I took my first weekend trip with the Ioniq, long enough to see how far I can go on pure battery power before the ICE kicks on. I drove 38 miles on battery, mostly driving at 60 mph between towns but some slower speeds in towns also. I like that.

I also like how the driver's floor mat is fastened in place and doesn't slide around. In my Civic the floor mat would slide up over time and eventually get stuck on the clutch pedal when I tried to shift. It was always a bit unsettling when you are trying to shift gears and the clutch sticks down. Maybe the Hyundai engineers are smart, or maybe I've been living in a cave for the last 16 years while the whole auto industry has improved around me. But anyway, I like it.

I am really happy with this car. I am beginning to think my daily commute to work is too short.

 

I bought gas today! First time since I've had the car. When I got my phev Ioniq 4 months ago it had a full tank of gas. Now 1750 miles later, it was at 1/4 tank so I bought 3 gallons of gas just to get back to half a tank. That's cool.

 

So after reading this I am still trying to figure out if you really like this car. LOL. One question. I have some questions if you have the time.
1) what kind of charger do you have? Is it a 120 volt or 240?
2) have you ever timed it to see how long it takes to charge your PHEV when plugged in?
3) have you ever charged it away from home like in a public charging station?
4) have you checked to see what your overall fuel mileage is?
5) is there anything you don't like?
6) have you had the dealer service it and did you get any push back from them?
Thanks for your time and I am glad you like the car.

 

LOL, yes there is a lot to like.

1. I use the ICCB trickle charger. I plug into an outside socket next to my driveway. It's a 120 v, 15 Amp circuit with gfi protection.

2. I have not timed it. I use the scheduled charging so I plug it in when I get home in the evening, it starts charging sometime after I go to bed, and it finishes just before I go to work in the morning. Probably about 7-8 hours. I charge at the medium rate.

3. I have charged it at work and at home. I have never considered public charging. If the battery runs out when I am driving about, I just wait till I get home. No problem driving on gas for a few miles.

4. My cumulative mpg as displayed by the car has varied between about 200 mpg to about 500 mpg depending on how many long weekend trips I take. I was going to calculate it myself after filling up the gas tank but decided to only refill a partial tank so I don't have gas sitting unused for too long. Rough estimate would be about 200 mpg. But it's a strange number, it really just indicates that my driving pattern lets me run in EV mode most of the time.

5. Hmm... I wish the backup lights were brighter but I feel that way about all cars. I wish the startup musical tones were a little quieter, I'm not a morning person. I wish the key fob was a little smaller, I'm used to a single small key. I wish the rearview mirror nighttime dimmer switch worked as pull to dim instead of push to dim. I wish the cautionary message did not display on the touch screen every time you start the car, it goes away on its own after a few seconds but it's not necessary. I wish it would not chime when I'm not wearing the seatbelt, sometimes I don't need a seatbelt. I wish Android Auto would display a weather radar map. I wish Android Auto would display incoming text messages. I wish the phev Ioniq was more widely available. But all of these are minor things, mostly personal preferences that I don't worry about. The one thing that really bothered me was the car buying experience. I wish my car buying experience at the Hyundai dealerships had been better.

6. I haven't owned the car long enough to require service yet. This could be an issue later. With my Honda I did the routine stuff myself, oil, filters, brakes, tire rotation, wipers. I don't like to pay high service fees for work I can do myself and I don't totally trust car mechanics. So hopefully I don't get any pushback about it being a phev. And hopefully (from what I have read so far) in the US you can do some service yourself with a receipt and still keep the warranty in force.

 

I drove a rental car this week for a business trip and found that it just doesn't compare very well to my Ioniq. One thing in particular was driving me crazy. The volume control knob for the radio was a very small knob located right next to the touch screen. Every time I tried to adjust the volume I would inadvertently change the radio station. I had to grip the volume knob with surgical precision to avoid touching the screen. I kept wondering to myself, who would design such a thing?

It was also loud and the doors felt like they were cheap or made of tin. I didnt care for the dash display, however, the temperature controls were simple and straightforward: temperature, fan, position. There's something to be said for that.

