Episode 438: 2026 Hyundai Ioniq 9, 2026 Acura RDX

Hello, and welcome to the Unnamed Automotive Podcast.

My name is Sammy Haj Asad,

and with me as always is my good friend

and fellow automotive journalist, Benjamin Hunting.

Say hi to the people, Ben.

Greetings, human listeners.

Greetings to everyone.

If this is the first time you're listening to our podcast,

thank you for listening, and thank you for your patience.

Me and Ben actually hung out last week,

and we're unable to do the podcast at the same time.

We actually just did the podcast in real life

with each other, but without any of the preamble,

without any of the recordings,

and pretty much without any of the real consumer advice

or reviews that we usually give in the show.

Sammy's describing friendship in meat space,

I guess is how you would put it.

Does that not say meat space anymore?

Is that a thing?

No, when you say meat space,

do you mean like meeting somebody or meat like flesh?

Meat like flesh, I don't think anyone has ever,

I mean, maybe there was a dot com

called meat space like 20 years ago,

but I don't think anyone has used it

in that context in a long time.

Okay.

Well, yeah.

I'm just getting like the Cronenberg long live

the new flesh type of meeting.

What does, yeah, I guess so.

Now that's the voice of Ben, Benjamin Hunting,

of all people who is my good friend

and fellow automotive journalist.

He says hi to everybody, every show,

mostly corporeal people, non-robots, non-ghosts.

That's what you're saying.

I don't want to paint ghosts with a big brush like that,

so I'm going to forget that you said that.

Do you put ghosts in robots in the same?

Here you go.

Anyways, Ben, I would love you to plug

a couple of the latest publications

that you've been writing for.

You can find my work at Motor Trend,

at Inside Hook, and at driving.ca.

And you can find my work at auto trader.ca

and driving.ca.

One more random thing,

I actually for the first time was interviewed

by NPR this week.

What does NPR stand for again?

National Public Radio.

Not something record?

What?

Not policy record?

I don't know what you're talking about.

I'm not talking, I'm just trying to come up

with three other words that start with NPR.

I'm glad you went with the funniest words

in the English language, policy and record.

Noodle, pool, removal.

You were interviewed by them.

I had written something for Motor Trend

about EV driving in the winter

and essentially range testing.

And I think one of their producers found it

and wanted to talk about the impact

of cold weather on EV.

So it was strange.

I can tell you it's strange to be the interviewee

instead of the person asking the questions.

But what was more interesting to me

was the host that I talked to,

I was speaking with them about just,

I mentioned that I was in Southern Quebec

and they were like, oh, so whereabouts?

And I'm like, you know,

I'm about five miles from the Vermont border.

And then they were like,

oh, so you were in the Eastern townships then.

And I'm like, how do you know that?

And they revealed that they were secretly from Montreal.

So that was funny.

It was very random.

They live in DC right now.

And that's, I mean, right now,

that's where they live permanently.

And they come back to visit Montreal

like one or two times a year.

So kind of the world feels very small sometimes.

What does it feel like to be on NPR,

which is a national public radio?

And they interviewed you,

obviously they interviewed you about your knowledge

and expertise on something,

but also because you were in Motor Trend

and wrote something really cool in there.

It's, you just try not to sound like an idiot, I guess.

I think the opposite of this podcast.

That's how it felt.

How easy is it for you?

Well, the fall I spent, I would say 20 hours

being interviewed on podcasts

for my comic book that was coming out.

And it was very similar to that,

except they couldn't be as off the cuff

because they also had to remember facts and figures.

So I have a little bit more empathy for,

even more empathy for the people that I interview

who are on the spot and have to come up with

like coherent answers in a live setting.

So this week then,

we've got a pair of electric vehicles

that are actually the same electric vehicle

that both of us have driven.

Yes.

Are you comfortable doing a joint review on this?

What choice do I have?

Well, I mean, I could just let you do all the talking.

I put myself in this position.

Yeah, that's a lie.

I mean, I've driven,

I think I drove the car several weeks,

maybe almost a month ago.

And you didn't like it.

And that's why we're talking about it now

because you had a very different experience than I did.

Yeah, so we're talking about the 2026 Hyundai Ioniq 9.

I drove the range topping calligraphy, ultimate calligraphy?

Ultimate with the calligraphy package.

Okay, I don't think that's a trim, but...

Sorry, hold on.

It's called the...

Preferred with the ultimate package.

Preferred all-wheel drive plus

with the ultimate calligraphy package.

That's what the full name is in Canada.

If you're in the States, it's just calligraphy.

It's exactly the same.

They know how to treat the people with trim names.

It's just odd that it's presented as a package here.

Hyundai does this on a bunch of their electric vehicles.

We're like, they have two trims,

but also there's packages,

which are technically trims, question mark.

Ultimate calligraphy package.

Anyways, I drove this in one of the snowiest weeks

I've ever had a car this year.

And I also got an opportunity to compare it

to the Hyundai Palisade Hybrid,

which we talked about in a previous episode.

And I found a couple of things,

driving the two cars back to back,

I found a few things that stood out to me in favor,

maybe not in favor of the Palisade,

but things that knocked the calligraphy,

the Ioniq 9 down a peg in my mind.

Because I think from a distance, it's a really cool car.

