The vehicle, the myth, the rolling cathedral
The Big
Beautiful Ioniq
One blue Hyundai Ioniq 5. Eight hundred volts of quiet menace, a glass roof open to the heavens, and a computer that does the driving. This is Payton's spaceship, and it is parked in low Earth orbit (the driveway).
Telemetry / 01
The spec sheet, blessed
Numbers are how a spaceship introduces itself. The Ioniq 5 runs on an 800-volt platform almost nothing in its price class touches, which means it sips at chargers other cars choke on.
Electrical architecture
10 → 80% on a fast charger
Range on a full tank of electrons
Times cooler than a crossover
Sticker, brand new
What Payton paid - 2.5 years and 20,000 miles later
The same spaceship, barely broken in
For the record: Payton once told Poke it was a $20k car. The honest number is $23,990. Still an absurd deal for an 800-volt spaceship that cost nearly sixty grand when it rolled off the line.
Telemetry / 02 · provenance
The lemon that wasn't
Yes, the title says lemon. Cue the dread: a full-blown ICCU meltdown, the EV crisis everyone whispers about, a spaceship with a rotten core. Payton braced for catastrophe.
Then the saleslady at Ron Marhofer Hyundai chuckled, slid the paperwork across the desk, and pointed at the official reason: "trunk noise concern." That's it. That's the whole defect.
The trunk noise had a known fix. The catch: a parts shortage parked it in the service center for more than 30 days. In California, shop time past 30 days legally triggers a manufacturer buyback offer - and the original owner took the deal. A rattle in the trunk wrote this car a one-way ticket to a salvage-adjacent title and a 59% discount.
$ carfax --reason
defect "trunk noise concern"
days in shop > 30 · buyback MANDATED
catastrophe level 0.0 (a rattle)
Payton's read: a car this clean was clearly babied in EV-worshipping California before its rattle sealed its fate.
- CA
Born in California
Sold new for $58k to an EV-worshipping first owner
- SJ
San Jose Hyundai
Trunk-noise fix stalls on a parts shortage - 30+ days in the shop
- BB
The buyback
California law forces a manufacturer buyback. Previous owner takes it
- AU
Auction block
Off to the auction, lemon title and all
- OH
Ron Marhofer Hyundai
Lands in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio for a few months
- PD
Payton's driveway
Acquired for $23,990. The spaceship comes home
Telemetry / 03
Who needs to touch a steering wheel
Bolted to the windshield sits a Comma 3X running OpenPilot. On the highway it holds the lane, holds the gap, and holds its nerve far better than most humans before their first coffee. Hands rest in the lap. The spaceship flies itself.
It is not a chauffeur and Payton stays awake at the wheel like a responsible captain - but on a long, straight interstate, the difference between "driving" and "supervising a very good robot" is mostly philosophical.
- Lane centeringGlued to the middle, mile after mile
- Adaptive followingReads traffic, keeps the gap honest
- Driver monitoringWatches that the captain stays sharp
- Open sourceCommunity-built, endlessly tinkerable
$ openpilot --status
engaged ENGAGED · lane lock 98.2% · driver attentive
steering wheel untouched, thanks
Telemetry / 04 · field report
Nothing Ever Happens
The forecast called for hail. Seventy-mile-an-hour winds. The kind of sky that sends sensible people to the garage. Payton's spaceship has a full panoramic glass roof - one enormous, beautiful, terrifyingly exposed pane of glass.
It stayed outside. Rawdogged the storm. Parked in the open like it had something to prove, that gorgeous roof staring straight up into the chaos.
"Nothing ever happens."
Wind gusts shrugged off
Of beautiful, unbroken glass
Cracks, chips, or regrets
Telemetry / 05
It's not a Tesla. It's better.
Let's address the obvious. No, it isn't a Tesla. And that turns out to be the whole point. The Ioniq 5 has buttons you can find without looking, panel gaps that line up, and a design that doesn't blend into every parking lot in America. It charges faster, it looks like the future people actually wanted, and it has a personality.
Charging
800-volt architecture eats fast chargers for breakfast - barely time for a coffee.
The face
Pixel headlights and origami creases. It looks like nothing else on the road.
The controls
Real knobs. Real stalks. A roof you can actually open to the sky.
The vibe
Retro-future hatchback energy. It doesn't need a falcon door to turn heads.
But honestly? The spec war misses the point. Payton loves this car. Not because a chart says he should - because every drive feels like piloting something from a better timeline. That's the entire review.
Telemetry / 06 · systems check
All systems nominal
Since touchdown in the driveway: no accidents, no problems, no drama. This is Payton's first EV, so the ropes are still being learned - but so far the spaceship has behaved like a spaceship should.
Incident log
Zero accidents. Zero problems. Zero issues. A suspiciously clean record so far.
Pilot status
First EV, learning the ropes. Range anxiety fading, charging-curve nerdery rising.
Frunk duty
Used exclusively for pickleball gear. A sad excuse for a frunk, but it fits the paddles perfectly.
Insurance runs $200/mo for now, riding on a four-person, four-car family plan. Not bad for an 18-year-old insuring an EV that stickered near sixty grand.
4 people · 4 cars · age 18
Telemetry / 07 · lineage
Respect the Ancestors
Before the spaceship, there was the legend that started it all - a 2016 Honda CR-V named Jo. Every great vehicle stands on the bumper of the one before it. View the legend that started it all, and pay your respects.
View the legend - JoEnd of transmission
Long live the Big Beautiful Ioniq.
Eight hundred volts. One unbreakable roof. A robot copilot and a captain who wouldn't trade it for anything with a T on the hood.