But I was very happy to get back to my Ioniq after the trip. Ahhhh.

 

Regarding heated seats, in Australia we have 2 versions, the Elite and the Premium,The premium has, heated/vented seats and steering wheel, sunroof, leather seat covers etc, the Elite does not have these, we are skinflints so didnt buy the premium, but I do miss the heated seats so we bought this set off ebay. They are 2 heated seats with one control that fits the cigarette lighter.
cheap and cheerful price as well, no issues so far.
https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/2x-12V-...ated-Winter/401484803827?ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649

 

My wife gave me a similar seat heater when I had my old car. I used it for a couple winters and it was nice. But by the third year it had stopped heating. Best of luck with yours.

 

...
2. I like the good gas mileage and the good electric range. I like being efficient and the PHEV Ioniq is perfect for my driving situation. Short daily commutes and longer weekend trips. I dont need sports car acceleration. And I dont need an over sized battery because I can go 600 miles on gas. I cant wait to see what my average mpg will be after a year.
...

So after one year my average is 150 mpg (US). Very nice! I'm happy that it is more than the plug in Ioniq's rated mpge of about 120. During the first year I wanted to just drive the car like normal to get a baseline of what a 'normal' mpg would be for me. But with the mpg and energy displays on the dash and all the little things you learn about maximizing range it's easy and natural to try to increase your mpg when driving.

For me, the biggest hit to mpg was driving in HEV mode during the coldest months of the winter. After reading about lithium battery technology, I decided not to recharge the battery if the temperature was below freezing. Since I don't have a garage I spent about 2 months driving in HEV mode. And in those kinds of temperatures any car's gas mileage would suffer.

This year I am looking at building a garage. It would allow me to recharge in any weather which should really boost my average mpg. (And give me a warm start on cold winter mornings, and stop mice from chewing on the car wires, and keep tree sap off of the paint, and all the other normal benefits of a garage)

But I've come to see that a mpg figure for a plug in car is not what the average person on the street thinks of as mpg. It's fun to tell family and friends my mpg and watch their jaws drop, but really it just means that I do a lot of driving in EV mode and a little driving in HEV mode. And it doesn't hurt that the Ioniq is rated at HEV 52 mpg in HEV mode. That alone should impress them when the US national average is only 25 mpg.

 

So after one year my average is 150 mpg (US). Very nice!

Now the weather has warmed the MPG on short trips, less <40 miles, is ridiculous - I have just had two trips at 290 and 395 MPG (UK), and my average over the last month, a quarter of a tank, is around 125 MPG.

 

If there was one improvement to be made to the full electric, it’s better soundproofing. But that’s more weight and less efficient

 

The Ioniq is definitely quieter than my previous car. And in EV mode it is peacefully quiet. Last week I was driving the family around town and we heard a strange faint rattling noise in the car. We all searched for the source of this quiet rattling and finally found the zipper on my wife's coat was jiggling against some hard plastic. We had a good laugh because in EV mode even the smallest noises seem to be noticeable.

However, my son does say that he sometimes hears a whining noise when he's in my car. I assume it is a high frequency noise coming from the electric motor that the younger generation's ears can still hear. One time we tried a phone app that generates a high frequency sound that young people can hear but older folks generally cant. The kids thought that was so funny that they could all hear it but the parents couldn't. Ahh, to be young again.

 

Jonboy,
In regards to your item 8:
8. My old Honda Civic was a great car, but it didnt have a lot of things. Like interval wipers, power locks, power mirrors, power windows, a backup camera, tire pressure monitoring, outside temperature display, display of mpg, cruise control, steering wheel volume control, and key fob. The Ioniq has all of these things that a lot of people probably take for granted. But these are things that make me smile.

I dearly remember the Honda Civic I bought fresh out of college back in '79 - great little car with a four speed manual. It too was missing all of the things you mentioned, but the one thing I don't miss the most was the manual choke. Yea, to start the bugger, you had to pull out on the choke lever and remember to push it back in once the car was warmed up. There was a red indicator light reminding you the choke was out (which I hacked to make it white), but one day, after riding for about 5 minutes and feeling the car less peppy then normal, I pushed the choke back in and the red light stayed on. OOPS - the red light was the parking break warning. Fortunately, no damage to the breaks, but still - I don't miss the manual choke....

