Three cars. One petrol, one hybrid, one electric. Two German blueblood conventional estates, one Far Eastern interloper goodness-knows-what. I’m going to say ‘crossover’, whatever that is. A price span of over £35,000. Six cylinders, four cylinders, no cylinders whatsoever.
Just five years ago, less even, such a test would have been inconceivable for reasons involving all three protagonists: five years back, BMW had never made an M3 Touring, AMG an estate with fewer than six cylinders and Hyundai? Five years ago a Hyundai had about as much chance of competing in this category as I do replacing Tom Daley as one half of Great Britain’s 10-metre synchro pair at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.
Such is the world in which we live.
It is my lot today to drive the Hyundai Ioniq 5 N over to our location and already there’s a problem. It’s been on charge all night, is registering 100 per cent full, but the quoted range is just 230 miles, even in its least-energy sapping mode. There’ll be neither the time nor the facilities to re-charge en route and I’ve driven enough EVs to know what happens to their battery levels when road testers start putting them through their paces on mountain roads, so if this thing is to stand any chance of completing this test I’m going to need to be very careful. I crawl down to the motorway, set the cruise to 62mph and hope.
