Leading Electric Vehicle Influencer Discovers the Hard Way His 2025 Hyundai Ioniq 5 Needs a New Battery Pack After Just 8,500 Miles During Thanksgiving Day Roadtrip - EV Ownership Doesn’t Get Much Worse Than This

We’ve all seen the fake or exaggerated posts about EVs needing new batteries. So many that the radical EV-advocacy media works day and night to tell you a lot of also untrue facts to bring balance to the force. They say that EVs are more reliable, despite literally every reliability expert ranking EV brands last in reliability. They reason they say EVs will be reliable because they are “simpler” and have “fewer moving parts." We need only look at owner surveys of those who actually own EVs to know this is false.

Now we have a stunning new post from The Ioniq Guy. I love The Ioniq Guy. I follow him on social media, learn a LOT from what he presents, and I am an active member on a Facebook group that he is the admin for. To say he is a leading, trusted source of EV information would be an understatement.

Here’s what The Ioniq Guy posted today:

(Heavy sigh) My 2025 Ioniq 5 needs a new battery pack. That’s right. My car that has only 8,500 miles on it, is now in for repairs, and I likely won’t have it for many weeks.

It would be very hard to have owned more Ioniq EVs than The Ioniq Guy. He has had a 2022 Ioniq 5, a 2024 Ioniq 6, and now this 2025 Ioniq 5. Like most owners, The Ioniq Guy says that his three Ioniq EVs from Hyundai have had “Relatively few issues.” He listed them for us. Here are the relatively few issues:
 - The radar unit on the 2022 Ioniq 5 failed
 - The charge port on the 2022 Ioniq 5 overheated
 - The high-voltage battery on the 2025 has failed

Just a Few Failures - Really?
It’s debatable if these three issues amount to a lot of failures or a few failures. Until you factor in that The Ioniq Guy has only traveled a total of about 50,000 miles in all of his Ioniq EVs combined. Three pretty big failures, none of which were “easy over-the-air fixes.” If you owned any car and it had three failures like these, would it inspire confidence in your choice of vehicle to drive past the warranty? I would either buy an extended warranty, which can cost up to $5,000, or ditch the vehicle and never shop that brand again. Tell us in the comments what you would do.

Battery Pack Replacement Cost - According to Hyundai Dealers
The battery pack in an EV is the single most expensive part of the car, and the most important part of the powertrain. If it doesn’t work, the car won’t move. Battery pack replacements for Hyundai Ioniq 5s can cost over $60,000, including labor. Yup, we know. You are justifiably calling BS on this statement, but the info is not something we made up. Hyundai dealers provided those estimates to an owner in writing. And then a second Hyundai dealer did so. The crazy battery replacement cost number comes directly from Hyundai’s authorized dealers - the only people who can replace your Hyundai EV battery safely and under warranty if needed.

Other Owners Are Also Reporting Catastrophic Powertrain Failures
It didn’t take more than a few hours for fellow owners of Ioniq EVs to start chiming in under The Ioniq Guy’s post. Here are a few of the more relevant ones that highlight that this owner is not alone in having EV powertrain failures:
JGS - “Same thing happened to my 2025 IONIQ 5 Limited RWD this past Sunday!  Within a minute of getting in the car and driving, I heard a loud pop from the rear of the vehicle, immediately followed by a warning on the driver information display saying “CHECK ELECTRIC VEHICLE SYSTEM”. “
CG - “MY25 I5N threw me this exact issue at 1333km 10 days into ownership. Took 36days from dropoff to pickup (sept/oct) with brand new BSA.”
MD - “Our 2024 Kia Niro EV had a similar issue last December when we bought it (issue showed in < 200 miles). However, it took them MONTHS to get the pack. I hope you get it replaced much sooner.”

A Perfect Storm Of EV Failure
Having a failure in your driveway is one thing, but the Ioniq Guy was on a long holiday road trip on Thanksgiving Day. The battery failure occurred while the vehicle was stopped at a DC charger. Who doesn’t love spending the better part of an hour charging when taking the family to see relatives on Thanksgiving? “This totally screwed up my plan for getting down to Philadelphia. I was planning one more charging stop. That would be good enough to get us to (the destination) and back to the original charger on the way (home.)” We took out the specifically named places to give The Ioniq Guy some privacy, but you can see his route on the video.

A Perfect Example Of Hybrids and Why They Are More Popular Than EVs
Aside from the crazy battery failure reported by the Ioniq Guy, his post also illustrates perfectly why EVs are capturing less than 6% market share right now. His holiday journey to see family was only 300 miles each way. A 2025 Toyota Prius hybrid can make that loop without stopping for energy at all. Its range is 644 miles. A RAV4 hybrid has a range of over 500 miles and can be refueled in just 87 seconds, virtually anywhere on the ride from Boston to Philadelphia. No lines, no waiting. Take five minutes to use a bathroom, and on you go.

What’s Your Take?
We’ve done top-level stories recently highlighting how EV brands are ranked the lowest in reliability. Now we have done a very focused story around a report from an EV advocate who has the trust of the EV community. Tell us in the comments below if you think the reliability of EVs is a reason that 95% of American shoppers don’t buy one. 

Image of a 2025 Hyundai Ioniq 5 Limited atop a serene mountain by John Goreham.

In case you missed the direct link at the start of our story, here is the source of this story:

John Goreham is the Vice President of the New England Motor Press Association and an expert vehicle tester. John completed an engineering program with a focus on electric vehicles, followed by two decades of work in high-tech, biopharma, and the automotive supply chain before becoming a news contributor. He is a member of the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE int). In addition to his fourteen years of work at Torque News, John has published thousands of articles and reviews at American news outlets. He is known for offering unfiltered opinions on vehicle topics. You can connect with John on LinkedIn and follow his work on his personal X channel or on our X channel. John employs grammar and punctuation software when proofreading, and he sometimes uses image generation tools.