Hyundai Ioniq 5 N
Why 8.5: Engineered for involvement — fake gears, real cooling, drift mode that works. Owners daily them and track them, and nobody has figured out how to speculate on a Hyundai. The category's proof of concept.
Layout
Natural habitat
Ride comfort
Sound
N Active Sound+ runs ten speakers in sync with simulated eight-speed shifts, so a fake upshift lands with a real torque interruption behind it. But the Ignition setting is an impersonation of a four-cylinder that is not there, layered over an otherwise silent car.
electric · rated 1.2 / 10 for engine sound
Market value
Median asking price, good condition · €59k (2024) → €44k (2026), trending down · illustrative data
Child seats · ISOFIX
2nd-row outboard seats are marked green ("fitted to test car as standard") for both Isofix and i-Size; 2nd-row centre is a red cross.
Euro NCAP's safety-features grid marks Isofix, i-Size and Integrated CRS all with a red cross for the front passenger seat — explicitly not available, not merely unlisted.
Sourced from the standard Ioniq 5 (the N shares its body/seats and Euro NCAP has not tested the N separately).
Euro NCAP Hyundai IONIQ 5 datasheet, Oct 2021 (Safety Features grid, p.6)
The long version
EVs depreciate hard as a category, and this one is no exception, down roughly a quarter from its first model year already, but here that curve reads as a feature rather than a warning sign, because a car this engineered for involvement was never bought as a store of value. Owners use the drift mode because Hyundai built it to be used, not screenshotted, and falling prices are pulling in buyers who want a track-day EV without new-car money. Daily Driven and Bargain Window together describe a car doing exactly what an enthusiast EV should: getting driven, then getting cheaper, then getting driven by someone else.