The Hyundai Ioniq 6 Carried Us Through a Winter of Content

We’re not going to lie—our time with our yearlong review 2024 Hyundai Ioniq 6 SE has been boring thus far. But boring in the best way possible, since it hasn’t keeled over from the dreaded ICCU issue, left us on the side of the road with a dead battery, or given us lots to complain about. Horror stories can make for entertaining reading, but buyers want a car ownership experience that’s transparent and without drama. The positive things stand out, grating issues are minimal, and everything just works without needing a lot of brainpower to make it happen.

We took the Ioniq 6 RWD Long Range on for a long-term test based on its excellent range, well-balanced powertrain, and futuristic look. All those things impressed us in testing, stacking up well to its competition and providing reasonable performance in our signature MotorTrend testing regimen. Is this, we asked, a budget Lucid Air for the price of a Tesla Model 3? As we hand off this red electric sedan to another editor for another perspective, we’ll give a half-term summary of what we’ve learned, what we love, and what we may or may not miss.

See All 28 Photos28

Driver Assistance That’s Actually of Assistance

Since one of the Hyundai’s archest nemeses is the Tesla Model 3, with its available (and oft-investigated) advanced driver assist system (ADAS) , we turned our Ioniq 6’s equivalent Highway Driving Assist I system on as much as conditions would allow. As the miles piled up and the system’s idiosyncrasies and strengths became apparent, we came to see it as a real benefit for long- and medium-haul trips and commuting.

As enthusiasts, we draw a large distinction between commuting (we usually dislike it as much as anyone else, unless the vehicle is ridiculous) and driving for pleasure. An ideal commuter helps you arrive as relaxed as possible without causing you to nod off and plow into the back of a parked emergency vehicle. (It happens, unfortunately.)

Hyundai’s ADAS isn’t unique to the Ioniq 6, but we found that it matches the application perfectly. For one, the Ioniq 6 is quiet, and its long wheelbase and relatively generous sidewalls mute road imperfections—even if the damper calibration is a little rudimentary. The ADAS is easy to implement with a single button push, and its clear iconography shows which specific assists, such as adaptive cruise or lane keep assist, are active. We found it easy to rest back in the supportive seat and reduce the scope of what our brain needed to do. It was truly a stress-reducing, idealized Level 2 experience.

And while it worked great on our road trip up from California to Washington, the system is ideal for commuting since the driver will be aware of the places on the familiar route where a little extra attention is required. With lots of construction on the interstate in our area to make way for light rail, a few rough patches with weird meandering lane markings made us sit up a bit and see if the steering assist might deactivate—not causing anxiety, just the need for a little diligence. It rarely did save for the occasional significant rainstorm.

Frankly, it’s been tough to hop into a car without ADAS lately and run through our commuting corridor. The system pairs so well with the Ioniq 6’s other strengths that it becomes a true stress reducer.

See All 28 Photos28

Taking Comfort in Comfort

The Ioniq 6 wouldn’t have been a good commuting platform if the seats were a pain point. This is entirely subjective, of course, given body type variance and personal preferences, but the Ioniq 6’s base seats are supportive and well shaped for moderate-haul comfort. Over the course of the past few months, the seat has essentially come to rest in a single position, only being adjusted to make room for a laptop (or reclining fully for a quick nap) at a charging station. Some cars require endless fiddling, and nothing ever seems quite right. Not the case here. Another mark in the win column for this Hyundai.

See All 28 Photos28

Running Costs Don’t Send Us Running for the Hills

With all the running around the greater Seattle area, with energy-sapping hills, construction, and the home charger often being occupied by the family’s Ioniq 5, the Ioniq 6 has been hitting a lot of DC fast chargers for top-ups. Charging at home is cheap, much cheaper than buying gas for a typical car, but DC fast chargers are vastly more expensive in most of the country.

And, particularly in EV-heavy areas that rely on non-Tesla charging networks, wait times can be a problem. The second closest fast charger to my house is a 350-kW Electrify America station, but it’s always infested with Chevy Bolts, which max out at around 55 kW. No amount of wishful thinking will make them charge more quickly than that at a 350-kW station. The owners apparently don’t remember (or care), even though there are plenty of 100- and 150-kW stations around for them to camp at. I’ve learned to just avoid this station if possible.

That said, even with an 80 percent mix of fast charging and reduced efficiency in the cooler temps of a Pacific Northwest winter, our running costs on the efficient Ioniq 6 are in the $0.11 cent per mile realm so far. We’re getting relatively low running costs, even if fast charging is noticeably less fast than we’d hope. All told, with a 60 percent mix of DC fast charging to 40 percent L2 at home, we’ve spent $865. (If we’d only filled up exclusively at home on cheap Pacific Northwest electricity, it'd have been a remarkable $286, dropping running costs to a somewhat astonishing $0.04/mile.)

