Farewell Volvo, Hello Ioniq 5

I am driving back from lunch, enjoying every kilometer in my trusty Volvo. It makes a new squeaky noise, but the mechanic said it should be fine. The repairs are piling up, though, and I can feel that our time together is coming to an end. What I do not know yet is that this drive back to the office is the last real run the Volvo and I will share.

The End#

In Austria there are mandatory inspections (§57a) for every car. Things like the brakes and the tires are checked. In past years this was always an anxious time, since the car got so old that I did not always have the highest hopes of passing the inspection. This year was no exception, but this time my gut feeling was different. I got used to the car making various sounds but there were new ones that were more persistent. I brought it to a workshop, told them to first evaluate if it is worth it and then do the inspection. Well there were several parts causing problems. Passing the inspection would have cost 2,000 €, but it was certain that the inspection next year would again be expensive. Also the winter tires were at the end of their life, so that was another cost factor. I decided that our days together were done. It was surprisingly sad since the car had been a trusty companion for 13 years. But at the same time: I want a reliable and safe car for my family and me.

The good part was that I got the news about four months before the car would become illegal for the road. That is plenty of time to search for a car. So far I had only owned two cars, and both had been found and recommended to me by others.

I had begun the search and already made appointments for a test drive when it happened: After lunch with a friend I wanted to get back to the office and broke down in the middle of the road. Roadside assistance took one hour to realize they had the wrong location in their system. And then another hour since there was a higher priority incident. In the end, both the car and I were brought home and the new car search became way more urgent.

The Search#

I quickly realized that pre-owned cars are surprisingly expensive nowadays. Having owned an old car, I also had some hard rules for the next one: Less than 100,000 km on the clock and less than eight years old. Also it would have to fit my family including the stroller while doing so without much hassle. Of course you can disassemble the stroller quite a bit, but I do not want to do that every time.

The Problems#

The problem with used cars is figuring out the exact model and feature set. Apart from the model name, car manufacturers often have specific version names. This part is still somewhat easy to figure out online as this is often mentioned. The problem comes with facelifts. Some car models have a light facelift and then a big facelift. Knowing which car is offered often does not reveal that. You have to rely on the research and the model year to get the right version. This also brings up the next problem: How do you compare the same car model twice when the features differ a bit? Comparing the distance the cars have covered and their age is easy. But how much is a tow hitch worth? Or: Can this specific model in this specific edition in this specific facelift of this specific construction year be fitted with a tow hitch? Those are the tough questions to answer.

The Fun#

I enjoyed the research itself: writing down information, watching tons of YouTube videos and learning a lot along the way. Seeing how far features had moved on from a 24-year-old car was fascinating, and for once I got to choose exactly which ones my next car had to have. Apart from the age and mileage, I had a few features in mind. A proper phone integration, for one: on the Volvo it had taken me ages to retrofit something properly, and even then it was far from perfect. Adaptive cruise control was another. And that was the quiet pleasure of the whole search - even buying used, I could write down exactly what the car had to have and then go looking for it.

The Cars#

Volvo#

The first thought was an obvious one: Another Volvo. My first Volvo had lasted for 24 years - how could this one not be obvious? Well in my family many drive Volvos and especially the newer versions. But they have had a fair share of troubles - often software related. Another major issue is the Volvo prices, especially for the higher-tier ones (XC60, V90, V90XC, XC90). So to find one reasonably priced, I would have to drop one of the hard requirements: Age and/or mileage.

Skoda Superb#

Another car I thought was fantastic is the Skoda Superb. From the reports I read about it online, it pretty much is like the V70: Tons of space, comfortable to drive and fairly fuel efficient. Looking at adults sitting in the back row was shocking: So much leg room. It also has some cool gimmicks, like an umbrella stored in the driver's door. I found out that the third generation of this model received a facelift in 07/2019. That was the model I was looking for. Apparently many people were after this kind of car. I was almost shocked by the prices for the given mileage. This is also when I realized that the used market in Germany was much cheaper than in Austria (~20%). But importing the car to Austria would again result in extra cost (temporary insurance, import fees, ...).

Skoda Octavia#

In parallel to the Superb, I also checked the best-selling car in Austria in 2025: The Skoda Octavia. It is the slightly smaller version of the Superb. Here there was a facelift in 2021. But I quickly realized that it wasn't much cheaper than the Superb. Since I considered the Superb to be more "premium", I then dismissed the Octavia.

Hyundai Ioniq 5#

A car I had always found awesome-looking is the Hyundai Ioniq 5.

