HYUNDAI IONIQ 5 N

A FROZEN LAKE IN NORTHERN SWEDEN PROVIDES A FROSTY RECEPTION FOR HYUNDAI'S HOTTEST EV ONE PACKING PORSCHE TAYCAN PERFORMANCE

- JOHN CAREY

OUT ON the ice, it's apparent that what the tall, trim, grey-haired engineer told me last night is true. Like he said, the rear of the Ioniq 5 N does snap sideways "just like that" in Drift Optimiser mode.

"As a kind of advice, you really have to overcome your limits in yaw angle," the 60-something German continued. "You have to really let it go far, drifting, and then almost go to full steering lock." Remembering this, lap after sideways lap of the large circle scraped into the surface of the frozen lake, isn't all that hard...

Albert Biermann is always worth listening to... 

The German veteran spent more than three decades at BMW, where he guided development of some of its greatest M models, before moving in 2015 to Korea to mastermind, among other things, the creation of Hyundai's high-performance N division.

Three years later Biermann was made R&D chief of the entire Hyundai Motor Group, which includes the Kia and Genesis brands. Since retiring from that post in late 2021 and moving back to Europe, he's worked as an executive technical advisor to the company.

So Biermann understands where the Ioniq 5 N has come from better than anyone alive. It was during his time as R&D boss that Hyundai developed its first EV-specific platform, E-GMP, the basis for the Ioniq 5. Before that he basically wrote the 'How to Create an N Model' manual for Hyundai's engineers.

"Driving fun, accessible for normal drivers; this is what all the N cars stand for," Biermann says. And this is why Hyundai brought us to icy Arjeplog, just south of the Arctic Circle in northern Sweden.