Honestly, I have loved my 2020 Tesla Model 3. It has been a wonderful car and way ahead of its time. If not for the buffoonery, cruelty, greed, and stupidity of their CEO (Elon Musk), I would have purchased more Tesla cars. Additionally, I would not have been in a hurry to get a new car if not for the same irrational behavior of the Trump administration in stopping the electric car federal rebates. This post is not for complaining about policies though, it’s about complaining about user interface. So let’s get into it.
I ended up leasing a Hyundai Ioniq 5. All of the deals were great because the federal $7500 credit was going away in a month and all of the dealerships wanted to diminish their inventory. We got $18,000 off in total rebates.
Hyundai Ioniq 2025 Review
Note: I will also complain about other cars too.
First, buying a car sucks. Car dealerships should not exist. Tesla doesn’t have them because they ship the car directly to your house. It’s a much more pleasant buying experience that way. My first step was to identify which car I wanted to replace my Tesla with. I looked at cars from Volvo, Hyundai, Kia, Toyota, BMW, Lucid, and others. The Hyundai had the right balance of range, interface, and style. I was disappointed in the Lucid. It is way behind in technology.
Mostly these cars act very similarly to the Tesla cars. They all have about 250-350 miles in range. They all have digital experiences on the inside. They all have some bells and whistles. I saw many flaws including the following:
Too big
For some reason, a huge portion of the cars we saw were enormous. The designs were inspired by Trucks, not by SUVs or compact cars. After driving a Tesla 3, the Rivian seems like a school bus. They told us “American’s love big cars”, but this is just dumb. They should have different sizes for different folks. There were some nice cars that were very expensive, above $100,000. I couldn’t fathom paying that much for a car.
Copycat designs
There are no affordable convertible electric cars. There are no cars modeled after classic cars from the 1950s-1970s (with electric motors inside). Most of the cars try to be “futuristic” rather than classic. I think this is a mistake in understanding UX and fashion. I’ve posted previously about how the Toyota Prius won by being visually striking, if a bit ugly. All of the designs were roughly the same.
Wrong amount of buttons
The Tesla has too few. (Nearly zero) They just use a giant screen for everything including the glove box. The Volvo is very close to this, but they add a few buttons. Unfortunately, they have a smaller screen which makes it seem cheap. The Hyundai has too many buttons. Way too many.
Bad choices for hardware and settings
In the Hyundai, they have paddles behind the steering wheel that you typically use for shifting gears in sports cars. When they put together the Ionic 5 and 6 electric cars, they clearly reused the steering column to save money. Unfortunately, the car designers were put into the awkward situation of “figure out something for the paddles to do”. Honestly, they should not be there.
The thing they came up with was to change the amount of regenerative resistance the car would have your foot is not on the pedal. There is no reason to actually change this in normal driving. The problem is that there is no way to set regenerative braking the way you want and keep it. The Ioniq does not respect your settings. It’s not sticky.
The same is true for stopping at a stop sign. It creeps forward. You can press this button (Auto Hold) to make it work the way I want, but it resets every single time you start the car. I hate having to do this, but every time I get in the car, I have to press Auto-Hold and then press the left-paddle.
This is a total unforced error. Just make the settings sticky. Why do people make interfaces and not make the settings sticky? Its UX 101.
One cool trick the Ioniq has is the use of a screen for the rear view mirror. I thought I would love this, but I think I have to disable it permanently.
The problem is that your eye is weird. When you look at a mirror your eye automatically focuses on the things far away. When you look at a screen of the exact same thing, your eye does not focus the same way. The image is close, even if it depicts something far.
So every time I look in the rear view mirror my eye twitches and starts to freak out. It then adjusts to close viewing so I can see. It’s very disturbing. This is where testing would have shown the UX flaw. It looks good when you are sitting with it and feels terrible when you are driving with it.
BlueTooth and App Issues
Hyundai has their own app to control some of the settings. Additionally, they leverage Android and Apple Wallets to have digital keys. These keys do not work smoothly at the moment.
One of the amazing things about the Tesla was the invisible operation of getting in and out of the car. You didnt unlock the car, it unlocked when you approached. You didn’t turn the car on or off. You just went. You walked out of the car and it shut down and locked itself. It worked great.
Hyundai is the opposite. Walking up to the car only works sometimes. You have to press a button to start the car.
When you are done, you have to press the button to stop the car. Locking seems to be a mystery to me right now. You have to lock it with the app? I am trying to figure this part out. Sometimes, I forget to turn off the car, so it refuses to lock.
Hint to Hyundai designers: If I leave the car and try to lock it, just shut down the car. What are you possibly waiting for?
It’s the most frustrating part of the whole driving experience. Once you get used to Tesla’s model, it’s torture going back.
Overall the app is pretty bad. I can’t find how the software upgrades either. It is the kind of app designed by website people, not mobile app people.
Limited Driver Profiles
For some inexplicable reason, the number of driver profiles is limited to 2, plus 1 guest. This is idiotic. It’s free. You lose nothing by having 5-10 profiles. A typical family has more than Mom and Dad, plus one child. And you can’t tie a key to the profile except for the first two. I hate this so much.
Also, the profiles do not clearly save enough of your settings.
Overall grade
I like the car. Solid A-.
The CEO of Hyundai could be a serial killer for all I know, but at least he isn’t being obnoxious in my face all day. At least he isn’t trolling everyone on Twitter. At least he isn’t stealing billions from the government and firing good people working for the common good.
The Ioniq is a good ride, it’s roomy, it has excellent range, and has some features I like, like the Heads-Up-Display (HUD). I miss some things, but I feel like I am still in a car I enjoy. Hopefully, the Hyundai software engineers can fix some of the digital problems.
If you want an electric car in the next 4 years, this is probably the best time to get one. The deals are excellent. I am afraid that Trump will continue to deny climate change and he will thwart the green power changes that are making a positive difference. Vote with your money, buy electric.
Happy Driving!
Whatya think?