A few weeks ago I wrote a post explaining why I was switching from my Opel Corsa to a Hyundai IONIQ 5. The phantom mechanical issue nobody could fix. The lack of rear legroom for my son when I had the seat pushed back to fit my 1.85m frame. The €320 a month I was burning on fuel. The ENI promotion. The loan at 3.16%. All of it. I ended that post saying the car was sitting at the dealer with zero kilometres on the clock, waiting to be registered, and that I'd write about how it actually feels to live with after the first month.
Well, I couldn't wait a month. It's been three days. The car arrived Saturday. And as I write this, the odometer reads 320 km. So consider this the early, slightly-too-excited first impressions piece, written by a man who has been finding excuses to drive places he doesn't need to go.
The space is even better than I remembered
I knew the IONIQ 5 was big inside. I'd sat in it at the dealer, I'd done the test drive, I'd written about the 3-metre wheelbase and the flat floor. But knowing something intellectually and living with it are two different things.
The thing that's struck me most over these first three days isn't a single dramatic moment — it's the absence of a problem I'd lived with for years. In the Corsa, every single car journey involved a small negotiation. Seat too far back, my son's knees in my spine. Seat too far forward, my own knees in the steering column. It was a constant, low-level compromise that I'd stopped even noticing because it had become normal.
That's gone now. Completely gone. I push the seat back to where my long legs actually want it, and there's still a comfortable amount of room behind me. My son climbs in, stretches out, and — this is the part that genuinely makes me happy — he doesn't complain anymore. Not once in three days. He just gets in, gets comfortable, and looks out the window. For a kid who used to dread car journeys, that's a transformation.
The flat floor makes a bigger difference than you'd think. There's no transmission tunnel running down the middle, so the whole cabin feels open in a way that petrol cars just can't match. It feels less like a car and more like a small, very comfortable room that happens to move. The seats are excellent — supportive on longer drives, and after a couple of hours behind the wheel I get out without the back stiffness I used to feel in the Corsa.
It's the kind of comfort that makes you reconsider what "a car" is supposed to feel like.
The silence and the acceleration are a different planet
Here's the thing nobody can fully prepare you for, no matter how many reviews you watch: the silence.
I knew electric cars were quiet. Everybody knows electric cars are quiet. But there's a difference between knowing it and pulling out of your driveway for the first time and realizing you genuinely cannot tell whether the car is on. No engine note. No vibration. No rumble. Just this smooth, eerie, wonderful nothing. The first time I drove it at night with my son half-asleep in the back, I caught myself driving more gently, more calmly, almost reverently, because the whole experience felt so serene.
And then there's the acceleration. Oh, the acceleration.
I was NOT prepared for this. My old Corsa had a 1.2 Turbo, which is a peppy little engine for a supermini — it was never slow. But the IONIQ 5 is in a different universe. When you press the accelerator, there's no waiting. No gear change. No turbo lag. No build-up. The power is just THERE, instantly, all of it, the moment your foot moves. The first time I pulled onto a motorway slip road and put my foot down, I actually laughed out loud. It pins you back in the seat in a way that feels almost unfair for a family SUV.
I'm not someone who cares much about performance. I bought this car for space and economy, not for thrills. But I'd be lying if I said the instant torque hasn't put a smile on my face every single day so far. Overtaking is effortless. Pulling away from traffic lights is effortless. The car just glides forward like it's being pulled by an invisible string. It's genuinely addictive, and I'm having to consciously remind myself to drive sensibly because it would be very easy to get carried away.
The silence and the acceleration together create this strange, lovely contradiction — the calmest driving experience I've ever had, combined with the most exciting. I didn't expect to feel both things at once.
Charging: I've now done both home and public
In three days I've charged the car twice — once at home, once at a public charger — so I've had a taste of both, and I want to share the experience honestly because this was the part I was most nervous about.
Home charging is convenient in principle, but I have to be honest about a real problem I'm dealing with — and it's the kind of thing the YouTube reviews never warn you about because it depends entirely on your house, not the car.
Right now, my home charger is only pulling 1.7 kW. That's slow. Painfully slow. For context, that's barely faster than charging through a regular wall socket, and it means a full charge takes the better part of a day rather than overnight. The problem isn't the car — it's the electrical supply in my house and the limitations of the setup I currently have. Tomorrow I'm going to see if I can tweak the charger to at least hit 2.3 kW, which would be a meaningful improvement, but even that is a long way from ideal.