I think it continues the really good ambitions

of the Ioniq sub-brand, which the 5, 6, and the 5N,

and I think there's a new 6N coming,

all really have impressed in terms of their design

and driving dynamics.

And I think that this one,

this one didn't hit the mark for me

in terms of driving dynamics, in terms of range,

the price point really felt high.

And in terms of interior appointments and technology,

I found even the Palisade to be a little bit better.

So that was my, I was like,

I don't want to just knock this car

when I had it a month ago,

but I knew that you were gonna have it

and it would make for a really good discussion.

Not that I think that you're generally positive

on the Ioniq 9 in all ways,

but when you were driving it,

you did tell me that things were going a little bit more

your way.

Oh, I feel completely the opposite that you do.

It's not even like a question of degree, I think.

And I also don't think it's comparable to the Palisade.

No, I mean, I think it's only comparable

in the mission statement of being in a three row SUV.

There's even, you can even get more seats

in one of the cars, I think in the Palisade.

And while the space is kind of similar,

the price point is really, really not.

The price point is different.

The power is different.

The styling is radically different.

I feel like this vehicle is as close as Hyundai

has ever come to making a genuine luxury vehicle

since ever since they spun off Genesis.

Okay, I think that's a great place to start.

Why wouldn't they just make it Genesis?

Because this is it in Canada.

Because that's the beautiful thing.

They don't have to choose, right?

Like they can, I mean, you know.

What would be called GV90?

Well, I think it's something like that

has already been announced, yeah.

But the other thing about this vehicle

is it's not the first three row from Hyundai

because Kia came out with the EV9 last year.

Right, exactly.

I haven't driven the, I didn't drive the EV9 yet.

I drove it and I drove the GT line package

and it was the worst handling large SUV

I think I driven in years

because the suspension tuned for the rear end

was, I don't know, stiff to the point of being,

I don't wanna use the word dangerous

because I was not in danger.

But every time I went over a bump,

the rear end of the vehicle would lift up and move around

and I have not had that happen.

Just a complete lack of control from the GT line trim.

And so when I got into the IONIQ 9,

I was curious as to whether it would have the same kind of

just hyper tense, unnecessary reflexes I guess.

And it was night and day.

They, I'm assuming took a lesson

from the tuning of that suspension

and when they went to the IONIQ 9,

they're like, no, this is something that

we're not even gonna pretend is a high performance vehicle.

We're gonna position it as a premium badge.

And I think that was a really smart move for them.

So you were talking about pricing.

The calligraphy in Canada is like around $80,000

before you add in like $2,000 worth of delivery fees.

In the States, it's about $60,000 in base.

There's a base rubble drive version.

And I mean like base base.

There's the only model that has rubble drive in the US.

I don't even know if it's available in Canada.

So that's 61 grand and then it goes up to 79 US

for the calligraphy design,

which is a calligraphy with different wheels

and different paint options.

So if you're looking at pricing,

the Canadian model at 80 grand Canadian

is a screaming deal versus 79 grand for a US calligraphy.

Like literally 30% less

with the currency exchange.

That is wild.

Yeah, absolutely.

The currency exchange really doesn't do the car a favor

in the US for sure.

And I'm wondering if it has anything to do.

I don't know where the Ioniq 9 is built.

So it could be that tariffs are pushing the price

up in the United States.

I'm not sure.

Because I know the Ioniq 5 is now built in the US

for the American market.

And that's how they're going to do it.

I'm just really uncomfortable with the concept

of a nearly, I mean, this is 80,000 in the US.

What are you uncomfortable about?

What does that make you uncomfortable?

I think at that price point, I'm trying to think of the,

I mean, the thing that's working out in the car's favor

is that there are so few good, all-electric three-row SUVs.

There are none that are not luxury other than the Kia.

Yes.

And from what I understand,

the Kia did not impress you very much.

Not the GT line trim.

I didn't drive any others.

But I mean, once you exclude the Kia,

you end up with the Cadillac Vistic

and the Volvo EX90 pretty much, right?

And I guess there's a, is the Rivian a three-row?

I think so.

It feels smaller though.

I have no, I'm not sure.

In any case, you're much more expensive.

Right.

Like the most expensive version of the Ioniq

is roughly the starting price for all of those vehicles.

Exactly.

I think that's an important thing to talk about.

But of course, you're spending money on a couple of things

that are meant to be more premium.

I mean, so for starters, the interior is really high-end

for a Hyundai.

It does really edge on the,

it does really land on the edge

of a premium vehicle, I think.

So that's, sorry, that's the one area

where I thought it was less impressive.

Like I liked the dashboard and the calligraphy.

I thought the design and the inlay of the,

I guess it's supposed to look like marble or something.

Yeah.

It's pretty cool.

But then you end up with,

you know, your switch gear is still Hyundai

and the screen on the dash is just kind of there.

And you know how I feel about that kind of thing.

Yeah, it's got that same double 12.3 inch screen.

They hook up together.

They just make this blank black plastic on the dash.

It's really like, it's okay.

I think it's really okay.

It's super mega okay.

But like to your point about pricing,

like that's one area, like everything is fine inside.

The appearance wise.

One thing that impressed me a lot,

like, I don't know, maybe go on with your,

you're talking about the aesthetics

so we can get to seating maybe later on.