 

...
I dearly remember the Honda Civic I bought fresh out of college back in '79 - great little car with a four speed manual. It too was missing all of the things you mentioned, but the one thing I don't miss the most was the manual choke. Yea, to start the bugger, you had to pull out on the choke lever and remember to push it back in once the car was warmed up. There was a red indicator light reminding you the choke was out (which I hacked to make it white), but one day, after riding for about 5 minutes and feeling the car less peppy then normal, I pushed the choke back in and the red light stayed on. OOPS - the red light was the parking break warning. Fortunately, no damage to the breaks, but still - I don't miss the manual choke....

Wow, I don't remember any car with a manual choke, even my dad's cars didn't have one that I can recall. Honda has come a long way. The oldest car I ever had was an old used Datsun pickup truck probably from the seventies or eighties, I don't really know. The bed rusted out so I built a wooden bed for it. That was cool, an old fashioned wooden bed. That truck had a lot of character.

I enjoy all the neat modern features included with my Ioniq except cruise control. I just prefer to not use cruise control. I really like the key fob, and quiet unexpectedly so. The key stays in my pocket and the door unlocks and the car starts, amazing.

 

Mine resets on new fills. Even so, I have accidentally reset it between fills I think three times now in a 15 months of driving by pressing the toggle instead of the distance button right below. Might have happened to you.

 

That would make sense I guess. Maybe because I always have it displayed it's easy to accidentally reset it. Toggle and distance buttons, not sure which is the distance button, but I can see accidentally pressing the reset button.

 

Jonboy stated: My wife gave me a similar seat heater when I had my old car. I used it for a couple winters and it was nice. But by the third year it had stopped heating. Best of luck with yours.

I had my Hyundai i40 for seven years. The heated and ventilated seats in the front were functioning correctly throughout that period as were the heated rear seats.

 

Yeah, I don't expect any problems with the built in seat heaters.

 

@PDilly I remember them well. I was too young to own one but my eldest brother had two. One actually had a reverse and electric start. The reverse wasn't really reverse. You had to stop the engine, switch to reverse and start the engine again. This was because reverse was selected by starting the engine backwards. Seats, wow they were uncomfortable and very basic.

The attached picture is not a picture of his as he sold it many many years ago but it may help others picture one.

 

I had a second one too. It was similar to your pic but an earlier model. I think they were models C & E. It broke down outside our house and my dad gave the exasperated owner ten pounds for it which he gladly took. It was electric start though. No reverse. It had small tube heater down in the footwell too. Pity the battery couldn’t handle it ???

 

Was it understeering on tight curves? >

 

No, but it was underpowered downhill ??

 

Its been two years now since I got my Ioniq and I am very happy with it. It's a joy to drive, so quiet and smooth in ev mode. I've put 8,200 miles on it in the two years. According to the display, my driving style is 85% economical, 15% normal, and 0% aggressive. My average gas mileage is about 170 mpg (US). I'm sure that number will go up the next time I get gas and update Fuelly. But that may be a while. I bought a full tank of gas back in November expecting that I would use it all during the winter. But now that I can park in a garage I was able to recharge the battery all winter long. And the winter weather was not very cold this year so I hardly needed to run the heater. And to top it off I will be working from home for a while.

The car has been great. I'm so happy that I got it and I plan to keep it for a long time. The auto industry keeps changing and new electric cars are slowing coming out. I'm glad Hyundai is a leading part of that change.

The garage building project is finished so the Ioniq is parked indoors now. And I have a nice work area to putter around in.

 

Things I Like:
1. I like that Hyundai has a reputation for building reliable, dependable cars backed up by good warranties. Of course I wont know how my car passes the test for another 10 years.

2. I like the good gas mileage and the good electric range. I like being efficient and the PHEV Ioniq is perfect for my driving situation. Short daily commutes and longer weekend trips. I dont need sports car acceleration. And I dont need an over sized battery because I can go 600 miles on gas. I cant wait to see what my average mpg will be after a year.

