The Most Potent Electric Car You Can Get For Under $70,000 That Isn’t A Tesla

Electric vehicles (EVs) continue their slow and fragmented growth towards reaching mainstream status. While the sales slowdown is real, more EVs are still projected to be sold in 2024, albeit with less growth than in the prior year. Charging, long-term battery replacement costs, and range are still some of the biggest concerns of mainstream buyers, since those who already got an EV are mostly early adopters with financial room to own a second car, most likely an internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle.

But there’s another hurdle that EVs face, one that’s less rational and more subjective as opposed to being measured by numbers–emotion. EVs don’t have an ICE, and the lack of sound, or even the driver engagement provided by a third pedal and a stick shift are reasons why some car enthusiasts swear about owning an ICE vehicle for as long as they are legally permitted. Remember the Rimac Nevera? It’s a million-dollar electric hypercar with about 50 units sold so far. 150 units were supposed to be made, but Rimac is struggling to sell the remainder because hypercar customers don’t want one with electric propulsion.

While any EV will never match the emotion and the aural theater of an ICE car, there is one EV out there, whose price tag when fully loaded doesn’t escalate past $70,000, which has been imbued with the soul of an ICE hot hatch. It’s also a great EV if you want something potent for under $70,000 that isn’t a Tesla.

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An EV With Plenty Of Value For Under $70,000

If you want an EV that has more personality than anything else out there, probably even more than the Porsche Taycan, then you’ll have to head to an unlikely dealership. The 2025 Hyundai Ioniq 5 N hails from South Korea, and has been developed by the folks at Hyundai’s N division to be the ultimate electric crossover that’s disguised as a hot hatch.

Plenty Of Power…

With a starting price of $66,100, your only optional extras are the paint options. If you want the striking matte blue paint, that is only $1,000 extra. Everything else comes standard, including its 601 horses and 545 pound-feet of torque its dual-motor all-wheel drive (AWD) setup. With N Grin Boost mode activated, though, the horsepower figure jumps to 641, which is enough to send this crossover SUV that looks like a hot hatch from zero to 60 mph in just 3.3 seconds. For perspective, here’s how the Ioniq 5 N stacks up against its key competitors.

… As Well As Standard Equipment

Being a Hyundai, you’d expect the Ioniq 5 N to come with all the bells and whistles you expect at its price tag. Apart from the matte paint, there are no optional extras to speak of. Want a Bose surround sound system? That’s fitted as standard, and so is the Hyundai SmartSense suite of advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS). The 21-inch forged aluminum wheels also look good whilst reducing the car’s unsprung mass. If it was a German luxury brand, the wheels would most likely be an optional extra.

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It Has More Personality Than Most EVs

The folks at Hyundai’s N division went all out with the development of the 2025 Hyundai Ioniq 5 N, and it clearly shows when our team was able to put it through its paces on track. Trying to emulate the attitude of ICE cars isn’t going to be everyone’s cup of tea, but in the Ioniq 5 N, the execution works extremely well.

An EV With A Gas-Powered Soul

The Ioniq 5 N’s ICE-aping personality begins with the N Active Sound+. Basically, this feature emulates the sounds of a gas-powered hot hatch, pops and bangs included, though this is something you don’t hear outside. But I’m sure you’re also wondering, won’t that sound weird since an EV doesn’t have a multi-speed gearbox? Why yes, it doesn’t but that’s where the Ioniq 5 N’s N e-Shift comes in. It comes with paddle shifters that are meant to control the simulated gearbox – engine RPM redlining and bouncing included. Want to initiate a drift? Why not do a “clutch kick” like in a manual car through the Torque Kick Drift function. Finally, the N Drift Optimizer is there to electronically setup the car’s systems for you to easily initiate and hold that drift.

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It’s An EV That Can Also Be Serious

This is all fun and good if you want to hoon your Ioniq 5 N, but what if you want to be serious about setting the fastest lap times? Well, the Ioniq 5 N is also one heck of a grip machine. The Ioniq 5 N also has stuff like an electronic limited-slip differential (e-LSD), and adaptive dampers to better manage body roll, while the brakes are Hyundai’s most powerful to date. There are all the chassis enhancements you can expect to make this car feel tight around corners, while those Pirelli EV tires that were optimized for the Ioniq 5 N have been proven to be great at setting lap records at the Nurburgring.

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The Attention To Detail In The Ioniq 5 N

What’s amazing about the Ioniq 5 N is that, by giving the development of this electric crossover SUV into the hands of Albert Biermann, who used to work for three decades at BMW’s M division, everything has been well-thought-out when designing an electric crossover SUV that’s supposed to be usable every day and yet able to put a smile on anyone who dares to drive this car.

Racecar Genes In A Family Car

The Ioniq 5 is fundamentally a car that’s been built to be a lounge or living room on wheels, and that trait mostly carries over to the Ioniq 5 N. Gone is the sliding center console, but that’s the only family-friendly feature that was removed. Apart from that, the interior is spacious and extremely practical, and it still has the magnetized surfaces on the left that let you add whatever decorations you like to personalize your vehicle.

But you also have to remember that this is a high-performance EV, and it comes with the appropriate gear to do such a task. Gone are the comfort-oriented power-adjustable front seats that enable you to lay flat when the vehicle is charging. In its place is a pair of bucket seats that do a good job of holding you in place while cornering and accelerating hard. Gone is the car’s white interior in favor of a black interior that suits the car’s more sporty and aggressive nature. And yet, you still get a Bose surround sound system, a powered tailgate, among other niceties.

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It’s Got Systems To Keep The EV In Check

It’s one thing to make an EV go fast and be driven hard, but it’s another for an EV to be able to sustain all of those pushing drives lap after lap. Even that’s been taken into account by Hyundai, wherein the Ioniq 5 N’s battery and electric motors. See the sporty front end of this car? It’s not just for looks, but the gaping grille also cools the battery and electric motors, and this is on top of the liquid cooling that Hyundai added for the battery.

Even the battery cooling can be tweaked depending on the drive mode of the N Race system. N Race offers Endurance and Sprint, with Endurance focused on limiting power to slow down temperature build-up, while Sprint focuses on intense, short bursts of acceleration for the battery’s energy programming.

Unfortunately, since this is a performance EV, don’t expect this vehicle to be efficient. With an 84 kWh battery, it may be larger than what the rest of the Ioniq 5 range offers, but the sheer power this produces is immense. Thankfully, the Ioniq 5 N, just like the standard model, comes with an 800-volt architecture that lets this vehicle accept up to 350 kW of DC fast charging, whilst its vehicle-to-load (V2L) feature allows this vehicle to act as an external power source. So yes, this may be a high-performance EV, but it still hasn’t forgotten its core values.