I’ve driven Kia, Hyundai, etc. Trust me, you don’t want one of those. The Ioniq 5, one of the higher-end Hyundais, has absolutely shit ride quality. I test drove that, got back into my old diesel E-class (and I mean OLD. 2003) and felt like the E-class was the slowest thing ever, but 10x as comfortable as the Hyundai.

I did end up getting a newer car, but it wasn’t an EV, it was a 2019 C-class, because it was a lot more affordable than any new car in early 2022 and also way more comfortable than any EV that would’ve been “only” twice the price I paid. That’s because VW or BMW didn’t really have a proper lineup yet and MB and Audi were only doing really expensive models.

Now that the Germans have somewhat proper EV lineups and Volvo is turning around as well, the Koreans are just going to be the cheapo EVs, much like they were cheapo ICEs. They can have cool designs, pretty good infotainment, etc… But the ride quality is abysmal because they cheap out on everything that isn’t visible or numerically significant.

There’s so much in a car that the size alone doesn’t tell you, nor do numbers. The Ioniq 5 has a McPherson strut for the front suspension. My C-class (which I’ve since sold because I now drive so much, I can’t justify a car that has room to depreciate, I put 80k on it in the last 8 months), had multi-link front. In the Ioniq 5, I didn’t feel very confident cornering at a high speed on a back road. In the C-Class, it was soooo much better. But then you’d think maybe if the Ioniq 5 wasn’t as great for spirited driving, maybe it felt better over bumps? Also no, it felt MUCH worse. Way crashier. You could feel every bump in the road. And bear in mind, I didn’t even have Airmatic suspension or anything.

Now if you truly can go drive a Polestar, a Mercedes and a Hyundai and tell me that the Hyundai felt like the best car to you - go for it. But personally I’ve been ruined by the fact that I’ve driven extremely depreciated luxury cars for 8 years out of the 10 I’ve had a driver’s license and a nearly new executive car the other 2. I can feel every single imperfection in a car’s ride quality at this point lol

Ah, an extra fun fact: The best car I’ve owned in my last ~8 months of driving shitboxes, was a V8 Cayenne. For years I figured “but it’s just a Volkswagen with a Porsche badge, it can’t be that great”, but I was so wrong. The first gen Cayenne isn’t as sporty as the newer ones, but it could still corner pretty damn good for a big hunk of SUV, yet handled bumps really well too. It had locking diffs and a low-range transfer case. It was an absolute beast in every way. Unfortunately, one of those ways was fuel economy and though it was OK once I had LPG installed, the tank was so tiny, I had to refuel it every 200 km, so it also had to go.