Can Hyundai’s Ioniq 5 drive the entire North Coast 500 The COMPLETE Challenge _ Fifth Gear

The Ioniq 5: A Test of Endurance and Efficiency

We set out on our journey with one goal in mind: to see how far we could travel without charging our electric vehicle, the Hyundai Ioniq 5. We found a fully functioning and vacant charging station that was conveniently located near a fish and chip shop - a perfect spot for a quick pit stop. As we filled up on fuel, we couldn't help but think about the challenges that lay ahead. The next 200 miles of hilly road sections would be the toughest test of our batteries and our driving skills.

As we prepared to leave, I must admit that my range anxiety was starting to get the better of me. I was worried that we wouldn't make it to Inverness without running out of juice. But Rory, ever the optimist, reassured me that we had enough range to complete the journey. We plugged in our trusty calculator and did some quick math - 516 miles, plus 338 miles already traveled, left us with a comfortable buffer. "We're five miles to the good," I said, trying to sound more confident than I felt. But Rory just smiled and told me that with some careful driving and a bit of luck, we'd make it.

The first few hours of our journey were uneventful, with nothing but rolling hills and scenic vistas as far as the eye could see. But as the darkness began to fall and the rain started to come down, things got more challenging. The wipers whirred into action, and the energy hits kept coming - a constant reminder that we needed to be careful with our battery management. I tried to conserve energy by using my momentum to carry me up steep hills, but even that wasn't enough to avoid the occasional drain on the battery.

That's when Rory pulled out his trusty hypermiling guide and started teaching me some new tricks. He showed me how to lift off and on, use regen to feed current back into the battery, and coast down hills instead of braking hard. It was like a whole new world opened up behind the wheel. I was amazed at just how much more efficient our car could be with a bit of practice. And as we approached Inverness, I could feel my confidence growing.

The final stretch of road was a blur of darkness and rain, but our trusty Ioniq 5 had other plans. The heater kicked in, warming us up on the cold Scottish evening, and the car seemed to come alive under Rory's skilled hands. We were approaching Inverness in no time, and as we pulled into the city, I couldn't help but feel a sense of pride and accomplishment. We'd done it - we'd completed one of the UK's longest and remotest drives in an electric vehicle.

As we sat there, parked on the outskirts of the city, I turned to Rory with a grin. "Well done," I said, genuinely impressed. "That was a fantastic journey." And indeed it was. The Hyundai Ioniq 5 had proved itself to be a capable and reliable companion, comfortable and efficient even over long distances. We'd faced some challenges along the way, but in the end, our car had come out on top.