On that note, preconditioning on the Ioniq 6 (and 5, and all pre-CNCC E-GMP vehicles) is not great. There’s no button to turn on the preconditioning system, and finding the charger you want in the in-car nav is a pain in the ass. On the road trip to pick up the car, we didn’t have a working BlueLink account, but now that we do, it makes finding a charging station and sending it to the car’s nav as a destination a little simpler. Doing that ensures the Ioniq 6 knows to activate its preconditioning mode. Even so, it seems like a crapshoot as to whether the car will precondition or not, and the parameters for the system’s operation are frustratingly opaque. If you’re not going to allow the driver to precondition manually, it’d be nice if there was at least a pop-up on the gauge cluster—“Your route includes a DC fast charger; would you like to precondition the battery for faster charging?”

See All 28 Photos28

A Mid-Loan Wishlist

I’ll be very eager to see if my California-based MotorTrend colleague who’s taking on the loan agrees with me, but after 8,000 miles driving the Ioniq 6 almost exclusively, I think the ride quality is a significant mismatch to the rest of the driving experience. This is a long-wheelbase, ultra-smooth, comfortable, torquey, and quiet car. It is aerodynamic and futuristic. But even on the 18-inch wheels, with consumer-grade tires and meaty extra sidewalls, there’s a lot of crashing over sharper road imperfections. The long wheelbase helps with the lower-intensity stuff, but there’s just not enough compliance in the system to provide a ride that matches the Ioniq 6’s other ride-enhancing qualities on paper.

Some important qualifiers: Building cars is hard, even for established automakers. EVs are heavy, so the suspension has its job cut out for it. Batteries are extremely expensive still, so automakers need to rein in spending where they can. But I’m saying I’d have signed on the dotted line for a $1,200–$2,000 adaptive suspension line item, which even over the course of a lease would have (I think) paid for itself.

It's worth noting that the mechanically similar Genesis GV60 does offer electronically controllable dampers, although only on the full-zoot Performance trim. If you must shell out for the priciest version of the priciest of this wave of E-GMP models to get this feature, hoping for it in the low-rent Ioniq 6 SE is wishful thinking. But wishing is free, right?

See All 28 Photos28

Steering the Convo Back to the Positives

One area where the Ioniq 6 stands out, however, is at the helm. There’s way less heft in Normal mode than there is in the same-year Ioniq 5 SEL RWD, which is mechanically very similar other than the larger 19-inch wheels. The Ioniq 6’s lighter steering feel isn’t numb or overboosted; it’s just right for the application, and the Ioniq 5 would be better off with it. I also deeply appreciate the controversial two-spoke steering wheel—there’s more of the appropriately meaty rim to grab before a spoke interrupts things, and that’s nice because the Ioniq 6’s turning circle (38.8 feet) is somewhere between barely acceptable and grossly inconvenient—especially compared with, say, a Volkswagen ID4 with its superb 31.5-foot turning circle—although the Tesla Model 3 isn’t much better (at 38.3 feet). With the lower H-point (basically, the imaginary axis through the middle of your hips in relation to the floor of the car) and more relaxed steering, the Ioniq 6 feels nimbler than its wheelbase would suggest in normal driving. In a three-point turn, however, it’s ponderous.

See All 28 Photos28

Signing Off With a Summation

We professional auto reviewers bring a lot of objectivity to the process of reviewing a car, but there’s also undeniably a subjective element to it. That’s why I’m glad another editor will be getting seat time in this car—any differences of opinion will be illustrative. But it’s time for me to sum up where this car sits among its competitors and platform-mates.

The strongest case for the Ioniq 6 SE Long-Range RWD is its mastery of both long-distance journeys of the sort that European sport luxury cars usually excel at, plus the ability to make short and repetitive commutes much less stressful thanks to a variety of useful features and design choices. We asked at the beginning of this loan if this version of the Ioniq 6 could really be a “Lucid Air at a third the price” kind of vehicle, and that’s very much the impression. A few comfort and convenience tweaks would make the analogy even more potent.

We’ve also pointed out that for our very typical suburban lifestyle—kids, stuff, and errands—the Ioniq 5’s hatchback form factor is significantly more useful. Eight-thousand miles in this sedan hasn’t changed our minds, but the 6’s comparatively tight trunk has regularly swallowed everything except unusually irregular loads, like furniture heading to a donation site or a couple of kids’ bikes. Luggage, groceries, boxes—anything you’d normally fit into a sedan, the 6 doesn’t have much of an issue with.

Last and least objectively, the styling. I will always appreciate that it is striking and futuristic. I like the spoiler and full-width rear running light, and Ultimate Red is a great shade for the shape, giving it character while minimizing some of the more awkward angles. But the front is simply disproportionate, too bluff for the plunging hoodline. The renders we’ve seen of a Sonata-inspired face-lift go a long way to addressing this with an even more futuristic front light treatment, with a lot of contrasting black in the “grille” area, and perhaps that will help. Few friends and family have offered anything but begrudging praise or pointed criticism of the shape.

But whatever you think of its looks, it’s a great EV to drive, it’s proved inexpensive and trouble-free to run, and nothing in our experience so far has changed our initial impressions. And, like the updated 2025 Ioniq 5 which addressed many of the older car’s shortcomings, we expect the next major refresh to be a serious upgrade from an ownership perspective.

See All 28 Photos28