No, no, I think we,

I was about to talk about seating now, right now.

Okay.

Because I think the interior is where we should really

discuss this car.

In my test, I found that it had almost identical

interior space to the Palisade with the exception

of I think one measurement with all the seats up.

I think the Ioniq has more overall space

but not by like a whopping amount.

So I used the vehicle on an airport run.

Okay.

And I was able, it has basically 22 cubic feet

behind the third row, so every seat is occupied.

But most of that space is vertical.

Still, I was able to take my gym bag,

lengthways and I could touch the seat back

and not touch the hatch.

So like that's decent.

And if you have roll on luggage that's tall,

it fits in there really well.

So it's still useful.

And then if you fold down the third row,

it basically doubles the amount of space you have.

Okay.

So from then on though,

there's a few like interesting,

how do you describe them?

Quirks about the technology and the vehicle.

Well, are we still talking seats?

Cause I wasn't finished with seats.

Yeah. Talk to me about these seats.

What I really thought was cool.

The third row has power recline.

You don't find that in a lot of SUVs period,

like electric or not.

Yeah. And not only that,

but you can actually adjust the seats

from the driver's seat through the touchscreen.

This is something that I found was common

between the Palisade and the Ioniq.

So you can kind of prepare the cabin

if you're picking somebody up, which is pretty cool too.

And not only that, if you're in that third row,

there's multiple ways to get in and out of it.

If you're sitting in the third row,

there are buttons that you can use

to move the second row forward and backwards.

There is a pole ripcord that you can pop the seat out

from the second row moorings and flip it forward.

And if you're getting in from the side,

there's another set of controls on the side of the seat

that will do all of that plus the normal seat position stuff

for the second row.

Sometimes when I get into a three-row vehicle,

the back row can feel like a prison

because it's not clear how you can escape it

if you need to, right?

Like once that second row seat locks in place,

you're kind of at the mercy of whoever's sitting

in front of you.

With the Ioniq 9, that wasn't the case

and I really appreciated it.

And it feels like maybe this is redundant

to have all these controls.

And how often are people gonna be sitting

in the third row anyway?

The fact that they paid attention to that is pretty cool.

And then I was impressed that,

well, maybe this is, now actually I never mind.

I was concerned that.

No longer.

I was concerned that.

I was impressed to concerned.

No, I was concerned that actually for a cheaper vehicle

the Palisade had in Canada heated seats in all three rows,

vented seats in the second row,

and some additional technology I think

in terms of like the embedded dash cam

and that weird UV sanitization doodad.

That doodad is useless though.

Let's be real.

Maybe if it sanitized the entire interior

at the push of a button,

I want a button that does that.

The Ioniq 9 does the first two rows are heated for sure.

I don't know about ventilated, question mark.

No, no.

Do you really need a heated third row seat?

When you've got a vehicle this large

and I think that's important.

Yeah, but if your kids are cold

and they complain and they're in the third row,

you're not going to hear them.

Yeah, I guess so.

It's fine.

It's totally fine.

One other thing about the, we're talking cargo.

So there's a frunk in the Ioniq 9,

but it is a lunchbox size.

Yeah, it's tiny.

It's only good for like a portable charger.

Yeah, it's 1.9 cubic feet if you have all wheel drive

and 3.1 if you have rear wheel drive.

Again, not sure if rear wheel drive is available in Canada,

but there is that one base model in the US

where you can get it.

And the reason I know the size of the frunk,

I don't often use them,

but we'll get to talking about the styling of this vehicle

later.

I had a problem where,

I don't know if this happened to you, Sammy.

So much snow and ice accumulated

between the windshield wipers and the cowl of the hood

that my wipers would not park.

That's interesting.

I didn't have that issue.

They stayed stuck up

and I tried to clean it out with a brush and I couldn't.

The cowl is so deep

that I tried reaching it with my hands.

I couldn't get it to work.

So finally, I had to pop the frunk and use my hands

to clean out the snow that had accumulated,

which is an ideal because once you do that,

you get so much snow that just falls into the frunk itself.

So if you do have something in there,

it's gonna get wet or like at least a little bit cold.

I have not had a vehicle

that had that kind of snow accumulation problem

which makes me feel like it's a design issue.

I had serious issues in the snow with this car,

like really uncomfortable issues

that really distracted me while I was driving the vehicle.

And I know that's really weird

because apparently you had driven it

in a similarly snowy weather.

Oh, far snowier, far snowier.

I believe our cars had different winter tires.

No, who can say?

I believe we had the continental, maybe?

I'm trying to remember now.

I'm sure I have a photo of it somewhere.

I don't know why they would have different ones.

I mean, I suppose it's entirely possible.

Fleets are gonna do their fleet thing, right?

Let me, I did do a close-up of the tire

because I had a problem with the wheels more than the tire.

So let me see if I can find that.

I don't think I've got photos of this.

Let me see.

Anyways, I just could not,

the stopping distances felt really, really long

in this car.

I was, and uncomfortably so.

I had Michelin, Michelin X-Ice.

Let me take a look.

I'm looking, okay?

So while you're looking,

I'm gonna address the point you just made.

A vehicle this size and this weight

is gonna take longer to stop.

And you add snow to that

and it's going to increase that stopping distance

even more.

Well, I mean, I don't appreciate you telling me that

as if I don't know that.

