Electric cars tend to be quirky either in how they look, how they operate or both. And while that’s true for the Hyundai Ioniq 6, not all quirks are bad. In fact, “bad” is among the last words we’d use to describe Hyundai’s award-winning electric sedan. The Ioniq 6 has a lot going for it: competitive range, design-forward styling, a balanced ride and crisp handling.
It’s not without its quirks, however. Where the Ioniq 6’s quirks fall on the good-bad scale depends on your tolerance threshold for oddities. After spending about two weeks in the 2024 Hyundai Ioniq 6, here are six quirks that stood out to our editors — for better and for worse.
1. One-Pedal Driving
The first time I tried one-pedal driving (on a 2018 Nissan Leaf), I was an instant convert. I enjoyed how the system simplified my pedal usage in traffic jams and saved energy; it just makes sense for an EV. What doesn’t make sense is making the system difficult to engage. While some vehicles have a simple one-button setup, engaging and altering Hyundai’s regenerative braking controls requires using the car’s paddle shifters. This isn’t difficult, but one caveat annoys: Once you tap the paddle a couple of times to engage one-pedal driving, that setting isn’t retained once the car is put in Park or turned off.
Cars.com Senior Road Test Editor Mike Hanley agrees. “The Ioniq 6’s one-pedal driving system works well, with predictable and smooth acceleration or deceleration depending on whether you’re pressing down or lifting off the accelerator pedal, and it’s my preferred way of operating an EV. I just wish the Ioniq 6 would remain in its one-pedal mode; you have to select it again whenever you restart the car.”
2. Dual Rear Spoilers
Part of the Ioniq 6’s appeal is its slippery, stylish looks. Its sleek silhouette and sloping coupe-like roofline give the sedan a more premium vibe than the Hyundai name might suggest. Its dramatic dual rear spoilers are one of the sedan’s head-turning design elements, but this feature has some drawbacks — namely to visibility.
“One of the ways Hyundai achieves a drag coefficient of just 0.22 with the Ioniq 6 is by its exceedingly swoopy silhouette, but one of the curiosities of its design is at the back, with dual spoilers that Hyundai says are wing-inspired. If they aren’t there purely for show, spoilers typically act as a downforce aid at speed for greater stability, but I don’t know how useful these are in that regard. What I come away thinking instead is that while the higher spoiler acts as another place to grab and lift the trunk lid, this is mostly an aesthetic touch that serves to reduce rear visibility from the driver’s seat; you could be getting an extra few inches of view out the back between the rear-seat head restraints without it,” said Chief Copy Editor Patrick Masterson.
3. Funky, Functional Interior Lighting
Design is a key component of the cabin’s appeal, as well, with a clean, streamlined look that imparts a modern vibe — and that vibe is changeable based on customizable ambient lighting.
“The Ioniq 6’s cabin-lighting game is strong. In addition to features like a customizable ambient lighting system with 64 colors (including mood lighting on the doors that highlights the panels’ molded-in ripple texture for a cool 3D effect), the Ioniq 6 has what Hyundai calls a Parametric Pixel Light on its steering-wheel hub. In place of the expected Hyundai ‘H’ emblem are four square LED lights (Hyundai says they represent the letter H in Morse code). These multicolor, sequential lights serve multiple functions: In addition to a welcome/goodbye lighting sequence as the driver enters or exits the vehicle, the lights change to indicate the selected drive mode, Reverse gear selection, voice-recognition activation and the battery’s level of charge. Clever!” said Senior Research Editor Damon Bell.
4. Toes Go Where?
While the Ioniq 6 looks pretty compact from the outside, there’s actually adult-friendly levels of legroom in the backseat. That room doesn’t extend to toes, however.
“The front seats don’t allow any room underneath them. It may not occur to you right away, in part because second-row legroom is pretty capacious; Hyundai says there’s 39.2 inches of legroom and at 6-foot-1, I didn’t have much trouble getting comfortable behind where I’d place the driver’s seat. Taller passengers, however, will notice the truncated room where you’d normally be able to sneak in an extra inch or two for your toes,” Masterson said.
5. Atypical Controls
As in many EVs, some of the Ioniq 6’s controls are in “inventive” places, which can create extra steps in terms of usability but also make sense in terms of design. The sedan’s untraditional gear selector may take some getting used to, but moving it to a stalklike position opens up storage space in the center console area, which is a big advantage.
“The Ioniq 6’s gear selector stalk might seem quite strange if you’re used to a traditional console gear selector, but the design has some benefits that are worth its learning curve. The center console has a cleaner look with this design, and the twist-knob gear selector is right behind the steering wheel, so it’s within easy reach of your right hand,” said Hanley.
The staff was more mixed on the location of the lock, window and mirror controls.
“The more I lived with the Ioniq 6, the more I realized that its placement of window controls and door locks in the center console is a needless reinvention of what should be intuitive. Cars should be designed in a way that when you get in, you have to think as little as possible about ergonomics, but EVs are big offenders in trying too hard to be different, and while the Ioniq 6 mostly acts normal from the cabin, the baffling decision to have memory seat settings be on the door while locks and windows are controlled from the center console only feels more conspicuous in its abnormality; I often found myself reaching to the memory seat button by the grab handle to unlock doors. Living with any car long enough eventually conditions you into accepting its eccentricities, but unless there’s a good engineering excuse for it, decisions like this are a frustration more than anything,” Masterson said.
Meanwhile, Hanley found them to be a mixture of quirky and design-enabling.
“Putting the switches for the power windows and locks on the front center console rather than the front doors allows for more design leeway with the door panels, and Hyundai designers took advantage of that freedom in the Ioniq 6. It’s an uncommon location for these controls, however, and it may take some getting used to. What’s more, the side-mirror controls are on the dashboard to the left of the steering wheel, and they don’t fall readily to hand here,” he said.
6. Strange Cargo
While backseat passengers will have to make some foot-space sacrifices (and taller passengers will have to put up with limited rear-seat headroom), your groceries will also have to be flexible due to the Ioniq 6’s strangely shaped trunk opening and small cargo area.
“The width of the opening is substantial, but it’s not especially deep; Hyundai claims 11.2 cubic feet of room in there (and the frunk is just an additional half a cubic foot). That’s not a ton of space, and its awkward dimensions, further reduced by the rear wheel wells, mean that you can only fit one large suitcase or bag back there — not ideal for a car with seating capacity for up to five,” Masterson said.
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