3. It’s a good value. One of the lowest price PHEV available, with a nice tax credit, and I will save thousands of dollars over the life of the car on fuel costs. The base model comes with a nice set of standard features so I dont feel like I had to give up anything to save money.

4. I like the exterior styling. Especially compared to the Prius and Clarity. I like it better than the Volt, Bolt, and Leaf. It’s a sharp looking car, somewhat sleek and sporty, somewhat normal yet modern.

5. I really like the interior, very smart, clean and simple. This is where I think a lot of car manufacturers mess up. The Prius interior layout is definitely not for me. I once rented a Mazda that had a dashboard layout so cluttered and confusing it made me want to scream. The Tesla’s single touch screen is a design mistake on the other extreme. I much prefer the Ioniq with actual buttons and dials combined with smart screen displays. The controls are logical and intuitive. It’s just a comfortable place to be.

6. I like the heated seats. Ahhhh.

7. My old Honda Civic didnt have air conditioning. I didnt need AC when I was younger but I like the AC now.

8. My old Honda Civic was a great car, but it didnt have a lot of things. Like interval wipers, power locks, power mirrors, power windows, a backup camera, tire pressure monitoring, outside temperature display, display of mpg, cruise control, steering wheel volume control, and key fob. The Ioniq has all of these things that a lot of people probably take for granted. But these are things that make me smile.

9. I like the Android Auto integration and BlueTooth phone link. Google maps on the touch screen is great. Hands free phone calls are great.

10. I like the auto volume adjustment. I dont have to constantly adjust the radio volume when I drive now. And it helps that the car drives so quiet. With the electric drive and low road noise I can really enjoy listening to music.

11. I like the hatch back which makes the large trunk space easier to use. When you fold the seats down there's a lot of room back there.

12. I like the welcome lights on the door handles at night. This is the kind of thing that impresses my wife. That counts for something.

13. I get compliments from the guys at work too. It’s cool to drive an electric car.



Things I might not like:
1. No spare tire. In 34 years of driving I've had to change a tire on the side of the road twice. However, 5 years of free roadside assistance sounds good. And that would help with other sticky situations like breakdowns, no gas, and lost keys. So who knows, maybe this is a non issue.

2. No local sales and service center. The local Hyundai dealers don't sell the plug in Ioniq. But they do sell and service the hybrid Ioniq. I figure the plug in is just a hybrid with a bigger battery, bigger motor, and a plug. So hopefully they will not have a problem servicing my car.



Non issues:
1. I thought the rear window visibility might be too limited. When I went for a test drive the dealer had placed the temporary license plate on the rear window partially blocking my view. But I don't have any concerns now. I keep the rear seat headrests down and I don't have a problem.

Lot's of good points and glad you're enjoying your Ioniq! The do sell a spare for the Ioniq if you are interested. Agree it's better than the competition. I really like the Honda Clarity, the problem is the price

 

I looked at the Clarity too. My previous car (Honda) gave me no problems at all. I would have been happy to get another Honda. But this Ioniq was everything I wanted in a new car and Honda just didn't have anything close. The Clarity is more expensive. And bigger and personally I don't care for the styling. But that's just personal preference, I'm sure its a great running car.

All new cars seem to cost more than I'm used to. Compared to my 2002 Civic which was $12,000 the Ioniq was twice as much. So yeah, $40,000 for a Clarity was more than I could stomach. The Ioniq feels like a good value compared to the competition. Hope you find what you want at a price you can afford, if not then keep shopping around.

 

Things I might not like:
1. No spare tire. In 34 years of driving I've had to change a tire on the side of the road twice. However, 5 years of free roadside assistance sounds good. And that would help with other sticky situations like breakdowns, no gas, and lost keys. So who knows, maybe this is a non issue.

I had a flat tire this winter (ran over a nail) and like you I was not used to not having a spare. In a panic - I was on my way to work - I grabbed the emergency kit, filled the tire (in -5C temperature of course!) and in about 15 minutes I was on my way to my mechanic's shop, luckily on the way to work. They fixed the tire and everything was fine. The only complaint, was that they said the glue that you fill the tire with, was a pain to clean.