I'm telling our listeners that.

I'm not lecturing you.

You're supposedly looking at photos.

I didn't even know you were listening.

I bring it up because it's something

that I don't think we talk about.

Yes, X-Ice Alpine SUV or something like that.

Yeah, so we had the same tires.

Yeah, I don't know.

So people don't really talk about this

when they talk about EVs in the winter time.

I mean, we all know that heavier cars take longer to stop.

I think I mentioned it when we had the BMW M5 Touring,

which is like 5,500 pounds, something like that,

5,800 pounds.

I am going to guess that the Ioniq is in that neighborhood,

if not a little bit heavier.

Yeah.

And I never found the vehicle to be sliding past

where I was comfortable.

I did make sure to take more time.

There's, on my commute, when I come off my road

onto the main highway, there's a little bit of a downhill.

And many times, I have been caught out

by my own exuberance in not hitting the brake early enough,

and I end up sliding down that hill in the winter.

So I become much more careful with it.

And in the Ioniq, I was like, OK, this is going to take a while.

And I was just a little bit more judicious

with my brake application.

So the other thing is that added weight of this vehicle

just becomes so much more noticeable in the winter.

In the dry, it's way less of a concern.

But in the winter.

How did you notice it?

What was the main?

Like I said, the long stopping distances,

and even like cornering or turning,

and I'm not even going to mean cornering actually,

like turning at intersections, the car really

struggled to get front end grip and sort of like push through.

It felt like I was driving, I mean, obviously I was.

It felt like I was driving through slush,

but I had zero grip in so many situations

that like made me super uneasy with dealing with that much weight.

You had to drive it at significantly lower speeds

than I think other cars.

Well, I mean, I drove it back to back with a Palisade,

and I didn't feel that same feeling.

However, I will point out, there is one really interesting thing

about the Ioniq 9.

Size-wise, it's lower than the Palisade,

and it's got a much longer wheelbase, I believe,

and it just feels a little bit more car-like,

I think, on the road than a big wobbly, top-heavy kind of SUV.

So all of that weight is really down low.

And like I said, in the dry, totally fine-feeling car.

But once I had it in the cold, it really wasn't my driving style.

So my experience, again, was kind of at odds with yours,

where we had a couple of blizzards while I had it.

I ended up booting it pretty hard on some back roads.

Oh, yeah, I could not.

I could not pick up the...

I found the vehicle was completely fine in corners.

In fact, I was impressed by how controlled I have a vehicle felt.

The only time I really noticed the weight of the vehicle

when I was underway was on moguls.

There's some up-down motion of the chassis.

It's not enough to make anyone seasick, but it's definitely there.

Also, the car was really tough to get the rear end to kick out,

which is unusual for a vehicle like this.

When it's driven quickly, it understeers more than anything else.

And even the understeer is super manageable.

What I did have happen is maybe similar to what you mentioned,

pulling away from a stop if you're doing like a 90 degree corner,

for example, like at an intersection,

the rear end will kick out a little bit in that situation.

Or you'll get a little bit of a shimmy if you get on the gas too fast

and it'll step out just a little bit.

But that was at lower speeds.

I found that in normal driving, I never had those problems.

And I found the traction control was really helpful versus being intrusive,

which is like I think back to when I had the leaf

a couple of weeks ago in the snow, when I would pull out from like, again,

that little hill that leads to the highway is it can be a little

hard stopping sometimes because once you've managed to break on that slippery

part, you have to pull out onto the road and hope that the traffic behind you

doesn't catch up to you, right?

If there's a lot of traffic because they're going fast.

So I would pull out on the leaf, but because the wheel was cranked to the left

or to the right, the traction control would really damp down on throttle.

And I would be in the situation where my foot is down and we're not accelerating

and cars are coming up really quickly behind me.

And I did not appreciate that in the Ioniq.

That did not happen.

It was much better at figuring out traction instead of just saying no power for you.

It would do its best to like find traction on one wheel and another wheel

and get you moving. So I was impressed by that.

There's a sport mode, which I didn't really feel the need to use.

Like I tried it out, but, you know, this is not a sporty vehicle.

There's a snow mode, which is supposed to smooth out your your inputs.

And I guess it works. I didn't find it to be necessary.

OK, yeah, I haven't changed it.

I didn't change any of the drive modes.

I just kept it, I think, in either the eco mode or the.

Snow mode, it's worth mentioning that that, like both Sammy and I drove

the most powerful version of the.

Yeah, I was about to get that.

We should start talking about the powertrain on the go for it.

So under the hood, we've got two two motors here.

I believe they're equally powered in terms of performance.

One hundred and sixty kilowatts at both end, basically at the front and rear axle.

Together, they make four hundred and twenty two horsepower and five hundred and

sixteen pound feet of torque.

This is a really punchy, responsive powertrain.

I think it's really impressive that they've made such a heavy, big car feel kind of.

I mean, I say this every time we drive an EV, but this is like among

the biggest EVs we've driven, safe for probably one of those like

Altium trucks, I guess. Yeah.

Um, the battery is also one hundred and ten kilowatt hours.

Yeah. And that's the same.

But so just to butt in on the power, there's also all the drive models

that don't have as much power. Yeah.

So the mid range models have three hundred and three horsepower and four

hundred and forty six pound feet.

