There are a lot of perks to driving a Hyundai Ioniq 5. Being one of the fastest-charging electric vehicles for sale at any price in the U.S. is one of the better ones. But when I charged the new 2025 Hyundai Ioniq 5 at a Tesla Supercharger in a recent test, the number on the screen caught me by surprise: 126 kilowatts.
For anyone new to the complex world of electric vehicle charging, that’s not an especially high number. It’s about 100 kW off the Ioniq 5’s normal maximum charging speed when it’s using something like the fastest Electrify America stations. On one of those 350 kW chargers, an Ioniq 5 should be able to charge from 10% to 80% in 20 minutes or less, making it a leader in its class and up there with luxury cars like the Porsche Taycan and Lucid Air.
Photo by: Patrick George
So the Ioniq 5’s charging speed of “only” 126 kW when I used a Tesla V3 Supercharger in Palm Desert, California came as a big surprise to me. But not to Karl Holodnick, the Engineering Manager for Propulsion and Charging at Hyundai America’s Technical Center who rode shotgun during my test.
“That’s what we’ve been seeing lately too,” he told me.
Had the Ioniq 5 lost its superpower now that it’s switched to a Tesla-style North American Charging Standard (NACS) plug? Not exactly, I learned. But owners of the 2025 Ioniq 5 who are counting on Tesla Supercharger access for easier road trips should know what’s going on.
How The Charging Test Went
The addition of a Tesla NACS plug is new for 2025, and the Ioniq 5 is the first non-Tesla EV to carry such a plug. Every other automaker in the U.S. plans to do the same over time, and in the interim, they are releasing adapters to allow their standard EVs to access the Tesla network. For the 2025 Ioniq 5, Hyundai is giving out an adapter too, but one that will allow the car to use CCS charging stations. Hyundai claims owners will see no difference in performance if they use any sort of adapter.
Photo by: Patrick George
Let’s start with how the charging experience went. After running the Ioniq 5 down to a 24% charge with 50 estimated miles remaining, I pulled up to the Tesla station, backed in and plugged in.
I should also note here that the Ioniq 5’s charge door is on the passenger side of the vehicle. Tesla plugs are on the driver’s side, and most Superchargers have extremely short cables that can’t easily reach other EVs charge doors. Hyundai’s port is far enough back that I was able to plug in without issue, but I did hear of some colleagues struggling to do the same. Your mileage may vary depending on the specific layout of the Supercharger you use. Sites with V4 dispensers don’t have this issue. But between the slimmer, easier-to-handle plug and the reliability and ubiquity of Superchargers, I didn’t mind.
Once the session started, I was initially horrified to see an estimated 50-minute time for charging, but as a Kia EV6 owner myself, I quickly realized the Ioniq 5’s DC fast charging was set to 100%. The last 10% to 20% of DC fast charging always takes the longest. Instead, I dialed the car’s settings down to 80%, which is as high as I ever go for DC charging myself. This gave us a much more reasonable estimate of 17 minutes to reach 80%, after the car had been juicing up for a few minutes already.
| 2025 Hyundai Ioniq 5 with factory NACS plug | 63 kWh (SE Standard Range) | 84 kWh (SE, SEL, XRT, Limited) | |
|
DC Fast Charging (10-80%) |
Tesla NACS | 24 minutes | 30 minutes |
| w/ CCS Adapter on 50 kW DC fast charger | 1 hour, 1 minute | 1 hour, 21 minutes | |
| w/ CCS adapter, >250 kW DC fast charger | 20 minutes | 20 minutes | |
| AC Level 2 Charging (10-80%) | 5 hours, 40 minutes | 7 hours, 20 minutes |
The Ioniq 5 pulled a steady 126 kW from the Tesla Supercharger nearly the entire time, before tapering off somewhat to 115 kW toward the end. Ultimately, the car charged from 24% to 80% in 28 minutes—adding a total of 50 kWh in energy and giving me an estimated range of 197 miles.
By 2025’s standards, I’d call it somewhere between “solidly midpack” and “not great.” It’s slower than an Ioniq 5 would perform on a standard 350 kW charger, for example. But after 20 minutes or so, you’d still have enough range to get back on the road comfortably—my usual standard for DC fast charging, as I tend to think they work best as road-trip “boosters” rather than replacement gas stations.
Yet for any Ioniq 5 owner who’s used to getting this done in the time it takes for a bathroom break and a quick stretch, it’s worth explaining why this is happening and what Hyundai is doing about it.
Why Tesla NACS Means A Charging Difference
Photo by: Patrick George
While you might expect an EV charger to be an EV charger, and the only thing on the Ioniq 5 that’s changed is its plug type, it’s not that simple. There are differences in voltage—the “pressure” from an electrical circuit’s power source that pushes charged electrons—between Tesla’s systems and what Hyundai and other EVs use.
“It’s a charger thing,” Holodnick told me afterward. “The charging of the vehicle is limited by the charging power of the Supercharger, on these cars.”
Holodnick said that the Supercharges operate at 470 volts, nominally, while Hyundai uses an 800-volt-class electrical architecture (697 volt, nominally, in the big battery version). To use an Electrify America station again as an example, their newer 350 kW chargers can operate at 1,000 volts. Those have enough power to max out the Ioniq 5’s charging curve. But a V3 Supercharger like the one I used—the most common type out there right now—isn’t built to put out that sort of voltage, as most Teslas cannot accept it.
“Obviously, at 350 kilowatt, 1,000-volt chargers, we’re able to charge at a much higher power because we can charge at the nominal voltage,” Holodnick said.
Photo by: Patrick George
At the same time, he believes that even now, an Ioniq 5 can charge faster at these stations than, say, a Tesla Model 3 can. That’s because of the charging curve of the Hyundai. Even if its current 126 kW charging doesn’t seem that impressive, the time it takes to “fill up” is comparable or better than a Tesla.
“Our curve goes up quickly and then stays flat,” Holodnick said. “Tesla’s goes up higher than ours, so they have a higher peak, but they drop down pretty quickly below our power.” This chart below from a Tesla Model 3 from 2021 illustrates his point:
But things should be getting better soon as well, and here’s why.
Why This Should Improve
The situation illustrates an interesting challenge for established automakers and Tesla alike. While this transition opens up more than 17,000 Tesla Superchargers across the U.S., it means that many different EVs of different specifications must now access a network that was previously by Tesla, and for Tesla only. A once-closed and uniform system must now work with all cars.
Holodnick said that as a first step, Hyundai expects to release an over-the-air update in the coming months that will improve charging speeds and times on the Tesla network. “Official timing on that has not been released yet, but I’d say it’s going to be faster than a year,” he said.
Tesla is also making some improvements. The company is currently rolling out more V4 Supercharger stations and V4 “cabinets” (i.e., the electrical equipment that powers them) and those will support vehicles with battery packs rated between 400V and 1,000V. Inherently, those should offer better charging performance for the Ioniq 5 and other higher-voltage EVs switching to the NACS plug.
In any case, I can confirm that NACS charging works for the Ioniq 5; that it beats the hell out of using an unwieldy CCS plug any day of the week. While the speeds aren’t what owners are used to, they’re decent enough. If Hyundai can deliver on making them faster, nobody will miss the days of NACS charging.
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Photo by: Patrick George
