Hyundai Ioniq 6 review

Very up together. There’s obviously quite a bit of carryover from the Ioniq 5, but there’s a sense here that it’s better constructed, from the rigidity of the bodyshell to the tactility of the materials. And it all works well together. That’s chiefly because Hyundai has resisted the temptation to shove everything into screen menus. You still have separate heating controls and shortcut buttons for the navigation and media, and you can still switch off the driving assist via buttons on the steering wheel.

A pair of 12in screens manage all your information reasonably logically and understandably, the seats are a bit flat (but finished in ethically sourced materials). The cabin - at least with the grey/white finish rather than black - is light and airy.

How is the driving assist?

As irritating here as anywhere else. Next question.

How practical is it?

More than we expected. It looks like the curved roofline should eat into rear headspace, but cutaways in the rooflining mean taller passengers will actually be pleasantly surprised. And they’ll love legroom. There’s oodles. Just ask those in the front seats to raise their chairs a bit so you can tuck your toes under and you’ll think you’re in an S-Class.

The notchback saloon boot is more compromised, but not small at 401 litres. That’s decent, but holidays for four are likely to be a challenge. And you don’t want to hang kit on the outside of such a slippery profile now, do you? And don’t go thinking the frunk is going to be helpful: at 14 litres it’s not even big enough to carry the charge cables. Hopeless.

Is there a design element you particularly like?

Well yes there is, thank you for asking. The door cards are really well designed. It’s a bold, simple, striking shape, with three tiers. At the top a ridged plastic that does interesting things with the cabin’s mood lighting at night, then an elbow rest bar with a broad sweep of speaker grille, and at the bottom a full length door bin. Best of all it’s sculpted out, giving a generous feeling of space. It’s really well done.

Anything irritating?

The two spoke steering wheel that looks like it is on upside down. Fair play for Hyundai for being confident enough to leave its logo off the wheel though: in its place are four dots that illuminate when you switch driving mode or play with the self-driving features. There is a link though: four dots is the Morse signature for the letter H.