The Hyundai Ioniq 5 in MY2023 not only includes a slightly larger battery but battery pre-conditioning. The car can adapt the battery temperature to the optimum before charging to enable faster and more constant charging. We went to test if the upgrade is worth it and found the ups and downs in measured charging curves.
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We first tested the Hyundai Ioniq 5 in the winter of 2021/2022 in what was its top engine version at the time, namely the 225 kW all-wheel drive and 72.6 kWh battery. In that test, we could charge at over 220 kW even in sub-zero temperatures, albeit only when the battery had warmed up over several hundred kilometres from a previous charging stop. More often than not, we experienced much slower charging processes because the battery was too cold, and the software reduced the charging power to protect the cells. At that time, we were far from the advertised 18 minutes for recharging the battery from ten to 80 per cent capacity as claimed by Hyundai.
Things are different now because the current model year has preconditioning so that it can warm up the battery before charging in winter and cool it down in summer. The goal is to arrive at a fast charger with an optimally tempered battery of about 25 degrees to reliably utilise the best possible charging curve. Reliable, in this case, means that you can rely on achieving a certain charging performance and duration. In the Ioniq 5 without the preconditioning (which can also be applied to older models via software update), it was generally a bit of a lottery as to how warm the battery actually was and at what charging power the car actually charged.
For this latest test, Hyundai provided us with an Ioniq 5 with its large battery option and all-wheel drive. The battery is now 77.4 kWh – just like the Kia EV6 – and the transmission power has increased from 225 to 239 kW with the slightly larger battery. The test car again has high-quality Uniq equipment, only the paintwork is different, and this year the test car has 19-inch aluminium rims with winter tyres.
The opportunity to test the updated Ioniq 5 on a highway journey presented itself when Volkswagen invited journalists to an advance premiere of the revised ID.3 to give us an impression of the facelifted model. This meant we had to get from Düsseldorf to Hanover and back, which is a 273-kilometre-journey each way, making for a perfect chance to give the Ioniq 5 a spin. Since the battery in the Ioniq 5 was not fully charged before departure, a charging stop had to be scheduled on the route. At temperatures of four degrees, this was ideal for testing the new function.
At this point, a rather unusual problem began with an error that hadn’t occurred before and could not be reproduced later in the test, the navigation just stopped working. It was possible to enter a destination, but during the requested online route guidance, the system repeatedly got stuck and returned to the main menu after a short pause. A short stop, during which the vehicle was locked for several minutes, did not result in the hoped-for reset of the system, and even the manual reset via the hidden button in the dashboard didn’t help the navigation system at all.
The smartphone connection via Apple Carplay still worked perfectly, and we could still use some kind of navigation, however, the catch in the Ioniq 5 is that the battery preconditioning cannot be started manually but is tied into the integrated Hyundai navigation system the registered fast charging stations. So in our case, the battery had no preconditioned optimal charging temperature on the way to Hanover.
You can see the result in light blue in the graphic below: at the charging stop at Ionity in Lippetal, the charging power fell far short of the possible peak, with 134 kW possible at the peak. The start of the charging process with around 68 kW had initially suggested worse, but even without the preconditioning, the charging power was in the triple-digit range for long stretches. After 28 minutes, 47.5 kWh were charged – still an average of 102 kW.
After arriving in Hanover for our event, the car was parked for several hours. This was apparently enough to reset the navigation system because the error no longer occurred. So we were able to continue with the test on the return journey with a charge level of just over 30 per cent. Next, we set off in the direction of Düsseldorf, with a charging stop planned at the EnBW facility in Lauenau, only about 30 kilometres out of Hanover.
The result of this charging process is shown in dark blue in our graph above: shortly after starting with 113 kW at 19 per cent, the charging power rose to a plateau of around 195 kW. At 40 per cent SoC, 224 kW were then available – which was constant up to 55 per cent. After just ten minutes, the Ioniq 5 charged from 19 to 59 per cent, 19 to 80 per cent was reached after 16 minutes, and even at those 80 per cent SoC, 125 kW still flowed into the battery.
