The Hyundai Ioniq 5 costs from £37k

The TG Electric Award-winning Hyundai Ioniq 5 arrives in Britain very soon. So soon Hyundai has just revealed exactly how much its first bespoke EV is going to cost you. And it’s not cheap, but nor is it outrageously expensive.

The entry-level ‘SE Connect’ car costs £36,995 before options. So it just misses out on the government’s £2,500 Plug-in Car Grant for EVs costing less than £35,000. It has a 58kWh battery good for up to 240 miles of range and rear-wheel drive. Good kit too, with 19-inch alloys, the full-size screens, CarPlay, those cool LED head- and taillights and a load of clever driver assistance/safety systems chucked in as standard.

£39,295 buys you a small-battery ‘Premium’ spec car, and the option to upgrade to the larger 73kWh battery with either rear- (£41,945) or all- (£45,145) wheel drive. Key upgrades versus the SE Connect are heated/power seats, even cooler headlights, more safety/assistance systems and the option to add the ‘Vehicle 2 Load pack’, which lets you draw up to 3.6 kW of power from the Ioniq’s battery to power, well, whatever you want. Even other EVs.

The top-of-the-range ‘Ultimate’ Ioniq 5 costs £42,295 with the 58kWh battery and RWD, £44,945 with the 73kWh battery and RWD, or £48,145 with the 73kWh battery and AWD. It gets pretty much every conceivable gadget, but oddly this top-spec car is the only one that gets the option of a heat pump for more efficient electric motoring in cold weather.

Context? The Tesla Model 3 starts at £40,990, the Skoda Enyaq starts at £31,995 and the VW ID.3 starts at £30,870.

The 73kWh rear-wheel drive Ioniq gets the longest range, with a claimed range of 300 miles in Premium spec. Adding all-wheel drive subtracts 13 miles from the WLTP range figures but adds a substantial amount of performance – the AWD car has over 300bhp and 446lb ft of torque, so it does 62mph in 5.2 seconds versus 7.4 seconds for the 214bhp/258lb ft 73kWh RWD. The 58kWh car has 168bhp/258lb ft and does 0-62mph in 8.5 seconds.

Click here to read our review of an almost-finished Ioniq 5 prototype. It’s gonna be good, this thing…