Canadian pre-orders now available

I'm amazed at the number of people who think a useless rear window is no big deal. It makes me wonder about the attentiveness of other drivers. I was driving in a snow storm today. Traffic slowed in front of me so I slowed. When I brake I always look to the rear to see traffic coming at me. Sure enough, the guy behind me hit the brakes late and skidded sideways toward me. Because I was watching I had time to move to the right and he slid past and into the oncoming lane. Moral: use your mirrors. Look behind you. Looking back isn't just reserved for parking.

 

Has any reviewer actually driven the car in a northern climate with snow, slush and that grey mess left on the road after the salt and sand trucks have gone by?
Having driven my '86 Hyundai Pony, '92 VW Golf, '03 Toyota Echo HB, '13 Hyundai Elantra GT, and '21 Kona, all but the VW had a rear wiper. All needed one! I vowed after VW never to drive a HB car without a wiper, since I like to see out the back. Schmutz simply collects on the rear window......

 

I drove it yesterday in the snow in Ottawa. The back window was not great. You can still see out, but it certainly isn’t clear. We only had it for 30 minutes I’m sure it’s worse for longer drives.

 

Shocked but my rinky-dink dealer has a demonstrator on site! Test drive next week.

 

I saw one in BC last week at High Street Mall in Abbotsford. Anyone here have it? I wonder if it is a test vehicle or somebody in BC already has one.

 

Got a VIN today for a AWD Preferred Ultimate Digital Teal. I have to decide by Friday whether I am going ahead with the order or not. I guess they're either building them now or are very close. My last spot in the queue was 186. Decisions, decisions.

 

That's funny. Literally my strongest impression about my test drive (appearance-wise anyway) was how crisp and nicely designed I thought that logo was! Ha!
Hope you get a test drive and can share your impressions.

 

I cancelled my order this morning. I quite liked my test drive and I was really looking forward to the Ultimate trim bells and whistles and light interior but some of the shortcomings were weighing on me. Underwhelming efficiency, expensive 20" wheels and most of all the rear wiper miss all added up to say "wait". So I'll wait and enjoy the Kona while the EV landscape changes and evolves for at least a couple years. Kind of sad about it but it seems sensible.

 

You Kona owners must have used up the supply of rear wipers, leaving the Ioniq 5 to depend on the wind to clear grime off the rear window. You think the 20" wheels are too expensive. Would you pay extra for a rear wiper? How much?

If I was dead-set on an Ioniq 5, I'd pay even $500 extra to get a rear wiper--it's that important to me. But I'm the crazy guy who begged MINI to take $2,500 to delete the fake hood scoop from my MINI Electric by installing the cheaper scoopless hood of the base MINI Cooper. MINI ignored my plea so I had my local body shop perform the hood-swap/scoop-deletion a week after delivery for about $2K.

 

I would have happily put together a trim and options that pleased me had I been able to do so. It would have been a rear wheel drive long range in blue with the light interior and Ultimate package with 18" wheels, a rear wiper, camera washers, nicer European headrests, drawer type glove box and possibly delete the Pano roof. And, because I would be super happy getting exactly what I wanted the price tag would feel much easier to take, be it higher or lower.

 

Just got our Ioniq 5 LR RWD on the 28th of Dec and took it for a 500+ trip over NY.
Thoughts so far:
1. VERY comfortable long-distance car. the adaptive cruise control + lane keep steering makes it almost autonomous on the highway. After 2h of 401 it was a 'we already have to stop?' kinda feeling.
2. high-way driving at 115 with winter tires consumes around 20kW/100km, which is better than the 2018 Kia Soul it replaces.
3. it cold-gates like mad:
1st stop we started charging with 41% after 2h of highway driving (see #1): it started at 60kW, dropped to 45kW for 12 min only to get up to 90kW towards 80% where it dropped to 4kW at which point I stopped it. This was at a 350kW Petro-Canada charger in 5C.
2nd Petro-Canada 350kW charger stop was at 56%: started at 60kW, dropped to 42kW and it stayed there til 75% when we stopped charging.
At this rate it's cheaper to just use a regular 50kW charger.
4. the rear window is OK, but it's definitely missing a wiper. Once cleaned it stays clean as long as you drive (same as a sedan), but if you stop or have any sort of accumulation on it, forget it. Using the rear window defogger makes it worse, since it just melts whatever is on it and it smears all over.
5. our trim doesn't come with front parking sensors, which my wife is missing from the Kia, as it helps parking in the city on busy streets. Not sure why they didn't bother putting them in? The 2018 Kia had them.
6. Snow gets into the handles and it's hard to get out.
7. the 2 inner headlight covers are straight and get a lot of grime and snow built up at highway speeds and need cleaning every time you stop.
8. headlight beams are awesome - very bright! great car to drive at night, especially with the auto-highbeam function turned on. Loved it on country roads!
9. Didn't miss having a AWD version, even though we got hit by a snowstorm. The car is heavy and RWD will shift all the weight to the back. VERY hard to get the tires to slip, even on snow. The RWD is fast enough, like mid-range BMW fast, not M3 fast.
10. LOVE the range. Already planning going to East Coast in the spring (fingers crossed they allow manual battery pre-heating soon)

 

A few more things I just remembered that I found different from what I've seen online:
The 'frunk' is the tiny AWD model, not the RWD model that is seen on the EU-spec cars. Disappointing, as the tire kit needs to be taken apart to fit in there alongside the charging cable. At least they're snug in there and not rattle around, I guess.
The glove box is standard, not the drawer-style seen online.
There are no trunk liner, cover or winter mats available as of now for the car in Canada. I threw some cheap things that barely cover anything in there, but can't wait to get something more substantial, as it's super easy to get mud and grime on everything with such an open cockpit floor.

 

The mat issue was the same with our Soul EV. Because the floor height was different in the BEV vs. the ICE model, the standard OEM mats would not fit, and there was nothing suitable in the aftermarket either. It took months for them to get around to making mats for the EV model.