly broke into the 10s in the quarter-mile, clocking 11.1 seconds at 123 mph. We saw those times using the Drag mode that required about 20 minutes to prewarm the battery, but out on the track in regular 601-hp mode, the 5 N certainly doesn’t feel much slower, especially when the planets align to engage N Grin Boost and access 641 horsepower for 10 seconds.
Granted, this is a heavy car, weighing in at 4849 pounds, and the realities of EV range considerations—Hyundai claims 221 miles of range from the 84.0-kWh battery, and we saw 190 miles in our 75-mph highway test—mean that its tires are not full-on track-attack rubber. That range result isn’t far off of the 210 miles we’ve seen from a lesser all-wheel-drive Ioniq 5, but the N also has almost 9 percent more battery capacity. The N’s Pirelli P Zero PZ4 summer tires (size 275/35ZR-21 at all four corners, on forged wheels) wear the EV-specific Elect label and include a sound-deadening layer inside and a tread design calibrated for low noise. Even so, this big hunk o’ Hyundai pulled 0.96 g on the skidpad, prompting testing director Dave VanderWerp to call it “probably the most power-oversteery car I’ve ever driven on the skidpad, and that was with the torque split set to 50/50.”
2025 Hyundai Ioniq 5 N
Indeed, the 5 N allows the driver to adjust front-to-rear torque split across 11 intervals, from tame to wild. It will also let you imitate kicking in the clutch on a rear-drive car to initiate a drift. This is called the Torque Kick Drift function, and you probably don’t need it if you’re indulging in the Ioniq 5 N’s inherently chippy handling, which adheres to a philosophy that Hyundai dubs “Corner Rascal.” They’re ginning up some great names over at Hyundai these days.
And they need a lot of names with all the drive modes, settings, and features crammed into the Ioniq 5 N. Sometimes the setting you’re trying to select disagrees with some other settings, and you get a message like, “The operating conditions for N Torque Distribution (NTD) have not been met. NTD is available when all the following conditions are met. Motor mode: Sport + (in N Mode or N Custom Mode). ESC mode: Sport or off. It is not available while the following functions are active: N e-shift, (smart) cruise control, speed limiter.” The 5 N serves up a lot of variations on that sort of message. Even the virtual soundscapes include two other options besides Ignition (the internal-combustion one): Evolution and Supersonic, which offer noises we’d describe as “cousin of a Martian laser gun” and “someone asked a robot to pretend to be a fighter jet.”
2025 Hyundai Ioniq 5 N
But get it all set up to your liking, and the 5 N is a blast. Multiple hot laps didn’t upset its battery, which never rose above 95 degrees, and its brakes were always ready to haul down for the Corkscrew. These are the biggest brakes ever fitted to a Hyundai—15.7-inch rotors up front clamped by four-piston calipers—and the dual motors contribute to braking too, helping reduce fade while recuperating energy. By themselves, the motors can deliver 0.6 g of deceleration, meaning you can avoid using the friction brakes entirely in normal driving. And even in a full-ABS stop (70 mph is scrubbed in just 153 feet), some regen can still be active. All of this feels completely natural through the brake pedal, with no lurching or lack of linearity as the calipers and motors share their workload.
You can forget that blended braking is at work the same way you can forget that the 5 N is an EV. This suspension of disbelief is enabled by eight speakers inside the car and two outside playing an internal-combustion symphony. Our critique here is not that Hyundai chose to emulate a gas-powered car but rather which car it selected: the Elantra N DCT, which means the simulated pops and crackles of the exhaust are modeled on a car that is itself contriving those pops and crackles through deliberate programming. It’s a copy of a copy.
2025 Hyundai Ioniq 5 N
And besides that, Hyundai modeling the Ioniq 5 N on the Elantra N is like being granted dinner with any person from history and choosing your coworker, Mike, who sits in the next cubicle over. It’s not that Mike isn’t an entertaining guy, but what about Cleopatra or Leonardo DaVinci? Likewise, if you can program an EV to sound and behave like any car at all, how about a Formula 1 car from the V-10 era or—keeping it in the family—a Hyundai WRC car? When you put the 5 N in Pretend Elantra mode, the instrument cluster even switches over to show Elantra-appropriate gauges, including a tachometer with a 6700-rpm redline. Meanwhile, the 5 N’s actual motors spin to 21,000 rpm. There’s such a thing as too on-brand, and emulating your own car that costs half as much is a prime example.