A friend of mine has had an electric car for several years and is super satisfied with it. Usually when you tell someone you are considering buying an electric car, you will hear all the horror stories about it. But often those people do not even have experience with these cars. So I researched it thoroughly. At the start I did not even know what counts as normal consumption for an electric motor; for a diesel I knew 5 l/100 km was a good value. One special horror story is the "broken battery". But it became quickly obvious that you can generate a battery certificate stating the state of health of the car down to each cell. Apart from that, electric cars are less maintenance-heavy than combustion engines. That left the classic objection - low range paired with long charging times - as the one question that would not go away. I will come back to it where it belongs: the decision.

With the horror stories out of the way, I decided to look into the car properly. This is where I ran into a problem: Invest 1,000 € more and you get this much more. And another 1,000 € more and you get that feature. I also found out that, apart from the various editions (Basic, Uniq, ...), it also had the facelift issue mentioned before: There was a smaller facelift for the 2023 models and another one even later. So I checked prices for the 2023 version, since the long range version had 77.4 kWh battery capacity instead of 72.6 kWh. This is when I found a great deal in Germany. Here the import was easier, since cars newer than three years fell into a category where no inspection (§57a) was needed first. Also, since it was electric and used there were no real fees. The only necessary part was adding it to a general database so the insurance companies in Austria could insure it. That was around 186 €. The same car in the same version but pre-facelift would have cost 30% more in Austria. I drove to Germany with my father to have a look at it and give it a test drive. The appointment was coincidentally the day after my Volvo broke down. It is always advisable to bring along another person to check out a car. My grandfather was a mechanic, so my father learned a lot from him. And another person doesn't have this "Oh this might be my new car" gut feeling. So great questions came from my father: Can this car be retrofitted with a tow hitch? I hadn't considered this since my Volvo had one and I hardly ever used it. A car this new also means I would think twice before loading house-construction materials into it, to avoid scuffing the interior. A trailer would solve that problem.

The first test drive was almost anticlimactic. I had done so much research on the car due to the price that there weren't many things to discover. The only thing I discovered was the lack of some features. But this is when I realized that most YouTubers will review the highest tier of the car. The car had no power outlet, no seat cooling and no electrically adjustable seats. Nothing bad, but I did like the idea of those features.

The Decision#

With the Volvo now dead, finding a replacement suddenly gained real urgency. It had come down to two real contenders - the Superb and the Ioniq - and before I trusted my gut, I wanted to let my inner engineer loose and prove on paper that the car I was leaning towards would not be a reckless choice.

The Two Contenders#

To judge them fairly I also lined up my outgoing Volvo V70 D5 as a benchmark - the diesel estate that had served me for over a decade and crossed 300,000 km. On paper the three could hardly be more different, which is exactly what made the choice interesting.

The Ioniq 5 was the base trim, but in its Long Range form. That means the bigger 77.4 kWh battery, rated at 481 km WLTP. The car uses a single rear motor with 228 hp and 350 Nm, and an 800V architecture. It can even power external devices through Vehicle-to-Load. The boot holds 527 liters, plus a 58 liter frunk up front.

The Superb was the 1.5 TSI ACT Combi in Ambition trim: a 150 hp petrol engine, a manual gearbox and front-wheel drive. Its trump card is space. The boot starts at 660 liters and opens up to 1,950 with the rear seats folded, in a car that still weighs about 365 kg less than the battery-laden Ioniq.

Measurement note: There is no single standard boot volume measurement covering all three: the Ioniq and Superb use the modern VDA method, while the 2002 Volvo predates it and is quoted in DIN (to the window line), so the seats-up row is only roughly comparable. The truly like-for-like row is the seats-folded maximum, all measured to the roof - and there the long Volvo (1,641 l) actually overtakes the Ioniq (1,587 l), with the Superb well ahead of both.

Can it go the distance?#

The harshest row in that table is the range. On a long run the Ioniq manages around 480 km, where the Superb does about 1,000 km and the old Volvo even 1,150 km on a tank. Pair that with the fear of long charging times and you have the classic objection I had parked earlier - and on paper it looks damning. But most of it rests on the charging time, and this is where the 800V system quietly wins the argument. Charging from 10 to 80 percent takes around 18 minutes at a fast charger. A petrol stop is rarely the two-minute affair people picture either: I never refueled the diesel on the motorway, where fuel is the most expensive, so topping up meant leaving for a cheaper station off the motorway - real money saved, but time and a detour spent. Add that up and the gap to an 18-minute charge shrinks.

There is also the driver to think about. After a couple of hours on the motorway the Ioniq wants a charge, and a break does me good anyway. Even truck drivers are made to stop - by law they have to rest after four and a half hours behind the wheel. It is also just enough time for a coffee, which regular readers know I take fairly seriously. Far from lost time.

None of this is to pretend that topping up in three minutes and driving straight on would not be more convenient - it would. But the charging breaks are nowhere near the ordeal they are made out to be. And there is one thing the diesel never offered: because I charge at home, I set off every morning with a full battery. With the Volvo, a full tank always meant a detour to the petrol station first.