A small side note is that Hyundai has now also adjusted the charging curve above 80 per cent. At 82/83 per cent, the charging power used to drop sharply, and the battery management system had to measure the cells individually after the charging process, just to be on the safe side. Since a significantly higher charging power was released, Hyundai is now confident about doing this without this “measurement pause” because we could no longer observe this behaviour in the test.
Despite the preconditioning, we did not quite reach the peak charging power of 238 kW that we measured last year in the sister model Kia EV6. At low charge levels, the Ioniq 5 measured in winter remained below the charge curve of the EV6 recorded in summer. On the other hand, the Ioniq 5 is more stable at higher charge levels.
As a comparison for a 400-volt vehicle, we have included the Nissan Ariya, which was also tested in winter, in the graph. Since we don’t yet have our own measurements for the charging curve for the current MEB models with a 77-kWh battery, we have used data from Björn Nyland for the VW ID. Buzz in the graph.
Editor’s note: In the drop-down menu of the following chart, you can select any of the vehicles we have on file for comparison. We collected all of the data for these charging curves, as mentioned, with the exception of the ID. Buzz.
182 kW charging power on average
At the end of our charging process in Lauenau, just outside of Hanover, the Ioniq 5 had recharged 58.4 kWh in 25 minutes, making for a rate of 137 kW on average. We charged up to 93 per cent SoC for the purpose of recording the charging curve. If you want to make progress as quickly as possible, you would probably have ended the charging process at 80 per cent and planned a short, second charging stop later. In our window from 19 to 80 per cent, the average was an impressive 182 kW!
The Ioniq 5 would probably have just about managed the remaining 242 kilometres to our destination – we’ll get to the consumption in a moment. But since the author of this text does not have a wall box charger at home, it would not have been wise to park the car with an almost empty battery in order to drive it again the next day. So the Hyundai navigation system scheduled another charging stop at EnBW in Ratingen shortly before returning to Düsseldorf. For this charging session, the Ioniq 5 didn’t preheat the battery. Exactly why this happened remains unclear: either the battery was still warm enough from the fast charging process in Lauenau, or the battery level was too low at the scheduled arrival at the EnBW fast charger. The Hyundai system only works up to a certain charge level. The eleven per cent we still had in the battery on arrival may have been too little. In any case, the small battery preconditioning symbol in the speedometer display did not light up.
The result of this third charging process of the day is shown in green: at the beginning, a slightly better performance was recorded than in Lauenau, the 195 kW plateau was reached a little earlier, and the Ioniq 5 also reached 224 kW a little faster in this case. Both cases involved an Alpitronic Hypercharger HYC300 from the same operator, so it can’t be due to the different behaviour of the charging station. We noticed that the 224 kW could not be maintained for as long as in Lauenau: the charging power was reduced earlier and dropped briefly to about 130 kW before it rose again to 180 kW. The charging curve was similar to that from Lauenau, only shifted by a few per cent of the charge level.
With a warm battery, the Ioniq 5 is in its element
Charging from eleven to 80 per cent took 21 minutes (perhaps due to the earlier 224 kW cut-off), and the average charging power was a proud 161 kW. So again, we couldn’t quite reach the factory specification of 18 minutes, but a difference of three minutes is not far off.
A typical visit to a service station with a short walk to the toilet, purchasing a bottle of water or a coffee and the return journey on foot often takes longer than the actual charging process. Not to mention a sufficiently long break for a meal, as even with a cold battery, the Ioniq 5 charged 47.5 kWh in 28 minutes. With many other electric cars, this is the best possible case, so even “slower” HPC visits with the Ioniq 5 don’t take an eternity. However, it bears mentioning that the winter in Germany in 2021/2022 was not as cold as usual for the season. It’s quite possible that the charging curves would have been quite different with ten degrees less.
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