The battery of the e-bike is empty, its owner is standing in a green field, and now the tour seems to have come to an early end.

A charging cable and a small box located in the trunk of Hyundai's Ioniq 5 can help.

It is placed on the charging socket and has a household socket at the other end.

Like the Kia EV6 and the Genesis GV60, the Ioniq 5 allows bidirectional charging.

The electricity not only flows into the car's battery, but also back if necessary to supply external devices with alternating current.

This guarantees that the e-bike can continue its journey, and you could also connect an electric lawn mower or the electric grill.

Michael Spehr

Editor in the "Technology and Engine" department.

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We examined the Ioniq 5's infotainment by asking how the electronics make electric driving easier and charging times shorter.

The good news: Even in the cheapest model variant, everything that is important is part of the standard equipment.

Only the head-up display and the receiver for digital radio and a Bose sound system are reserved for the more expensive versions.

The price list shows that you have to book complete packages, our test car brought the most expensive one called Uniq for an extra charge of 12,900 euros.

Physical buttons and sensor surfaces complement each other

The Ioniq 5 always comes up with two flat screens, which, like in the Mercedes-Benz A-Class, are quite wide and somewhat reminiscent of an ironing board.

Here, however, the two monitors are visually clearly separated from each other.

Both the display in front of the steering wheel and the on-board monitor to the right have a diagonal of 12.5 inches.

Below the on-board monitor and below the air vents in the center console is a row of physical buttons for quick access to submenus, and a sensor surface that is used to operate the air conditioning.

There are also sensor surfaces and few buttons on the steering wheel, the impression is good.

After switching on the ignition, there are a few annoying start-up beeps, but then infotainment and voice control are almost immediately ready to take commands.

The speech recognition works properly and uses the mobile connection including the cloud.

If you prefer to tap on the screen with your finger, you can quickly reach your goal.

Starting from a main menu with large symbols, you quickly end up in the functional department you are looking for.

The satnav department displays real-time congestion data for each individual street, and nearby POIs are nicely visualized.

You can also see the charging stations, with the restriction that the symbol disappears much too soon when you approach the respective location.

We drove the Ioniq 5 with the most powerful battery (72.6 kWh) and all-wheel drive.

The fast 800-volt technology is always on board, but the onboard charger only manages a maximum of 11 kW with alternating current.

That's an annoying limitation.

In the third mix we came up with an average consumption of around 23 kWh for 100 kilometers in spring-like temperatures, but with a very cautious driving style.

Our range was thus 350 to 370 kilometers.

When the battery is fully charged, the on-board monitor shows values ​​of more than 400 kilometers.

The navigation system does not offer any loading strategy

The Hyundai can charge quickly with direct current up to 220 kW, a value that we never reached.

Anyone who is only out and about in their usual environment and knows where each charging station is and at what charging speed has nothing to complain about.

However, the whole thing becomes more difficult on long-haul routes.

Unfortunately, the navigation system does not offer any loading strategy here.

If the co-pilot detects that the destination is out of battery range, he will display a notification and any charging stations in the vicinity of the route.

No distinction is made between fast and slow.

If you tap on the detailed information, the maximum loading speed is also missing there.

A clever route calculation that takes the charging speed into account, as offered by Tesla, Porsche or Audi, is completely missing here.

So you have to search for fast DC stations yourself in advance on the Internet or with an app in order not to spend ages at slow charging points that the navigation system suggests.

There is still potential for improvement here.

The same applies to the head-up display with augmented reality.

Turn-by-turn directions with moving large arrows point in the direction to travel.

However, almost always much too early.

Others can do that better, such as Mercedes-Benz.

What is clever, however, is that information about vehicles approaching from behind is shown in the head-up display.

Our test car had some electronic problems: Occasionally the tailgate would no longer open.

Furthermore, the otherwise flush door handles did not extend automatically after the vehicle was unlocked.

Multiple locking and unlocking with the remote control helped.