u/Ioniq-Burner

For longer road trips, it’s important to have charging stations planned out along the way. The ABRP app paired over Bluetooth with an OBD2 device is excellent as a starting point for making this as automatic as possible on an Ioniq 5.

However, now that Plug & Charge has rolled out to ‘26 models, I’m considering dropping ABRP or waiting to see if it will start showing me ONLY Plug & Charge compatible stations like Bluelink seems to be capable of doing now.

I’m very pleased to see that Plug & Charge is working, even though it’s only at Tesla stations. I hope other stations catch up in my area, but no one else seems to be ready yet. EVgo and Electrify America are the main alternatives for me, but EVgo only seems to be compatible with Hyundai Pay so far, and I have no idea what works at Electrify America outside of their app.

The main thing is that I don’t want nine apps just to operate my vehicle on road trips. I want one or two at most. Plug & Charge is such an obviously better solution than even the simplicity of filling up at a gas station that I hope more charging networks support it.

That’s the thing about EV adoption generally: getting consumers to change their habits often means showing them a better solution, not an equivalent solution. Hyundai Pay is a very good equivalent solution, but Plug & Charge is ideal.

The industry is at a place now where EVs like the Ioniq 5 are the better solution to everything except for towing and overall vehicle weight. We’ve reached equivalence on range and are just now pulling in front on filling up a tank. Features like Plug & Charge are another step on the journey of leaving ICE behind forever.

I started experimenting with my regenerative braking setup after I started leasing my i5. It is probably the biggest learning curve I noticed while making the switch from ICE to EV.

I used “Auto” for the first couple thousand miles but found the braking to be a little more sudden and abrupt than I was expecting.

On top of this, I decided I would try Progressive Insurance’s in-app “Snapshot” service in an attempt to drive safely and save more money. Well, the app definitely picks up sudden brake “events” when I use “Auto” mode but far fewer such events when I use i-Pedal.

In this mode, it feels a lot more like driving an oversized go-kart, in a good way. It seems like there’s more fine-tuned braking control with i-Pedal than in pure Auto, at least in a 2026 RWD.

Driving an i5 after too many years in my former vehicle, a hatchback with way-too-tight suspension for bad roads, is a wonderful experience on the whole. There are quite a few ways to drive it, I’m very pleased with just how customizable it is, and i-Pedal simply is my favorite.