It took nearly half an hour on an ice lake to realize we could see behind ourselves in the 2024 Hyundai Ioniq 5 N prototype. That may not seem extraordinary, but considering every Ioniq 5 thus far lacked a rear windshield wiper—a constant point of frustration for any reviewer who lives where there’s weather—it’s a bigger deal than you might think.
Hyundai declined to confirm anything on the record, but sources close to Hyundai have told us that the Ioniq 5 lineup will finally receive a rear windshield wiper. It’s unclear if it will be standard or an option, but it’ll be available, and that’s what matters.
For those of you living under perpetual sun, it may be hard to figure out why this is a big deal. And for many cars with rear ends of various slopes, a missing wiper is hardly a major transgression. But there’s something about the Ioniq 5’s hatch that makes the rear glass accumulate snow, rain, dust, and dirt like nobody’s business. After a few trips, it’s generally dirty enough to require a stop at a gas station (quelle horreur!) to squeegee that glass and restore rear visibility. A wiper will likely cause a bit of additional drag, which can eat into the Ioniq 5’s overall range, but the benefits outweigh the drawbacks here.
It’s not yet clear if the Ioniq 5 will receive the rear wiper at the same time as the Ioniq 5 N, and there is no confirmation whether this will come as part of a greater product refresh for the 2024 model year. That’s what our sources said, but Hyundai declined to confirm our sources’ claims. Considering the 5 N will head to the Goodwood Festival of Speed—albeit in the same prototype form seen here—perhaps we’ll get more information about the rear wiper then.
Senior Editor
Cars are Andrew Krok’s jam, along with boysenberry. After graduating with a degree in English from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2009, Andrew cut his teeth writing freelance magazine features, and now he has a decade of full-time review experience under his belt. A Chicagoan by birth, he has been a Detroit resident since 2015. Maybe one day he’ll do something about that half-finished engineering degree.