The real solution is already in motion. I've had an electrician come round to assess what's needed to upgrade my home installation to support 7.4 kW charging. And it turns out it's a proper job, not a quick fix. To get there, we need to swap the breaker feeding the garage from 20A to 32A, and replace the existing 2.5mm cabling with 6mm cable that can actually handle the higher current safely. That's not a five-minute plug-and-play upgrade — it's real electrical work, pulling new cable and changing the protection on that circuit. But it's the number I'm chasing, because THAT is where the real savings live. At 7.4 kW I'd be able to fully charge overnight on the cheap night tariff, every night, without ever needing to think about it — which is the entire economic case for going electric in the first place. The whole "€250-a-month fuel saving" maths I laid out in the previous post depends on being able to charge cheaply at home. If I'm stuck at 1.7 kW or forced to use public chargers all the time, those savings shrink fast.
So the home charging situation is currently a work in progress. It's the one genuine headache of these first three days, and it's an important reminder for anyone thinking of going electric: before you buy the car, check your home electrical setup. The car can charge fast. Your house might not let it — and getting it there might mean a new breaker and thicker cable, not just a fancy wallbox. Getting the installation sorted — ideally to 7.4 kW or beyond — is what unlocks the actual financial benefit. I'm on it, the electrician's been, the plan is clear, and I'm hopeful it'll be sorted soon. But it's the asterisk on an otherwise glowing first impression.
The public charger, on the other hand, was the test I was dreading and it turned out to be a non-event. I'll be honest — I'd built it up in my head as this stressful, complicated thing where I'd be standing in a car park confused, fumbling with apps, watching the percentage crawl up. The reality was much calmer. I found a fast charger, plugged in, and the IONIQ 5 — because it runs on an 800-volt architecture, which is genuinely a generation ahead of most EVs at this price — charged remarkably fast. I grabbed a coffee, answered a few messages, and by the time I was done the battery had jumped up substantially. It wasn't the ordeal I'd imagined. It was just... charging.
The range anxiety I'd worried about hasn't materialized at all in these first three days. I think a lot of that fear is psychological — it's the fear of the unknown, of doing something different from the routine you've had your whole driving life. Once you actually do it a couple of times and realize the infrastructure works and the car does what it says, the anxiety just evaporates.
What's bothered me so far? Really just one thing
When it comes to the car itself, I genuinely don't have complaints. Three days, 320 km, motorway and city driving, with a kid in the back — and there's nothing about the IONIQ 5 that I'd point to and say "that's worse than the Corsa" or "I wish they'd done that differently." The driving, the space, the comfort, the silence, the acceleration — all of it has been better than I expected, and I expected a lot.
The one real headache, as I mentioned above, is the home charging power. Being stuck at 1.7 kW right now is frustrating, and it's the thing I most want to fix. But — and this is important — that's not a problem with the car. That's a problem with my house's electrical setup, and it's already being addressed. The car is ready to charge fast the moment my installation can deliver the power. So even my one complaint isn't really about the IONIQ 5; it's about the infrastructure around it, which I knew going in might need work.
The only other adjustment — and it's not a complaint, it's just a difference — is the mental shift from "fill up when empty" to "plug in when home." It's a different rhythm. But it's a rhythm I adapted to within about 48 hours, and now it feels more convenient than the old way, not less.
The money side, three days in
It's far too early to make grand claims about the savings, but I can already feel the difference in a small way. I haven't been to a petrol station in three days, which after years of watching €320 leave my account every month feels almost weird.
That said — and this ties directly back to the charging problem — the full savings won't really kick in until I've got the 7.4 kW home installation sorted. At 1.7 kW I can't comfortably do a full overnight charge on the cheap night tariff, which means I'm leaning on public chargers more than I'd like, and public charging costs more. So right now I'm not yet seeing the full economic benefit. Once the electrician sorts the home setup and I can charge cheaply overnight every night, that's when the real numbers kick in.
I'll do a proper cost breakdown in a few weeks once the home charging is upgraded and I have real data — actual kWh used, actual euros spent, real-world consumption rather than WLTP estimates. But assuming the installation gets sorted, the early signs point exactly where the spreadsheet predicted. The €250-a-month fuel saving that more than covers the €211 loan payment looks like it'll hold up — once I can actually charge at home properly. The car really might pay for itself, just like the maths said it would. I just need the electrons flowing faster first.
Three days in, no regrets
I bought this car for rational reasons. The Corsa was broken and unfixable. My family needed space. The fuel costs were unsustainable. The promotion and the loan made the numbers work. Every reason on that list was a head reason, not a heart reason.
What I didn't fully expect was how much I'd actually enjoy the thing. The silence that makes every journey feel calmer. The acceleration that makes me grin like an idiot every time I join a motorway. The space that's turned my son from a reluctant passenger into a happy one. The simple, daily pleasure of plugging in at home and never thinking about fuel again.
Three days. 320 kilometres. Zero regrets. I'll check back in once the honeymoon's worn off and reality has set in — but if these first impressions are anything to go by, switching to the IONIQ 5 might be the best car decision I've ever made.
More to come once I've lived with it properly. For now, I'm going to go find another excuse to drive somewhere.