And then the base model, the rear wheel drive is two hundred and

fifteen horsepower and two hundred and fifty eight pound feet.

Sorry, two hundred and fifty horsepower and two hundred and fifty eight pound

feet of torque. It still has a one hundred and ten kilowatt hour battery.

I do not think this car exists.

Like personally, I don't think I think this is just a paper launch.

Maybe for the range, right?

Because it's three hundred and thirty five miles of range for that model

versus three hundred and eleven for the one that you and I drove.

So that's yeah, that's not a big difference.

That's like eight percent, nine percent, maybe even less.

But they do it less than 10 percent.

Yeah. What was your struggle to get?

I really struggled to get anywhere close to 500 kilometers.

I got closer to four hundred.

Let me give you that in miles is two fifth around two fifty

miles per charge and oftentimes less than that.

So on the coldest day that I drove the vehicle,

I saw fifty five kilowatt hours per hundred miles of driving,

which is a hundred and ninety eight miles of driving range

that translates as the three hundred and sixteen kilometers versus the

expected five hundred kilometers for this vehicle.

So it's a drop of about forty three percent.

Now, that's a huge drop.

It's a huge drop.

But again, these were the coldest days I've driven.

Very cold, very cold.

I will point out, though, that I was driving the driving dot C.A.

Long term tester, which is primarily under the care of the editor there,

Renita and Irane, and she herself says

she barely ever gets over 400 kilometers in the winter.

This she has the the Ioniq calligraphy as the long term.

Yeah, basically, yes.

OK, she's had it since, I think, October.

And she says once the once it got cold, basically,

the that five hundred kilometer range really dropped.

However, she's also come.

She's a little bit different than I think you

who has a who's had a level two charger for quite a while now.

And I don't have a level two charger, actually.

I just used a should. I know I should.

I'm working on it this year. OK.

And I actually have one.

Sorry, I should point this out.

I have one. I just haven't installed it yet.

I guess I have to get it wired up in the garage.

Anyway, she is like it in and then like

but like have the cable go to the outback or something.

So your neighbors freak out.

So she says basically she was really concerned about that limited range.

Basically, like you said, around 40 was not that limited.

It's until she realized that, you know, you can charge this thing

every single day, get that 400 kilometers of range,

350, 400 kilometers of range, every single night

and not have to worry really about about long, long distance driving.

It'll do it'll do 10 percent to 80 percent

in 24 minutes on a level three charger.

I'm curious. Did you get that?

Did you get to test that during the I almost never DC fast charge?

It's just not necessary when you have a level two charger at home.

And I mean, with a big battery like that, level two takes a long time.

I mean, I'm peeking out at seven kilowatt hours, right?

So let's say you have 110 kilowatt battery.

If it was empty, yeah, you're looking at like 13 hours, maybe 14 hours.

I actually have the I have it here.

They say it would be a level of 220 volts or 240 volts

would be about nine hours and 40 minutes.

Now, see, that's not true because yeah, yours is a bit.

I mean, well, no, very efficient.

You have to understand there's different types of level to charge.

Right. Yeah.

So mine is generally electricians do not like you using

the maximum capacity of a particular fuse or or or or breaker

on your on your breaker box. Right.

So I can't remember the exact number.

I want to say something like 70 percent capacity.

Maybe it's a little bit less and they leave you some overhead.

So depending on what you already have coming out of the box,

your charger for level two in theory, there are there are level

two chargers that can go nine point two kilowatt kilowatt hours.

So sorry, nine point two kilowatts, 11 kilowatts, like at the extreme.

But you would almost have to have a box that's dedicated to the charger to do that.

When I got mine just from a heat perspective and the fact that I know

I have heating in the garage, I have lights in the garage that is attached to.

I don't want to go crazy.

I don't want the the charger to trip a breaker and blow out, you know,

the power of my garage.

So it's set to seven or seven point two kilowatt hour,

which is pretty common for a lot of what you'll see for level two.

So when you see these kinds of things from manufacturers,

you have to interrogate like what speed they're they're going to pick

the best speed for them. Right.

Like if level two has max capacity of this, that's what they're going to go with.

Exactly. So anything else though that really is something you wanted to discuss

with this car? I think it looks great. I think it's a really I think this is

the thing when you look at this vehicle,

you mentioned that has that long wheelbase.

I also think about the roof line and how the roof line slopes to the rear.

This is very Range Rover. This is this.

I think I mean, again, I drove it back to back to a

what's it called Palisade and the Palisade looks super Range Rover.

I think this looks way more Range Rover. You're crazy.

Well, am I crazy? I just don't see it.

Okay. In profile.

I mean, if you look at the Range Rover, it has almost a cam back tail, right?

Oh, like the sport.

I'm sorry. The Range Rover sport or like the full size?

No, the full size.

I has it has a tilted roof at the rear.

Am I am I insane? Is there not a tilted roof there?

It's my I'm going to look it up right now.

I think it's a bit mild.

No, it's definitely pronounced.

It's definitely not.

I'm seeing it. I mean, it's definitely more so than the E V nine.

E V was the name of the other one.

E V nine.

Is it called the E V nine? Oh, my goodness.

I just find it looks it's it's it's a nice look.

And I think it makes an impression.

It's certainly

when you're building an E V, this is big.

