test drives

VIDEOS

By Tim Saunders

Time is the most valuable commodity. My time especially. You see my seconds, minutes and hours are devoted to the most important thing in my life, my family (my wife and three children) and keeping the wolf from the door and no one or anything will get in the way of this mission.

So when the Hyundai Ioniq 5 N Line S 84kWh 228PS RWD is delivered to me and the driver says, “It’s got 60% charge, 180 miles but you can charge it can’t you?” I’m not surprised but am unimpressed. He adds: “It’s only got 600 miles on the clock.”

“I’m not surprised,” I mutter.

I do not have time to wait for a public charging point to become available and do not choose to have an unsightly box on my home. Range anxiety is no good for my health either. So I shall be using this vehicle – as I use all electric vehicles, purely for local driving instead of planned trips to Dorset and Oxford. Life, as I am sure you will agree, is all about priorities. So, instantly you can see that I am not the target market for this vehicle.

“I suggest that this car is best suited to either a singleton or a retired person with time on their hands,” says my wife, Caroline.

I wholeheartedly agree.

It takes a little bit of head scratching to figure out how to engage drive mode. While the push button start is easy enough to find on the dash I am left a little perplexed when I cannot find the usual gearstick. Ah, it’s been moved to the right of the steering wheel and is a stalk reminiscent of the gearshift found in some 1950s vehicles much like the one for the windscreen wipers behind it. It’s simple enough to turn to select drive, reverse or neutral. But how to engage the handbrake? Heidi (12) says press the button on the end of the handle. And lo and behold it works. All of this palaver is unnecessary, I feel. The stalk looks out of place to me. Change for change’s sake… And it doesn’t feel natural.

Recently, we’ve been moving things around at home – the cutlery drawer is now in the island – and I still find myself going to the old location because I’m so used to where it was. The exact same thing happens to me in the Ioniq. Will I feel more comfortable at the end of the test? I wonder.

From outside when it’s moving, there’s that electric buzz accompaniment once only associated with the hover boards on Back to the Future. I can’t say I’m a fan of that sound. This five door hatch is spacious enough inside with a good size boot. The seats are comfy and Henry (9) is at home with the ‘infotainment’. He likes scrolling the screen. The black interior does its job. Externally, it looks different from the competition thanks to the unique door styling and the matt paint finish.

Did I make the right decision about which car to take to Oxford?

The Friday rush hour journey started off with a major accident on the M27 which ultimately turned the one hour journey from our home to Oxford into a two-and-a-half hour one with diversions that made the journey longer. The full tank of fuel in our reliable old Corsa ensured that I had no range anxiety whatsoever but the journey was still stressful as we crawled along in start stop traffic for five miles and we wondered whether we could get to our destination that evening. Once in Oxford major construction work had meant that the usual routes had diversions in place adding many miles to usually short journeys and increasing journey times from five minutes to well over an hour, forcing unfortunate motorists through the clean air zone so that the council could charge drivers of petrol or diesel cars £5 a day – what a great money making scam for the council. So we had to pay £10 to the council before midnight on the day we returned or face fines. Despite this though we feel that this is £10 well spent because if we’d been in the electric car we wouldn’t have actually reached our destination and been unable to see anything of Oxford because we would've been hunting for charging points all the time.

Facts at a glance

VIDEO

By Tim Saunders

The Honda Civic 2.0 i-MMD Advance is a mid-size family hatchback. Its nearest competitor might be a Mazda 3 or similar. I take it for a road test to Guernsey where it tackles the challenges of getting on to the Condor Ferries Voyager catamaran as well as pootling along narrow country lanes. Taking it on the M27 motorway from Hampshire down into Dorset allows us to travel at up to 70mph if we’re lucky, the automatic box making light work of the journey. There are paddleshifts for more entertaining driving. I discover that there are different driving modes too: economy, normal, individual and sport and that in individual it is possible to adjust things like the steering and powertrain if you wish, tailoring the car more to the driver’s requirements, which is a nice touch and enhances that all important driving experience. When in sports mode there is a hearty roar from the exhaust when the accelerator is fully pressed down. It raises a smile. “Go on, do it again Dad,” urges Henry (9). Some tailgaters get short shrift and give up, only to undertake in a traffic jam. There’s some pretty awful driving out there.

Arriving in Guernsey motorists seem to be more amenable and of a better temperament. It is necessary to drive with extra care due to strict speed limits rarely exceeding 35mph and there are some very challenging roads. The sat nav insists on directing us down the most awkward of these; single lane roads where there are stone walls either side and sometimes large stones protrude from the edge of the road making it even more difficult to manoeuvre. It’s no surprise that there are quite a few damaged cars about and yet we see a good number of large luxury vehicles. How on earth do the chauffeurs manage? We find ourselves down one road that is so narrow that when we realise we’ve gone wrong we can’t actually get out of the situation and so just have to continue with extreme caution down this road. Eventually a local helps us to find our destination. Unfortunately, not all the roads are listed on the sat nav and we find that following a traditional map is more reliable.

The Civic is a comfortable car with supportive leather seats and a good driving position. The suspension is pretty hard and this sports car is quite low to the ground, which I do enjoy. There are no complaints from my temperamental rear passengers either and there’s a good size boot for our luggage.

We like the honeycomb pattern on the dashboard and the front grille, which reminds us of the importance of bees – how nature inspires design. There’s rear privacy glass. The good size electric glass sunroof makes the black cabin a lot lighter and when the weather allows I drive with the sunroof open. Externally the metallic red Honda with its smattering of chrome around the windows, striking black grille and black alloy wheels really does look the part and we like it a lot.

Facts at a glance