We spent the next few days exploring Inverness and the surrounding countryside, marveling at the beauty of the Scottish Highlands. And as we sat around a campfire one night, swapping stories of our journey, I couldn't help but think that this was just the beginning. We'd discovered a new appreciation for the capabilities of electric vehicles, and we were eager to put them through their paces once again. So, yes - we would definitely do it again. And next time, we'd take two weeks.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthis is northern scotland which features some of the greatest most remote driving roads in the world in other words it's the perfect place for a fifth gear challenge because we want to see if the real-life range of a modern ev can handle a good old-fashioned road trip and not just any old road trip yes we are tackling the north coast 500 and as the name suggests it's 500 miles long and on the north coast yes of scotland the route is a big loop which starts and finishes in inverness we'll be going anti-clockwise heading up the east side first the scenery is truly staggering and every year tens of thousands take a week or two to gently tour around it but to truly test the mild munching power of our ev we're planning to only stop to recharge eat or sleep our weapon of choice is the futuristic hyundai ioniq 5. on paper hyundai's new ev should be the perfect car for our journey its 73 kilowatt-hour battery gives it a range of nearly 300 miles and its roomy interior means vicky and i shouldn't suffer from cabin fever on our marathon drive now we would love to stop and chat but it is one o'clock and we've got a long way to go before our first stopover keys no i'm driving what got it let's go the ev infrastructure has grown to the extent that even this remote chunk of northern scotland boasts 19 charges if they're all working and not occupied then we shouldn't have anything to worry about okay so we are now leaving inverness we have 97 battery capacity that means we should be good for over 250 miles of range and as our first charging point is only a hundred miles up the road for now we can relax and enjoy the car what do you think of the way this thing looks vicky i absolutely love it i think it is so eye-catching it's so different yeah there's nothing else on the road like it looks a bit like the delorean but a delorean for your mum like a grown-up version of that back to the future yes time travel in this particular ionic would cost you or my mum 42 000 pounds that buys a rear-wheel drive single motor version that can hit 62 miles an hour in a respectable 7.4 seconds wow we are climbing up now this might test our battery a bit an incline an ev's mileage is measured in miles per kilowatt hour we were currently managing three miles per kilowatt-hour and the ioniq has a 73 kilowatt-hour battery so under these hilly conditions a full charge would get us 219 miles about 80 less than the official figure however with 154 miles still left in our particular tank life in the cabin was still serene these seats are really good yeah we've got a nice bit of padding here because my arm's been rested you can put your phone in that gap as well oh my giddy aren't you kidding me why don't other cars do that we'd been heading north now for just over two hours it would soon be time to turn left so we're coming up to jonah groats soon which is the most northerly part of the north coast route i've never been we have to have a picture by the john a great sign please please can we stop 100 yes and the reason i'm agreeing to the sightseeing break is this a quick top up at the uk's most northerly charging station and look the bay is empty range anxiety what range anxiety charging yes well our battery to start with was at 97 and now we're down to 41 the maximum charge rate for this car is 220 kilowatts so if you can find a charger that will do that or more happy days because it will go from 10 to 80 of battery charged in 18 minutes yes this one here will do 120 kilowatts which is pretty good that's a decent speed it is it's enough for a photo and a cup of tea definitely yeah if you plug it in yeah you do that and i'll look after the financial side of things barely 15 minutes later and the ioniq was almost back to full strength how much does that cost us let's have a look almost 12 pounds 12 pounds pretty reasonable in fact that had bought us another 53 of range or around 120 miles our current rate the equivalent petrol would have cost us around 20 pounds could you unplug please yes it's manual labour it's not what i do thanks um are you going to actually do some driving on this yeah now who's got the key i'll give it to you what do you think i think it's lovely i think the ride is really good but also it's quite engaging because there's lots of nice things going on and you do feel a bit special in it i'd like to point out though the fact that i was averaging about 3.4 miles per kilowatt hour and within 16 minutes of driving you're averaging 2.1 at that rate our car will only last 150 miles on a full charge that's roughly half the range it should be achieving and plug-in points aren't exactly common in these parts vicky i've actually got some tourist info for you that's done at beach apparently yeah one of the best beaches that you can find in scotland oh lovely and guess what else what's that we're not going to stop at it no because we've done it done it see what you did there with the gloom descending we pushed on another few miles to the town of thurso we have made it to our overnight stop in one piece yeah it's been fun has been had a giggle and um thoroughly enjoyed the car the next day dawned bright and clear which was more than can be said for mr reed morning rory sleep well not really no really did you yes i did i'm so ready for my journey ahead the scottish scenery is breathtaking but it's also freezing so i'm delighted with the hyundai's heated seats and steering wheel i might even i might even put my nose on the steering wheel how much energy am i zapping using a heated seat and a heated wheel actually this car's got a pretty clever feature where it shows you the difference in range between having heating on or off so with the heating on it reckons we can get 224 miles okay or with the heating off we can do 231 miles and while we're on the subject of squandering precious range you're still only averaging two miles per kilowatt hour though because it's nowhere near what i can manage what is it about you what led lead foot vicky strikes again yeah the simple fact is enthusiastic drivers won't get anywhere