I mean, if you look at the Volvo, it's very Volvo, right?

Like it really makes you think like, OK, this is in line with all the other

Volvos that are out there that we've seen so far.

And if you look at the Vistik from Cadillac,

it kind of looks like a baby escalated in some ways on purpose.

OK. But then you get to the Ioniq nine.

It does not look like an Ioniq six and it does not look like an Ioniq five at all.

It's its own thing. Yeah.

And I mean, I think that's I mean, I've talked to

Hyundai designers in the past about their design philosophy.

It seems like they're sticking through it with the Ioniq sub brand as well in that

they want every car to have its own unique identity.

That's cool. They say that they say that not everybody has

a lineup of those cars on their driveway.

They want a car that looks good no matter what. Right.

So sure. And there's one more thing I do want to bring up about this vehicle in the snow

and that I had these like multi spoke 21 inch rims in the end.

And they gathered snow like you would not believe inside the rims.

And I because of the size of the slots for the spokes.

There's no way I could say that again.

There's no way to put a brush in there and clean them out.

And I didn't want to use the plastic part of the brush

because the scraper because I didn't want to damage the finish on the rims.

Right. So over time, so much snow accumulated inside the wheel,

not just in the slots, but in the like these are very wide wheels in that area as well

that I had. I couldn't drive above 90 kilometers an hour without the steering wheel

shaking like crazy. I actually had to go get it washed.

Which is very, very rare where I have this problem.

Like the last time I think I had snow accumulation like this was the odyssey

and I was able to clean the odyssey out my hand.

But this I actually had to go and just get jets of water to melt all that stuff.

That's wild. OK.

And it just like created like a gnarly vibration.

Yeah, because the snow accumulates unevenly.

Right. So when you have the snow, when it starts when it's frozen

and there are chunks of ice in there and the wheels rotating,

it's essentially like adding weights to the wheel.

And so it pulls it's no longer balanced.

And so that's where you start to get bad vibrations in the front end.

Interesting.

It happens a lot if you certain rim designs just were not intended for snow.

Right. Kind of kind of the beginning and end of it.

So that's I guess our differing takes on it.

I just didn't love the driving style and I found it to be fairly expensive.

I know when you take a look at the the rest of the three row SUV

EV lineup, of which there is only really Akia and premium vehicles,

it it makes a little bit more sense, but it's a lot of money.

I mean, I just I just think the funny thing about money, Sammy,

is you like it more if you spend it.

Yes, I guess so.

It's more valuable when you spend it, I guess, I don't know.

And I wasn't in love with the driving dynamics other than

the feeling that it actually drove smaller than it was,

which is which is an admirable quality given the the weight of it

and just the practicality of it.

So there's another vehicle I wanted to talk about today.

And this is something that this vehicle caught me by surprise.

I when I was going to Toronto to visit Sammy and do other things,

I ended up driving an Acura RDX and the Acura RDX.

I don't know if we've talked about it on the on the show before,

or at least recently, it's on its way out.

They're making a new I want to say plug-in hybrid or hybrid

version of the vehicle that's going to be on a different platform.

Is that right, Sammy?

I believe so. Yeah, 2027, it's going to be a very different vehicle.

And as a result, the 2026 model year, it's unchanged from 2025.

I drove a 25 and I checked with Honda USA and I checked in Canada

and there's no difference between 25 and 26.

So I'm going to talk about it as though it's the current model year.

But even though even that, they're only making it for like six months.

They're just going to do enough to keep inventory on dealer lots.

And then it's going to be gone.

So I got into this vehicle thinking, OK. Weird.

I feel like I've driven a model year 26.

Yeah, it does. It's late last year.

I mean, maybe you did.

I don't know. It just there wasn't one here in Montreal.

So it doesn't matter. They're the same vehicle.

There's no differences.

I wasn't sure what to think of the RDX, because I've personally never

really found the vehicle to be super competitive.

I didn't have a problem with it, but it was the kind of thing where I'd be like,

why don't you just get an X3 or why don't you just get a Lexus?

You know, like the question about that. Why?

I what? Why not just get one?

Well, I'm about to tell you. Tell me.

This is actually a pretty good vehicle.

I I shocked myself.

There's one. There is one critical flaw.

Yeah, we're going to get to that later.

But this is one red flag, unmissable red flag.

This vehicle has what is it?

Two hundred and seventy five, two hundred seventy two horsepower

to recharge four cylinder. It's got a 10 speed automatic.

It's got the super handling all wheel drive that Acura is super proud of.

And it actually has decent styling, in particular, the interior of mine.

I had the A-spec and I believe it was the let me double check the actual model.

The in the States, I believe it's called A-spec Advanced

and a candidate's called Platinum Elite A-spec.

I don't know how many more descriptors they can fit into that.

So in Canada, it's about sixty six thousand before you get into delivery charges.

In the US, it is fifty five grand.

So the exchange rate hasn't really done what it has done for the Ioniq.

In this case, you can also get like a regular A-spec

that doesn't have as much of the luxury stuff, but I had this beautiful red

interior red highlights on the on the door panels, red seats.

It just looked it looked good to the point where other people

were talking about the interior of the vehicle luxury SUV owners

were actually being like, hey, that looks really nice.

I'm impressed by that. And that surprised me.

