r/Ioniq6N

Took delivery today and promptly put about 150 miles on it mostly blasting around UK backroads and somehow only getting about 1 usable photo…

I’m sure most (if not all) of us are in the same boat of not having driven a 6 N yet, so safe to say I’ve been convinced this is every bit as good as my time in the 5 N and even more. The lower seating position is great, the interior feels far more special and high quality than the 5, and the damping/ride far more supple and sophisticated. It still very much has the split personality between ballistic speed and engagement with shifts and sound and yet is also very refined and quiet when creeping around in EV mode. So far it’s had a couple of grown men giggling like children and no complaints to report!

I’ve got a road trip planned this weekend so will report back with more thoughts and findings once I’ve got some more miles under my belt.

So far I’ve averaged 2.5mi/kW after some spirited drives, several launch controls and some potting around town in traffic - will see how it fares on a ~200mi motorway journey tomorrow.

I also absolutely love the Abyss Black paint, it does lose the contrast with the other black accents but I’m oven the moon with the appearance. It seems to get plenty of stares, too! Might have something to do with the massive spoiler on the back…

I know some people have been deliberating over the sunroof on here, all I can say is that I’m very glad I didn’t spec it. I’m 6’1” with a long torso and I’d get very uncomfortable with any less headroom! Funnily enough I haven’t missed it one bit today despite the sun shining, might have something to do with the addictive go pedal that demands you to focus on what’s going on very far ahead of you!

For anyone who’s got one coming, you’re in for a treat.

If anyone has any questions, ask away, I’ll try my best to answer!

I had the pleasure of driving my new N from the South East (UK) to Wales and back this weekend, covering about 650 miles of mostly motorway commuting, some leisurely sightseeing drives and of course, having a bit of fun on the twistys, too.

The 6 N is my first full EV (coming from a PHEV) so it was a bit of a trial by fire to just chuck a destination in the nav and hope for the best, but the N handled it like a champ.

The outbound leg was ~220 miles, so I planned a charging stop at the last services before arrival. We left on 100% and covered the 201 miles with ease, arriving with 17% SoC and let the car handle preconditioning. I plugged into an Instavolt 350kW before my other half was out of the car, and it was at 47% by the time I'd had a quick pit stop and 68% by the time we got some food. The 32 min total charging session got us back to 88% and felt seriously impressive to me - although I'll again caveat this is my first full 'leccy car! We didn't take any longer than we would have anyway and it gave plenty of juice for the weekend's activities. I ran in Eco mode (blasphemy, I know) most of the way while playing with the driver assist features and averaged 2.8mi/kWh keeping around 70mph on a 75% motorway/25% b-road journey - no gears/noise active. We could have made the full journey on one charge, but as I didn't have destination charging, the rapid top-up made sense.

We also had a few trips around with friends keeping things slow and sensible, which saw some new personal bests of 3.8 and 4.1mi/kWh on slower (30/40/50mph) journeys of approx 25-30 miles apiece - although these did benefit from a ton of downhill regen.

Some fast drives returned pretty reasonable efficiency too, in my opinion. Shorter, faster bursts achieved a min of 2.1mi/kWh up to 2.5, as per my previous experience.

On the return journey I threw caution to the wind and made the most of the clear-ish M4 and at 'higher speeds' (allegedly) efficiency really didn't seem to suffer as much as I thought, returning 2.4-2.6mi/kWh over the 200 miles back. Charging was a little more tricky, with the car's nav sending me to a 50kW unit despite ticking the 'over 150kW only' box, but I was able to quickly find a faster plug and route to that instead. There does seem to be a bit of a disconnect between the car's built-in charger searching and that in the Bluelink app, though - twice I sent a charger to the car only for it to decide it would route to a different one, but I'm still learning the screens so this may well be user error! One gripe though is that the app displays what %SoC to charge to at your stop, whereas I can't find anything on the nav screen to display this. It wasn't a big deal to slightly overestimate the charge needed, but at 91p/kWh on public fast chargers I can see why you'd want to minimise your consumption there!

Over this weekend, it feels to me like the car's efficiency range is going to be 2.1-2.5mi/kWh worst case, which just about falls into the 180-200 mile bracket I was preparing myself for. If you've got a more restrained right foot or a slower speed journey though, I think ~250 is definitely achievable, and the car's trip computer gave me some 'max' range estimates of high 200s from ~75 SoC on slow and sensible driving, so if you're using this as a commuter around town, I think it'll do quite well. At higher speeds however, there doesn't seem to be too much difference in it (from my limited and extremely non-scientific experience) so I'd probably choose to drive how I want to and take the hit of 10-15 mins at a charger, provided you've got a quick one on route and are happy to part with whatever they're charging for a kilowatt nowadays!

I know efficiency is perhaps the last consideration for this car, but I know lots of people asked for some numbers on this and it's good to know what to expect from it on a run for future trips.

I was also super impressed with the driver assistance features - it's definitely not what I bought the car for, but the adaptive cruise is smooth and responsive, and on mapped roads HDA will do lane changes for you which seems like something out of a futuristic sci-fi movie. Yes, I know, Tesla FSD exists, but from my experience of other high-end level 2 autonomy, this is amongst the best (i.e. on par with BMW, superior to Volvo/VW).

If I have one complaint, it's that the seat definitely isn't that adjustable and depending on your body size/shape you may have a better or worse time. My wife says the side bolsters are quite tight and firm, whereas I think they're actually too soft - but that's perhaps from a skewed experience of getting used to carbon buckets in a G80 M3 that's in the family! I think I've just about found my ideal position now and starting to get comfier though, although I think I'll still miss the lack of lumbar adjustment and thigh extension. Haven't reached for an electric adjuster or memory button though, so no great loss there!

See my previous post for experience in the twisty stuff - it's where this car really feels at home and excels, although it was perfectly comfortable and capable of doing a cross-country cruise, too. With a bit more seat time, I've definitely found that EV (i.e. no sound/gears) is great for relaxed driving, with little to no cabin noise, instant (but smooth) response and regen when you need it -- but, it really doesn't convey the speeds that this thing is capable of well enough to keep you out of trouble! You can break every speed limit in the country with about a second and a half of right foot down and without audible feedback, the insulation the car provides really robs you of the sensation of speed - don't get me wrong, it's very, very fast, but it's almost scary to see the speeds you can reach whilst feeling very numb to the experience. I had a couple of sketchy moments starting to accelerate before an overtake - as you would in an ICE car to anticipate for a downshift and turbo lag etc., but it's entirely moot in the N. Instead, make sure you're pointing a nice clear road first, then press go!

The antidote to the sensation of speed though is N Grin Shift and N Active Sound+. Even within the national speed limit you can belt through a couple of gears and the feedback is fantastic, it transforms the whole communication of what the car's doing and I think I can drive much quicker with it on as opposed to with silence - that may just need a driver mod to fix though!

Driving my Volvo for a final service before it goes felt very broken today, and the 'real' ICE/gearbox was a lot less responsive than the N and the sudden lack of almost infinite front end grip was very noticeable!

Anyway, I'll cut this ramble here, but I'm sure there'll be plenty more to share before long. Apologies for not getting any nice pictures of the car against the breathtaking Welsh scenery - I know I really should have but I was just too busy enjoying it from behind the wheel!