- The updated 2025 Hyundai Ioniq 5 is the first non-Tesla vehicle with a NACS charge port.
- We tested Hyundai’s claim of much faster charge times at Tesla Superchargers by doing our 10-to-90 percent charge test at a Supercharger and an Electrify America charger to quantify the difference.
- The average charge rate between the two is much closer than before, and the total charge time was 40 minutes at the 400-volt Supercharger and 30 minutes at the 800-volt EA unit.
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Almost two years ago, Ford was the first automaker to announce that it was going to adopt the Tesla charge port, also known as NACS (North American Charging Standard)—or J3400, as the Society of Automotive Engineers refers to it. Almost every other automaker quickly followed suit.But automaking has long lead times, and no Ford EVs have NACS charge ports yet. In fact, this 2025 Hyundai Ioniq 5 is the first non-Tesla EV with a NACS port that we’ve gotten our hands on, which allows for charging at Tesla Superchargers without an adapter. This particular Ioniq 5 is the new off-road-oriented XRT version, which gets about an inch more ground clearance, all-terrain tires, and incredibly beefy tow hooks to drag it out of any overly ambitious off-roading situations that it might get caught up in.For 2025, all Ioniq 5s get slightly larger battery packs—the standard-range models go from 58 to 63 kWh, and the Long Range versions go from 77 to 84 kWh—and they’re now also built in the United States. But, importantly, Hyundai promises faster charging at Tesla Superchargers than before. The Ioniq 5 has been one of the fastest-charging EVs in our testing, but part of that charging speed is enabled by its 800-volt electrical architecture. While DC fast-chargers from Electrify America operate at 800 volts, Tesla’s Superchargers only operate at 400 volts (until the next-generation, 800-volt V4 hardware arrives). That mismatch has caused dramatically slower charge times at Superchargers for the Ioniq 5 and other 800-volt EVs, such as the Porsche Taycan, Lucid Air, and others from the Hyundai, Kia, and Genesis family. Before, the Ioniq 5 was limited to a maximum charging speed of about 100 kW at a Supercharger versus a 240-kW peak at an 800-volt station. Now we’ve done our 10-to-90 percent charging test with the 2025 model at a Supercharger and—with an adapter to go from CCS to NACS—at an 800-volt station to see the difference. While the Ioniq 5’s NACS port makes charging at Tesla’s ubiquitous Superchargers easier because no adapter is required, it’s still not as simple as just plugging in like it is with Teslas. Initiating a charge still happens through the Tesla app.Car and DriverThe Tesla-charging result was much better than before, holding steady at a 127-kW pace from 10 percent all the way to 74 percent state of charge before the typical tapering of the charge rate the rest of the way to 90 percent. At the 800-volt EA station, the latest Ioniq 5 also charged faster than before, with a 258-kW peak and a 141-kW average from 10 to 90 percent.While that peak Supercharger performance might sound dramatically lower, it’s really the average that matters. And the average between 10 and 74 percent state of charge was 127 kilowatts, which is not terribly far off the 141-kW overall average at the 800-volt charger, because there the high peak comes early and then the charge rate steadily declines. The overall 10-to-90 percent charge time was 40 minutes at the Supercharger and 30 minutes at the EA 350-kW charger.Then again, from 10 to 60 percent, the 800-volt charging was nearly twice as fast (11 minutes versus 21), so it all depends on what battery state of charge you plug in at and how high you plan to charge.More Ioniq 5 StoriesDave VanderWerp has spent more than 20 years in the automotive industry, in varied roles from engineering to product consulting, and now leading Car and Driver‘s vehicle-testing efforts. Dave got his very lucky start at C/D by happening to submit an unsolicited resume at just the right time to land a part-time road warrior job when he was a student at the University of Michigan, where he immediately became enthralled with the world of automotive journalism.
Source: caranddriver.com
