Seven random things you can power with the Hyundai Ioniq 5

Thanks to its 800-volt on-board charging system and vehicle-to-grid capability, the Hyundai Ioniq 5 doesn’t swallow up electricity in a one-way street fashion. Hyundai is very proud to point out it can be discharged for several worthy, sensible purposes. 

Connect a cable up to your friend’s stricken EV and it’ll donate them enough charge to get them going again. Hyundai also suggests the Ioniq 5 is the perfect vehicle for a camping trip, where it could be deployed to run a fridge.

So, let’s begin here. We have the top-of-the-line Ioniq 5 at our disposal, with a fully charged 77kWh battery. Of that, 73kWh is classed as ‘useable battery capacity’. 1kWh is the amount of energy is takes to run a 1kW appliance for – you guessed it – 60 minutes. 

An average beer cooler will consume power at around 220 Watts, meaning 1kWh would power it for 4.5 hours. So, a fully charged Ioniq could keep the beer icy for 331 hours, or two weeks. But you’re walking home from the campsite.

A modest 32-inch LED telly will chew through around 50 Watts – taking 20 hours, maths fans, to use up one whole kWh. As a result, the Ioniq would run a television alone for two months straight. Enough to binge all of Breaking Bad, The Real Housewives of the Outer Hebrides, and more Top Gear than you can shake a busted caravan at.

Charging up, say, an modern smartphone 11 from absolutely flat (scary thought) takes about three hours from a wall-plug. The battery is a mere 15 watt-hour minnow. 

The Hyundai’s 71,000 watt-hour battery could charge that 4,733 times, which, at one charge per day, is enough to keep it going for almost 13 years, by which time you’ll need an upgrade, and hopefully be spending less time on TikTok. 

An average toaster is a power-hungry little box as it roasts your bread, chomping through 1200 Watts for a minute or two, depending how well-done you fancy your crispy bread.

The Ioniq would run our tame toaster for a cool 61 hours, by which time that’s going to be some pretty crunchy wholemeal. Presuming your toaster can rattle out 30 rounds an hour, we make that 1,830 two-slice batches of toast, all of which will land butter-side-down when you drop them. 

A real bargain, this one. Eating up just 0.3kWh in a year’s use, an Ioniq should keep your teeth pearly-white for two and a half centuries. Remember to floss.

You’re having a bad day. Your Honda e has run out of charge. But good news – it’s ground to a halt right alongside a friendly neighbour’s Hyundai Ioniq. You’ll be on your way in a jiffy, then? Not quite.

On paper, the Honda’s 35kWh battery is almost exactly half the size of the Hyundai’s cell pack, so you’d expect to get two full charges, but it’s not quite that simple: inefficiencies and charging losses mean you’ll probably get one and a half charges.

And then you'll require a tow-truck for your dead Ioniq. You know what, it’s a silly idea, forget it. Leave the Honda to fend for itself. 

Want to hear some scary numbers? Sit down for this one.

As we’ve learned, a kilowatt hour is a measure of how much energy an appliance consumes in an hour. A terawatt hour (1TWh) is one billion times bigger than a kilowatt hour. 

According to Cambridge University, global Bitcoin mining currently consumes an estimated 121.36 terawatt-hours of electricity per year. Which, says the university, is more than the entire country of Argentina. That amount of electricity could boil every kettle in the UK for 27 years. And you know how much we love a cup of tea.

So, if you were planning to buy a Hyundai Ioniq with your dogecoin profits and plug in your laptop to start digging out some of that sweet, sweet crypto, then keep a fire extinguisher handy.