Yes, the Ioniq 5 N costs $67,475, or $32,625 more than its internal-combustion N stablemate. Of course, it’s a lot more car, both literally and figuratively, a maximalist expression of the dual-use street and track car. If 350-kW chargers ever become common at road courses—dare to dream—then the Ioniq 5 N is ready to fulfill the promise of the track-ready EV and deliver 20 minutes of track time alternating with 20 minutes of charging.
Until then, it’s a multifaceted street weapon that gleefully explores the enthusiast possibilities electric propulsion presents. Whether you enjoy its theater or get hung up on mechanical literalism is up to you, but we don’t watch a John Wick movie and constantly yell, “Keanu Reeves couldn’t do that!” or get on Space Mountain and declare, “Just so everyone knows, we’re not really going to space.” So, if an over-the-air update could someday allow us to experience a 20,000-rpm V-10 on the way to work, we’re ready to believe.
2025 Hyundai Ioniq 5 N
Counterpoint
The Hyundai Ioniq 5 N presents itself as this razor-sharp track weapon, but even on the bumpiest parts of my commute home, it didn’t jiggle my belly as harshly as the Nismo Z and Subaru BRZ tS did on the same stretch. Like those rear-drive sport compacts, the all-wheel-drive N’s drift mode is just begging to be let loose. It can carve out a highway cloverleaf with great speed and grip, but it’s ready and willing to oversteer should you let it. When this Hyundai isn’t buzzing with immaturity, it rides much like the regular Ioniq 5, which is to say pleasantly. The aggressively bolstered sport seats do lock you in rather firmly though.
Usually, the fun, laughter, and excitement of an EV end shortly after its rapid launch from a standing start. Not so with the N. It’s like Hyundai created it specifically for people who don’t listen to podcasts when they drive. The N Active Sound + and N e-shift are hilariously convincing. Not only does it drop torque between shifts and refuse to accelerate upon smacking into its make-believe redline, but it also gives the N a little buzz at “idle” that you can feel with your arm resting on the door panel. Most EVs are so quiet inside you could hear a lingering spider relieve itself on a napkin. The biggest annoyance here is that the faux shifting must be enabled before every drive, and it’s somewhat buried in a settings menu. Without this enabled, it drones like you’re riding a cow stuck in a prolonged moo or operating the loudest CVT on the planet.
On a warm spring evening, I perused the Home Depot parking lot near my home with the hottest hatchback out of Korea. Friday nights are car cruise nights on Telegraph Road, just west of Detroit. This lot is a popular meeting spot, where the blasts and growls from Hemis, Coyotes, and Chevy small blocks only grow louder and reach deeper into neighborhoods as sunlight dips below the horizon. The N, with all of its fake noise settings enabled, received no such love from the Corvette corral.
2025 Hyundai Ioniq 5 N
Patrons in gym shorts and white socks quickly spun away from what was obviously an EV; sadly, the N’s puny exterior speakers are no replacement for displacement with this audience. And there’s no missing the bright N Performance Blue Matte paint, as it makes the car look like it’s one roof-mounted cone short of an ice-cream truck. However, its fake exhaust gurgle and simulated gear shifts will bring the kid out of anybody.
As the car meet’s parking lot began to empty, a lifted tan Clinton-era Suburban at the end of the aisle blocked us to let a parade of Hemi-toting Scat Packs with tinted license-plate covers stage before entering traffic onto Telegraph. Eventually waving us past, we followed a Jeep Compass that had forgotten to turn on its lights onto the highway. A sneaky Chevy Tahoe police cruiser sat pointed at traffic just a few entrances down. That’s the thing about loud cars: They get a lot of attention, good and bad.
Despite the N’s bright paint and funky design, our lack of rowdy exhaust noise made us out to be the responsible ones. And that’s the beauty of reproduced engine noise in these mostly quiet electric cars. Some of the freedom and immaturity we all love to deploy occasionally while driving is held somewhat secret in the N’s cabin, like a private showing. Unless the constabulary possesses the ears of a bat, their attention will likely point elsewhere. —Austin Irwin