I hadn't really it had been probably five years since they last maybe more

since I last drove an RDX.

And the last time I drove one was also on a long trip.

I went up to Ice Race in Milton, is that Minden?

Minden, Minden, Ontario, with a shout out

to Russ Bond for hooking me up.

My dad and I did some door to door ice racing there, a lot of fun.

And we got lost a little bit on the way back on the secondary roads

in the middle of the night in this RDX.

It was it was, you know, in the snow. It was perfect. No issues.

I wasn't sure if this was the right vehicle for a long distance trip,

because as Sammy talked about, there's something about it

that is super retro and by retro, I mean, not really retro,

just gone in a decision that should never have been made

and that every other car company has walked away from since.

And that's the infotainment system.

Sammy, why is the infotainment system so bad on this vehicle?

Well, because one, it's not a touch screen.

And two, it's mostly a pair of I think it's a pair of touch pads.

It's a pair.

I couldn't get the second one to ever work, so we're going to say there's one.

There's two.

There's like a square one

and then a taller rectangular one beside the square one.

OK, and the taller rectangular one doesn't do anything

in any situation.

And that was frustrating.

But more frustrating is the fact that.

Not only has accurate given given us the worst way

you can interact with a vehicle while you're driving, because it's tough

to have the motor skills to pilot a vehicle, keep your attention on the road

and somehow like mouse around properly.

The the other issue, the the primary issue with it is you can't use it like a laptop.

It's not the same kind of movement, right?

Like, you know what I'm talking about?

Yeah, yeah, it's expecting you to do these really strong swipes

just to move a little bit like you can't just trail your finger around

and get to where you want to go.

It's like icon to icon to icon.

Oh, my goodness.

It is maddening to the point where I was using Android Auto

and normally I'm pretty good about reporting things when I see them on the road,

like if there's an accident or a speed trap or responding to prompts,

like, is this still there?

I gave up on it.

I just couldn't do it.

I was like, I'm not going to put myself in danger to use this system,

which is how it felt.

I'm assuming the replacement RTX will not have this quote unquote technology.

I'm assuming it's gone.

Everything else about everything else about the interior, I liked.

I went crazy in Toronto because I don't often get to.

I don't often go to Anglophone bookstores, English bookstores,

because where I live, primarily French speaking.

And so when I get to a large English speaking city, I buy a ton of books.

I went, I'm also starting to collect laser discs for reasons I don't understand.

So I picked up some for you.

Yeah, Sammy picks them up for me.

He met someone at a library in Mississauga.

Very safe.

And brought those to me.

You're not allowed to scream when you're getting mugged in a library.

So I had a bunch of those and had a bunch of blue rays.

And we also had, it was Lunar New Year.

So we had a ton of food that was coming back with us as well.

When we went to Toronto, I was able to put everything

behind the second row without any problems and a few things on the second row.

When we came back, I was like, oh, no, we have all this stuff.

Like, what are we going to do?

I don't like packing to the ceiling because I like being able to see out the back window.

Folded the seat, distributed everything, and I was able to just have it level off under the window.

And it worked perfectly.

I was impressed. It was really easy.

The RDX system, other weird stuff, like

on the dash, it has like a big knob

that you think would be for volume.

Oh, yes.

But it's actually drive mode.

The thing you do the most in your car is change drive modes on the fly.

Right? Like, no, you never do that.

It's never it's something you do once at the start of your drive

and then you turn and you forget about it.

You know, like, oh, I've been in eco mode for three days.

You know, like, I don't remember this stuff.

I put that in sport mode a few times.

It does change the response of the transmission, which I appreciated.

But I didn't really feel like I believe also sorry, it has a suspension effect

on the A-spec, the top tier A-spec.

In any case, I didn't really feel it to be necessary.

Like the acceleration is quite good in all circumstances.

Fuel economy, I got like 10 liters per 100 kilometers for the whole trip,

which I think is like 21 or 22 miles per gallon, something like that.

I think those numbers are accurate.

Let me double check, which is decent for the cold weather that we had

and the speeds we were traveling.

And the fact that the vehicle was so full of stuff on the way back.

I'm just going to make sure that those numbers are right.

Yeah, 9.88 was my was my most efficient and 10.8 was my average.

And I want to say that's around 22 for that level of power and all the drive.

I'm not complaining about that in the winter.

The adaptive cruise control worked really well.

It has a lane centering system that's pretty happy and pretty much all

weather conditions unless it can't see the lines on the road, in which case

it's not going to work properly.

But as a road trip vehicle, it was good.

I was impressed.

It's now a vehicle that I might actually start recommending to people.

Oh, wow. Super surprised me.

I can't do it with that.

It's yeah.

But here's the thing, Sammy.

We used to recommend the RX, which had that pad, right?

Yeah, that was a long that was a long time ago.

I think it just seems like a long time ago because of how traumatic it was.

Like, I think it was a little closer to the current reality than we'd like to think.

Definitely, this pad could be a deal breaker for a lot of people.

And I would I would have to make it a massive asterisk in my recommendation.

But I thought this was cool.

I'm willing to bet you can get them for a discount because of the fact

that this is the last model year and a totally different models coming out.

It's it's decent styling and it is useful.

It was a useful vehicle.

And I mean, if you're going up against like what's competing against this

X3, McCann, you know, like, wow, McCann is expensive.