near to the manufacturer's claims with this ev or any other but who's going to have the most fun i come back to that's my friend your honor you won't be having fun when you're stranded at the roadside oh this is very pretty wow so let's do a check we have got 162 miles left on the battery we've got 67 charge and i'm doing 2.1 miles per kilowatt hour with 300 miles of our trip still remaining vicky's driving style would force us to stop at least twice more charges are few and far between up here and it's estimated that a quarter of all uk charges are out of service at any given time we could find ourselves stranded vicki needed a crash course in the art of energy efficient driving otherwise known as hypermiling all right so straight away what i've done vicky is i've pulled away gently there's no need to accelerate full ball yeah pull away nice and slowly once you've got your momentum yeah just relax and my driving style was also spicy tac-tac 2.6 miles per kilowatt hour oh for goodness sakes because i'd gradually managed to get our per kilowatt hour back to three plus however that presented us with a bit of a quandary vicky this is dones this is where the charging station is yep we've still got 137 miles though so do we stop here or do we risk it and push on we've got 100 miles to go to ulapool i say crack on if everything went to plan we'd arrive in aleppo with over 30 miles left in the batteries however for all we knew there were a couple of mountains ahead that could drain our power agreed rory but our mission is to find out if our ev has the legs for a trip like this so it needs a proper test this is on you right now interesting fact about dennis john lennon used to come here as a child on a holiday really yeah in 1969 he came back here with yoko ono and crashed an austin maxi wow must have been a hard day's night eh imagine imagine i'm here all week well rory's hyper-miling paid off and we made it to ullapool with charge to spare yeah we did it we've got 42 miles in the pocket 20 range yes oh what a lovely place as well this is so sweet all we needed now was a fully functioning and vacant charging station preferably with some food nearby ah fish and chip shop and the charger it was written it was written fish and chips on me eh we managed a quick pit stop in alipool have to say fab fish and chips but the toughest section lies ahead 200 miles of hilly road sections which will really test the batteries as will the speed queen at the wheel i'm not getting range anxiety i'm getting vicky anxiety because i know that i've got pressure on me and i know how i drive you know what you like i know but maybe the car can help out because the ioniq 5 has a very clever trick when it comes to sniffing out nearby charging stations it shows you where the nearest ones are and whether they're ac or dc dc is obviously the one that you want it tells you yeah available in use out of order or unknown which is quite useful actually it's really useful it was useful but this trip was never about hanging around charging batteries it was about seeing how far we could travel without charging i was thinking that we shouldn't stop to charge again we should just go all the way what do you reckon while my range anxiety was screaming that we should top up the batteries rory reckoned we had enough juice on board to make it to inverness time to get the calculator out how long is the nc 500 so it is 516. how many miles have we done since the beginning we have done three three eight plus what's the range the range left is one seven three one seven three five hundred and eleven miles yeah we're five miles short no no we're five miles to the good no i need five sixteen oh yeah oh no you're right yeah uh we'll just drive no lift lift lift left lift lift yeah get some mileage back while rory's man maths hadn't filled me with confidence the man himself was oozing with the stuff if you just exercise some of the techniques that i've taught you lift a little bit on this downhill yeah i think we can do it but at the moment you're doing 2.8 miles per kilowatt hour if you can get that up to three point something and drive more efficiently i think you can get it back you want me to drive more efficiently that's that's your challenge today on roads like this successful hypermiling is all about minimizing the negatives yeah a bit more speed use your momentum to carry you up and maximizing the positives here you can lift off and on an ev there's even more you can do put it into um into no regen and coast up once you're at the top of the hill you just let gravity bring you back down while carefully using the motors regen feature to start feeding current back into the battery it's scintillating stuff it's fun for me i like the discipline of driving in a slightly different way yeah but you know against the clock baby we still had over a hundred miles to go and darkness was now descending that meant the lights had to go on another drain on the ioniq's depleting battery then it started raining which meant using the wipers and the energy hits kept coming it's getting colder i therefore would like a little bit more heating on maybe i'll just put my hat on but quite rightly the heater went on because this car should be able to offer all the comforts a petrol one would i think we got enough i think as long as you're not lead foot larry i think we'll make it what have you been accusing me of the whole trip being led for it larry exactly now but that's the thing i feel fully confident in this car making it i don't feel confident in you no that exactly but i want to see what the car can do and in spite of my lead and right foot it seems the car was going to do it because the likes of inverness were now coming into view vicky yes i think we've done it oh my gosh well done seriously well done what a journey oh what a journey well done car okay first of all yeah impressions on the car did you like it oh i i really like it it is fantastic and i have never felt that i've needed to get out and stretch my legs it has been unbelievably comfortable so comfy so refined that just illustrates 500 miles yeah in your company without without complaining our challenge was to see if we could complete one of the uk's longest and remotest drives in an ev as you'd expect to do it in a petrol-powered car and the simple answer to that is yes you can okay there was a bit of range anxiety along the way but with some sage hyper-mining advice from mr reed even i managed to return mileage that was approaching hyundai's figures would we do it again absolutely except next time we take two weeks you\n"