Opinion: the Hyundai Ioniq 5 N’s fake gear shifts are… actually quite fun

When I drove the Hyundai Ioniq 5 N on ice earlier this year, a crucial element was missing. Actually, several were. Friction, for one thing. I gained no meaningful knowledge of how the car rode, stopped or handled. I couldn’t see how it looked, because it was still wrapped in disguise.

But mainly, the noise was missing. ‘Noise, in an EV? Course there wasn’t any, you fool’ shouts the corner of the internet which comments before engaging brain.

The Ioniq 5 N is a very noisy EV. In N mode, it summons various soundtracks, from one imitating a modern turbocharged hot hatch roar to more futuristic spaceshippy tones. N mode also brings up a ‘rev counter’ on the instrument readout, complete with wavering needle, redline, and the re-gen adjustment paddles behind the chunky steering wheel have all of a sudden become ‘gearchangers.’

So, you can hit an imaginary redline. You can bang up through the imaginary gearbox or blip some imaginary downshifts. The noise barks and crescendos. The revs flare and blip. And though the cynical part of your brain is screaming ‘this is all fake, rendered purely for my entertainment’, the petrolhead part of your brain won’t care. Because it’s having more fun than it could in a silent EV.

What’s more, because of how Hyundai has calibrated the shifting to interrupt motor power for a moment, there are now peaks and pauses to accelerating. Completely pointless in an EV. But also, somehow, intuitive. It’s the acceleration you’ve been brought up on. This is a really fast car but after launching it several times, I didn’t feel as queasy as I did in a Polestar 2 BST or have done previously in a Porsche Taycan Turbo S. And I think playing tricks on my limbic system to synthesise a transmission has a lot to do with that.

Your reaction to the N’s gimmicks depends entirely on the attitude you bring to it. It’s like arriving to see a movie reluctantly. If you go in expecting to hate Barbie, changes are you’ll be grinding your teeth into your popcorn. Head in with an open mind and you might surprise yourself. Same story here. Some will hate it. Some will say it’s everything wrong with the car world, that it’s fake news on four wheels. And you’re well within your rights to have that opinion. Don’t buy an Ioniq 5 N. Or do, and turn all the audio augmentation off. But this will not be the last EV to play this game – VW’s known to be plotting a similar party trick for future electrified GTIs.

The wilful cynic in me wanted to laugh at the 5 N and its cosplay gearbox. I wanted to say it was stupid and sad, and a waste of time. But in all honesty, I enjoyed it. I was impressed by it. It’s there if you want it. If you don’t, choose one of the silent-but-violet driving modes instead.

Perhaps the 5 N will be judged harshly because it’s the first EV on sale to really make a go of all this synthetic engine malarkey. Cars which ‘go first’ often get a pasting from the die-hards.

Remember when BMW first started piping engine noise into cars through the speakers as they started to go turbo? The early M135i and first forced-induction M5 got a right old kicking back in the day, but people forgave it over time and the cars sold strongly. Porsche has been accused of sacrilege many times in years gone by, thanks to water-cooling, electric power steering, diesel engines, SUVs… signs of the times, basically. Over time, the prosecution tends to wither away, and the big, grown-up car company tends to come out on top.

So life will be tough for the Ioniq 5 N while it has to share the stage with machines like a Mercedes-AMG A45 or Audi’s RS3, which use bits of metal and fuel exploding to create the thrills, instead of lines of code. But one day not too far from now, the showrooms will be empty of petrol-drinkers, and you might just be glad Hyundai bottled the essence of what it was to drive a fast petrol car and spliced it into a gearbox-free EV.