We spent a week and 620 miles evaluating the Ioniq 5 Limited AWD’s Highway Driving Assist 2 suite—adaptive cruise, lane centering, blind-spot monitoring, and automatic emergency braking—across city grids, suburban arterials, and multi-lane interstates in mixed weather.
Our test car was a 2024 Hyundai Ioniq 5 Limited AWD on 20-inch Michelin Primacy tires, running the latest over-the-air maps and ADAS calibrations. The system blends a forward radar and windshield camera with rear corner radars and ultrasonics, enabling stop-and-go adaptive cruise (SCC), Lane Following Assist (LFA) lane centering, Highway Driving Assist 2 (HDA2) with map-based curve speed adjustment and assisted lane change, Blind-Spot Collision-Avoidance Assist (BCA), and Forward Collision-Avoidance Assist (FCA) with pedestrian/cyclist/junction support. Testing covered Los Angeles freeways (55–75 mph), two-lane canyon roads (35–55 mph), and dense urban traffic with multiple construction zones. We included night drives, a pre-dawn rain session, and bright-sun glare conditions.
We logged events with a VBox and dashcam, noting following gaps, deceleration rates, and any warnings, interventions, or disengagements. Adaptive cruise is among the smoother calibrations in class. At the middle following gap (3/4), we measured a consistent 1.7–1.9 s headway at 65–70 mph. Cut-in response is progressive, typical peak decel around 0.15 g, avoiding the lurchiness we see in some competitors.
Stop-and-go works cleanly down to zero; it will auto-restart if stationary under ~3 seconds, otherwise needs a tap on the throttle or RES. It handled moderate rain but posted “sensor limited” and widened headway slightly. False positives were rare: one forward-collision pre-alert (no brake) approaching a shiny steel road plate at dusk. No missed slow/stop targets in our lead-vehicle tests, though it can hesitate behind aggressive motorcycle lane splitters before re-closing the gap.
Lane centering is dependable on clearly marked interstates. It tracks smoothly with minimal ping-pong, and HDA2 trims speed 5–8 mph for sharper highway bends using map data. Hands-on monitoring is torque-based; expect a gentle nag every 15–30 seconds if your grip is light. Limitations appear in construction zones and faded paint—LFA will recentre to the single visible line and can drift toward exit gores until it disengages with an audible chime.
In heavy rain at night, it briefly lost lane tracking twice; both times it handed control back gracefully. No phantom steering inputs were observed. Blind-spot monitoring is strong. The radar detects fast-closing traffic reliably, and the Blind-Spot View Monitor camera preview in the cluster meaningfully reduces shoulder-check time.
BCA’s gentle countersteer nudge and selective brake on the inside front wheel worked as intended during an intentional merge toward an occupied lane at ~40 mph. It correctly identified motorcycles and small hatchbacks two lanes over. One conservative false alert occurred when passing a box truck straddling its line in a curve; no braking was applied. Rear cross-traffic AEB intervened once, smoothly, when a car crossed our path at ~15 mph while backing out of a blind aisle.
Emergency braking performance is reassuring. In a controlled soft-target test at 20 mph, FCA braked to a stop with roughly 1.1 m to spare; at 30 mph, it reduced impact speed to walking pace. It consistently detected pedestrians in daylight and at night under street lighting; cyclist detection worked, but one late warning occurred with a fast perpendicular cyclist partially occluded by a parked SUV—driver braking finished the stop. Overall, the Ioniq 5’s ADAS suite is confident and largely drama-free.
It excels on well-marked highways and in typical urban traffic; expect reduced capability in heavy rain, construction zones, and with occluded cross traffic. Keep hands on the wheel and eyes up—the system is an able assistant, not a substitute for vigilance.