Exactly. That's a very specific.

That's what I'm saying.

It's like the competitors to this vehicle.

I mean, obviously, I like the X3 more.

I like the Genesis GV70 more.

I don't know if I like the NX more.

Is this an NX sized vehicle or is this an RX sized vehicle?

I would say it's NX size.

OK, the NX is I'm on the fence with that.

It's it's good.

It has way more drive change, drivetrain choice.

You can get the plug in.

That's pretty cool.

But if you're looking for something that's quote unquote luxurious

and you don't want to buy like a Buick and Vision and the McCann is just too expensive.

I mean, you could do a lot worse.

What do you think?

You think I'm crazy?

I think it drives well.

I think it's very it's relatively spacious.

And I think that the the pricing is pretty decent.

My and it looks good inside and out.

My main issue is the is the infotainment.

And I think the use we said I said spacious,

but I meant specifically in terms of cargo space.

I think the rear seat space isn't as spacious as other compact crossovers.

And I only know that because I'm throwing in a rear facing car seat

in all of my press cars.

I remember when I had it with the

with the RDX, I felt like it was a little bit tight for the front passenger.

Now, there's vehicles like the GLC, the XC60 from Volvo, the Q5, you know,

I guess the Maserati Gricale, like that's technically a compact.

But would you take this over, say, a Stelvio or an F-Pace,

which is somehow still on sale?

I like both of those very much.

So now you really like the Stelvio.

Yes, Stelvio is cool when I think it looks great.

But I mean, you want to talk bad infotainment.

Yeah, that's true.

Dated infotainment for sure, absolutely.

But at least, you know, well, it doesn't work.

What about a Valar?

Oh, I love the Valar.

But could you recommend it in good conscience?

No, no, no, these are not for me.

None of these cars are for me.

Yeah, I mean, none of these cars are for other people.

They're for me.

I also feel like I can say that the RDX will probably be less

troublesome than many of the vehicles we just mentioned.

You know what I mean?

I think that's a good idea.

I've always really liked the RDX that came.

It hasn't really interesting history, where the first generation model

featured a turbocharged powertrain.

The second gen had a naturally.

Is it a turbo V6?

No, the turbo four.

And then the second gen had a naturally aspirated V6.

And then for this third gen, they've gone back to a turbo four.

It's just this weird like flip flopping they keep doing.

And then there's this whole super handling all wheel drive thing.

I'm assuming that maybe going back to the turbo four is a taxation issue

for other markets. I guess so. Yeah.

Yeah. So that's my bit on the RDX.

It caught me by surprise.

I didn't expect to like it as much as I did.

I thought it would just put in the put in a decent jobs work.

And I would forget about it.

And it wasn't like that.

It was something that I I enjoyed driving long distance

and on the twistier roads near my house, it was fine.

It was totally fine in a way that, you know, a lot of these vehicles

are not like SUVs of this size.

So and the I was taken with its styling over time.

And I think you can maybe even get it in some cool colors.

I'm not sure about that.

There's a nice red. I know that.

But like mine wasn't kind of like a frosty gray.

You can get a blue.

I guess there's only two colors.

There's blue and there's red.

And the rest is like black, three grays and a white.

If you get the base model, you're only getting in Canada.

You're only getting gray, white or black, which is kind of sad.

I think that's the case with so many, you know, vehicles just have like no

absolutely no palette, really.

It's just grayscale all the time.

Yeah. Yeah.

Anyway, anything else you want to talk about this week?

No, I think that's that's I'm an empty void now.

OK, let's tell the people where they can find all of our

our previous episodes and other things that we've been doing.

Where would that be?

You can head over to our website, unnamed automotivepodcast.com.

And while you're there, you can see all of our previous episodes.

You can click on links to any articles that we are sharing

of the cars that we talk about in our episodes.

And you can subscribe to our podcast that way.

Although, realistically, you should just go to whatever

podcast, podcatcher or podcast client that you're using and do it that way.

Additionally, you can go to our website and fill out a contact us form.

And that will send us some some great feedback right to our inbox.

We love it when we hear from you guys and we tend to use a lot of the question

that you guys send us to help our show just be a little bit more relatable,

I suppose. So send us all your your comments.

If you don't want to do it through the website, you go on to your your email

client, you put in the two field Benjamin at Benjaminhunting.com.

Thanks for specifying the two field.

I mean, we're 35 years into email, so we do need the refresher.

So he comes in, he reads those emails.

He sends them to me and I do my best.

Sometimes I miss the two field entirely and I just I just BCC everything.

And then additionally, you can reach out to us on social media.

I recommend that you hit us up on Instagram.

I'm at Sammy underscore how like you're laughing and Ben over there.

He's at Hunting Benjamin over there.

That's him. Sammy, what are we going to be talking about next week?

I don't think I've got a I don't think I've got a car to talk about

specifically next week.

Well, I've got a car that's going to curl your toes.

And that is the 2026 Subaru Outback.

That is the brand new Outback, Sammy.

I can't wait. All right.

I love this. Thank you for listening, everybody. See you.

Episode 438: 2026 Hyundai Ioniq 9, 2026 Acura RDX

About this episode

Request an Explanation

Want to learn more?

Help improve this episode

More from Unnamed Automotive Podcast