May 20, 2026 · Reviews
Ioniq 5 or EV6? Two cars, one platform, two personalities
Members ask this one more than any other. Having spent proper time in both, the honest answer is that you should pick with your eyes — and here is why that is not a cop-out.
By Tom Baeten
The Hyundai Ioniq 5 and the Kia EV6 share a great deal underneath, which ought to make choosing between them agonising and in practice makes it rather easy. They have turned out to be genuinely different cars to live with, and the difference is not the one the spec sheet suggests.
The Ioniq 5 is the more relaxed of the two. It is boxier, so there is more air inside it, and the flat floor and sliding centre console make the cabin feel like a small room rather than a cockpit. Visibility is excellent. Getting a child seat in and out is easier. If most of your driving is town, school and the occasional long haul, this is the one that will annoy you least, and its retro-modern styling has aged beautifully — it still turns heads in a supermarket car park, which is not nothing.
The EV6 is the keener one. It sits lower, the roofline drops away, and it feels tauter through a corner in a way you notice on a good road and never notice on a motorway. The cabin wraps around you more. It is the better-looking car from some angles and the more compromised one from a booster-seat perspective. If you enjoy driving for its own sake and the back seats are usually empty, this is the more rewarding choice.
On the practical stuff they are close enough that it rarely decides anything. Both charge quickly at a modern rapid site — quickly enough that a coffee stop is genuinely a coffee stop. Both do respectable real-world range, and both, like every electric car, do noticeably less of it in February than in June. Both have the vehicle-to-load trick that lets you run something off the car, which sounds like a gimmick until the first time you use it at a campsite and become insufferable about it.
Where members most often disagree is the interior. Hyundai's cabin is airier and more minimal; Kia's is more driver-focused and a touch darker. Neither is wrong. Sit in both, on the same afternoon, and you will know within ninety seconds.
Reliability and running costs we will not pretend to have data on — one enthusiast community's anecdotes are not a survey, and we would rather say so than dress up a handful of stories as evidence. What we can say is that neither car generates the sort of grumbling in this community that would make us warn somebody off.
So: no winner, and we do not think that is a dodge. Two good cars, honestly different, aimed at people with honestly different weeks. Pick the shape you want to walk towards in a car park. You will be right.