Presenting Car and Driver's 2024 EV of the Year (2024)

Welcome to the fourth installment of our annual test of new electric vehicles. The intent of this contest is to keep you in the know on the latest advancements as EVs approach the practicality of gas cars. To determine a winner, we put each EV through a battery of objective and subjective tests and then vote. After the arguments end, the ballots are read, and the smoke clears, the EV of the Year emerges. This year 18 electrics were on hand, but only one deserves the title EV of the Year.

From the September/October 2024 issue of Car and Driver.

Schumacher. Vettel. Hamilton. Chestnut. Ioniq. They're all dynasties, though when we started this award honoring the best in electrification back in 2021, we might have set some different ground rules had we known Hyundai would three-peat with variants of the same machine. Unlike the consumer-grade Ioniq 5 (2022 EV of the Year) and Ioniq 6 (2023), this year's winner, the Ioniq 5 N, delivers a genuine enthusiast experience with an electric vehicle that can hit you in the feels like a 1980s G-body Porsche 911 Club Sport.

Electric vehicles excel in accel, but their mass is typically massive, and their general lack of emotion—no stirring noises, vibration, feedback, or torque interruption—can leave you as numb as a laudanum martini. Gather a bunch of them as we did for this year's competition, and EV ennui sets in. Another 20 miles of range or the ability to recharge quickly isn't the kind of excitement that got any of us into this business. We love a different kind of performance, the kind that presses us into seats, that goads us into bending into that corner just a bit faster, and that is accompanied by a head-turning sound. An EV capable of those things would stand out above the rest, but this new Ioniq 5 N goes beyond standing out: It's a glowing North Star in a midnight-black parking lot of electric cars. It's not "fun for an EV." It's fun, period. The 5 N is a car built by enthusiasts for enthusiasts.

We'll refer you to a few numbers. The 5 N has 641 horsepower at its disposal. That's a lot, yes, but not as much as it might be if it weren't moving 4849 pounds (a large portion of which resides in the 84.0-kWh battery). Nevertheless, the Ioniq 5 N clears 60 mph in 3.0 seconds, traps the quarter-mile going 123 mph in 11.1 seconds, holds 0.96 g on the skidpad, stops from 70 mph in 153 feet, and tops out at 163 mph. Those are, with the possible exception of the skidpad score, sports-car results. A good sports car. But then you remember it's a five-seat EV that we classify as an SUV and that it will cover 190 miles at 75 mph, then charge from 10 to 90 percent in 35 minutes, assuming you're on the correct charger. One more impressive number: $67,495, and this game changer is yours. Add $1000 for the matte blue paint.

EV of the Year gets scored on four criteria. The first is value. Done. Moving on.

Second is the fun-to-drive factor. That's unanimous. The only disagreement stems from the internal-combustion fakery (more on that in a sec).

Because the Ioniq 5 N nails the fun part, it also checks the third box: mission fulfillment. We even took it to a track to prove (or maybe disprove) that someone could replace a gas-engine performance car with this EV. And that includes the ability to partake in a drive-to track day and not have to thumb a ride home [see "2025 Hyundai Ioniq 5 N Track Day"].

That leaves the fourth EV of the Year pillar: advancement of technology. The Ioniq 5 N has the same 800-volt architecture as the two prior winners, placing it among the quickest-charging EVs we've measured. But the N really pulls at the nostalgic throttle cable with fake sounds and shifting. Is it hokey? A little. But it proves that EVs can entertain you like a great gas-powered car. This car also has more modes than a modern washing machine, which is annoying at worst but at best lets you tailor the car to your preferences. Two buttons on the steering wheel allow for four presets. You could spend longer than our two-week loan period trying out all the permutations. Turning on N Active Sound+ and selecting Ignition, the subsetting that sounds most like a car's engine, makes the 5 N do a Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally–quality imitation of a four-cylinder with a 6750- or 7750-rpm redline depending on whether you're in N mode. As long as you aren't actively thinking, "This is fake," it's fun to play with it. On a freeway, the mode is a bit much, because it makes the sounds of a World Rally Championship car.

There's also N e-shift, which matches the fake sound with fake shifting. It'll bog if you select too high a gear and bounce off the simulated redline if you don't pull the paddle for an upshift. The precise pairing of sound and feel is what makes it so convincing. It'll mimic a powershift, sending a shock wave through your back with just the right amount of head nod. And true to manual-shifting performance, it's slower. Should you want to enjoy the simulated powershifts from a stoplight, your 60-mph time climbs to 3.5 seconds (you also can't use launch control in this mode).

Do a soundtrack and shift fakery count as technology? They do when the integration is so well executed that you can fool yourself or your passengers into believing the car is burning dinosaur remains. And before any Tesla loyalists complain that we aren't giving the Cybertruck its due, know that the one we rented broke on the second day, effectively parking itself with just a few hundred miles on its odometer. A DNF results in a mission-fulfillment score of zero.

The sound and shifting simulacrum isn't for everyone, and it's certainly not for all the time, but it's a clever injection of joy that propels the Ioniq 5 N ahead of this year's competition. This is a genuinely entertaining EV that doesn't cost six figures, and it gives us hope for the future. That's something worth getting excited about. Maybe not quite vintage 911 Club Sport or 1064-hp Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 excited, but pretty darn close. That alone merits winning EV of the Year.

The Contenders

Here are the 17 other vehicles that were competing for our 2024 EV of the Year.

Acura ZDX, Audi Q8 e-tron, BMW i5 eDrive 40, BMW i5 M60i, Chevrolet Blazer EV, Chevrolet Equinox EV AWD, Chevrolet Equinox EV FWD, Chevrolet Silverado EV, Fiat 500e, Fisker Ocean, Honda Prologue, Hyundai Kona EV, Kia EV9, Mercedes-Benz EQS SUV, Polestar 2, Tesla Cybertruck, and the Volkswagen ID.4.