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After the thousands of new cars I’ve test-driven in the past 50-plus years of writing auto reviews, I must admit I was mesmerized the first time I saw the Hyundai Ioniq 5, which was shortly after it had been revised from a utilitarian caterpillar of a compact into a full-fledged butterfly as a the pure-electric 2023 Ioniq 5.

It strikes your senses because it could be a sedan, a station wagon, a sport-utility vehicle or even a space capsule for futuristic travel.
It is a squarish vehicle, but it goes well beyond square shape with grooves and contours that intersect artfully on both sides, leaving it a work of art that can convey you and your family to work, the mall, the hockey arena or across country.

The line was long when the Ioniq first made it into press fleets, and I was pushed back to the end of that line by my health restrictions and the compressed travel arrangements available to auto shows.
When I finally got one, I learned that sometimes Mother Nature has a better idea.
First, I wanted to test-drive the Ioniq 5 for what it is – pure-electric. Second, I wanted another test-drive of the car in a Northern Minnesota winter, when the harsh blizzards and frigid temperatures can reduce the battery power of EVs to minimal, and traction capabilities also are questioned.
I got lucky and got both extremes. When the Ioniq 5 was delivered, it had a full 100-percent charge of its battery pack system, and it showed 277 miles. The model I drove had the top-scale two-motor system with one powering the front wheels and the other the rear, giving it all-wheel drive with sensational powertrain numbers of 320 horsepower and 446 foot-pounds of torque.

It develops 99 horsepower for the front and 221 horsepower to the rear for a combined 320 horsepower, and 188 foot-pounds of torque to the front with 258 to the rear for a combined 446.
Other models are rear-drive, with a single rear electric motor both in the base SE with a 58.0 killowatt-hour system, good for 168 horsepower with 258 foot-pounds of torque at $42,745.
The power upgrade to the middle range has a 77.4 kWh motor with 225 horsepower and 258 foot-pounds of torque, while the top AWD version has 320/446 at a base price of $57,795. My test vehicle listed at $58,005.
We had stunning acceleration, listed at about 4.4 seconds from 0-60 acceleration and a top speed of something more than 100.
On dry pavement and decent conditions, the car was a bullet, handling very well at the same time, and always running silently. We thought we heard a faint little background sound of an engine revving, but it is through the superb Bose sound system, piped in so the driver doesn’t lose track of how fast he’s going.

Then we got the first of four days of sustained snowfall, and it totaled 30 inches during four days on the North Shore of Lake Superior. Driving in mostly slums the first day, I had no problems, although when I got on the freeway, it seemed to want to slither around a little bit on its 20-inch Michelin Primacy all-season tires.

After looking all over the console and both left and right areas of the dashboard, I spotted the drive-mode switch, nice and big and round, on the lower left part of the steering wheel. If you click it you change from normal to eco or sport, but it you hold the button in, you get a “snow” setting, which puts you in all-wheel drive. It also takes care of any highway slithering.

Motor Trend declared that the Ioniq 5 is an SUV, and named it the 2023 SUV of the Year, but in their evaluation they said they used the desert sand to replicate the effect of driving in winter. Sorry, Motor Trend, but my guess is that the desert sand has no way to replicate Minnesota winter snow and cold, and Mother Nature blessed us with the real thing in Duluth, Minnesota.

We had no issues churning out of our 100-yard driveway in the morning, before our guardian-angel neighbor Eric showed up with his F250 Heavy Duty Diesel pickup to plow us out.
We used up the remaining battery power the next few days, so I arranged to meet my wife, Joan, at the Canal Park Brewery, where we’d heard they had good food – and because it is only about a block from the EV charging stations down near Canal Park.
I got there just right to nab the end unit, which is a Level 3 high-power charger and is free to the public. It was about 20 above, but a ferocious wind was blowing into Duluth off Lake Superior and my guess is the windchill was more like 0-10 degrees.
After plugging in the charger to the right rear receptacle I found I had to reconnect it a half dozen times before it really connected, then I pulled my sweatshirt hood and my parka over my head and still faced a nasty chill on my walk across the parking lot.
As for the food, I ordered the walleye, and I must say it was the largest and maybe the best filet of store-bought walleye I’ve ever eaten.
Joan gave me a ride back to the Ioniq, and in the hour and 15 minutes it had reached 100-percent charge. However, in the cold it showed that amount of charge would be 177 miles, which is still very good, but not close to the 277 we could get in milder weather.
Hyundai builds the new Ioniq on its global electric platform, which it shares with Genesis and Kia, allowing all three to vary their length and wheelbase and still house the same floor-lining flat LG battery pack and electric-motor drivetrain in the Kia EV-6 and the Genesis GV-60.
Included in the drivetrain along with the long-range Lithium-ion battery is a battery preheating system, which doesn’t eliminate the power loss to the cold but does greatly limit it.
It also is equipped with an ultra-fast charging system, which can recharge with 240-watt or 480-watt chargers, and can also upgrade to 800-watt charges, which can give you 85 percent of full power in about 20 minutes.
The paddle shifters on the steering wheel are far more than gimmicks, with five different downshift settings for focusing full deceleration from braking or holding the vehicle back with gearing in downhill driving.
All of the standard Hyundai safety items are built in, including a driver attention warning, safe exit assist, blind-spot detection, rear cross-traffic alerts parking distance alert, accident avoidance, and lane-keeping assist. It has a full, fixed-glass sunroof, rain-sensing wipers and LED head, tail and daytime running lights.

Also carried over from Hyundai’s gas-engine tradition is that the drivetrain has a 10-year, 100,000-mile warranty, something that should add a layer of security to those decreasing cynics who still don’t realize we are heading toward an electric-vehicle future. And soon.
Despite the proliferation of EVs by Tesla, Chevrolet, Cadillac, Ford, Volkswagen, Mercedes, BMW and Nissan, right now the South Korean Hyundai have stolen the spotlight with what is ranked as the best EV on the market.