[If you don't know, the kit comes with glue and a pump. There are about 4 easy to follow instructions to set it up. The pump, complete with tire gauge, plugs into an outlet in the car and pumps glue into the tire mending the hole from the inside. You pump it until the gauge indicates to stop. The kit's a lot smaller than a spare tire too!]

These days, I think most new cars come with temporary spares, so you can only drive so far and so fast on them. Basically, having this temporary fix works the same. You'll still need to get a new/fixed tire moving on. To me, this is an advantage. Btw, I don't use Hyundai mechanics, as my private mechanic knows that there is no oil in a BEV (long story!!!).

 

I had a flat tire this winter (ran over a nail) and like you I was not used to not having a spare. In a panic - I was on my way to work - I grabbed the emergency kit, filled the tire (in -5C temperature of course!) and in about 15 minutes I was on my way to my mechanic's shop, luckily on the way to work. ...

...To me, this is an advantage. Btw, I don't use Hyundai mechanics, as my private mechanic knows that there is no oil in a BEV (long story!!!).

I had kind of forgotten, or stopped worrying about not having a spare tire. So far no problems, but of course you could get a flat at any time. So its good to hear that the kit worked for you in a pinch. And I think I agree with you. For sure I like not hauling around the extra weight of a full size spare like cars of old had.

 

I was down to a quarter tank so I bought gas this week, first time since November. Covered 2500 miles since then. I don't normally fill up the tank since it lasts so long but I did back then. Now my long term average is 208 mpg. This car really works for me and I certainly enjoy the ride.

 

Wow! I thought I was doing well at 125 MPG. You must do exclusively max 44km per day and recharge faithfully at night.

 

The Ioniq is a lot of things, but "cool" it ain't.

Sorry.

Unless you've just redefined the word cool.

 

I would say it's pretty cool. Fun, too in sport mode.

 

Well I guess that depends on what you mean.

If you mean cool as in - Ooh there's Brad Pitt driving an Ioniq in Fast and Furious 15. Well maybe. I mean high school was a long time ago, but cool is really just attitude. If the only pair of clean pants you have are a size too big and you spend your day at school being self conscious about your appearance, then that is not cool. But if you purposefully wear pants too big and keep your head held high when they drop, then that is cool.

My family, friends, and co-workers know I drive an Ioniq that gets super gas mileage. They know what a Tesla is. But they dont really appreciate my Ioniq the way I do. They think it's neat, or different, or it looks better than a Prius, but not something they would get. So they dont think it's cool. And until they see Taylor Swift riding in the passenger seat with me, it doesnt make me cool.

If you mean cool as in - Wow, this car is a marvel of engineering and modern technology. I'm driving an electric car! It's so quiet, it's rides so smooth, it glides down the road. I'm getting 200 mpg. It's good for the planet. It's on the leading edge of the electric car revolution. Whoa, that is totally wicked!

It's finally getting a really good electric car because the technology is finally there and finally affordable. Even though the auto industry, and the oil industry, and big government are trying to stop it. Heck yeah it's cool.

Yeah, it is a cool car. Totally. If you dont believe me, try holding your head up, be an electric rebel.

 

It has to at least look good to start with to get that label.

As much as I like the rest of the car, it looks like giant Guinea Pig.

 

Didn’t your mum tell you that looks weren’t everything

To me the Iconiq is function over form, it’s shaped the way it is for best drag coefficient and efficiency, And that it delivers in spades and matches or surpasses the manufacturer claims, ( Not many do )
Too my mind it’s a cool vehicle to use and in some small way I’m reducing my carbon footprint to the benefit of everyone,

 

I actually like the looks of the IONIQ, it's very similar to the Elantra, which I also like. I think my IONIQ is cool.

 

The front end is ok.

The LED lights look pretty good on my 38kwh, but the grill looks better on the old Ioniq EV.

Past that it is just frumpy Asian economy car.

There's hope for the successor though; the concepts look a bit more exciting that are coming out of Hyundai.

And yes, I agree that the new Elantra looks good.