What it costs to run#

One detail genuinely surprised me. In Austria the motor-related insurance tax for an electric car is calculated from its continuous (30-minute) power, not the headline peak figure. The Ioniq's registration papers list only 56 kW / 76 hp of continuous power, even though it peaks at 168 kW / 228 hp. So the car that is far more powerful on paper gets taxed almost like a small one, while the 150 hp Superb is taxed on its full output plus a CO2 component. The more I dug into the running costs, the more the gap between these two narrowed.

To put numbers on it, I worked out the yearly running cost over 10,000 km, counting only the two things that differ cleanly: the Austrian motor tax and the energy. Insurance premiums depend on personal factors, so I left them out. The motor tax is hard to pin to the cent, but a fair estimate is around 320 €/year for the Ioniq (thanks to the 76 hp rule above) and around 700 €/year for the Superb. Over 10,000 km the Ioniq draws roughly 1,550 kWh, the Superb roughly 650 liters.

Realistically I always charge at home at about 0.15 €/kWh, so the Ioniq costs me around 550 €/year in tax and energy. The Superb would have run to about 1,675 €/year at 1.50 €/l and right around 2,000 €/year at 2.00 €/l. So the electric car saves me somewhere between 1,100 and 1,450 € a year on tax and energy alone.

Does it pay off over time?#

That yearly saving is real money, so the obvious question is whether it justifies paying more for the Ioniq in the first place. It cost me roughly 7,000 € more than the Superb. Plotting the cumulative cost of both over time shows where the lines cross:

So on energy and tax alone the Ioniq overtakes the Superb after roughly five to six years, and every year beyond that is pure saving.

Then there is maintenance, which I had underestimated. An electric car has no oil changes, no spark plugs, no timing belt and no clutch, and because it brakes mostly by recuperation the pads and discs last far longer. Consumer Reports puts EV maintenance at about half that of a comparable petrol car, roughly 4,600 USD saved over a car's life. Counted conservatively at a few hundred euros a year, that pulls the break-even point forward to somewhere around four to five years.

Is that on its own a reason to spend 7,000 € more? Honestly, only just. Over a short ownership it would never pay back, and the sum ignores depreciation and the small risk of an expensive EV repair. But I usually keep my cars for many years - I had the Volvo from the end of 2013 until early 2026 - and on a ten-year horizon the Ioniq saves something like 11,000 to 14,500 € in tax and energy, well past the 7,000 € premium, with several thousand euros left over before maintenance even enters the picture. So the money was never why I bought it, but it is a solid argument that the extra spend was not just my heart talking.

None of this is solid ground, though. The calculation is useful for getting a feel for the numbers, but it is fragile. Electricity tariffs move around, and fuel prices change constantly - right as I was buying the Ioniq, oil prices jumped sharply when the conflict involving Iran escalated. A single year of cheap petrol or expensive electricity can tilt the whole picture. So I treated the figures as a sanity check, not a promise.

All of that assumed my own fairly modest 10,000 km a year. The purchase premium and the motor tax do not care how much you drive, but the energy and fuel costs scale directly with distance - so a higher-mileage driver reaches the crossover much sooner:

Why I chose the Ioniq 5#

On paper the Superb was the easier, safer choice. It was already registered in Austria, so there was no import to organize. It ran on technology I knew inside out, and it was in many ways a direct descendant of my Volvo: a big, comfortable estate that quietly does everything. Picking it would have been the low-risk, low-effort decision.

One thing nagged at me, though: three previous owners on a car only five years old. That is a lot of hands for such a young vehicle, and it is exactly the kind of detail that makes you wonder what each of them knew that I didn't. The more owners a car has had, the harder it gets to trace when any damage happened, or whether a fault was quietly passed down the line. On its own not a dealbreaker, but a yellow flag - especially next to the Ioniq's single, careful owner.

The Ioniq, on the other hand, was simply the car I wanted. It is the one I had admired since it first appeared, and the research had already taken the air out of the horror stories. The long warranties did the rest - the battery covered into 2031 and the car itself into 2028 - which made stepping into unfamiliar technology feel a lot less risky. On top of that came everything the numbers above already showed: charging breaks I can live with, lower running costs and less maintenance.

It also quietly ticked the list I had set out with. It sat comfortably inside my age and mileage limits, took the stroller without a fight, and came with the two features I had wished for: proper phone integration, which the Volvo only ever managed clumsily, and adaptive cruise control, which the old car never had at all. The things it lacked - a power outlet, seat cooling, electric seats - were all comforts I had never had in the first place.

So the Superb was the sensible echo of the car I was saying goodbye to, and the Ioniq was a deliberate step into something new. The running-cost math gave me permission to do it - the rest was simply wanting the car.

Final Thoughts#

Swapping a 24-year-old Volvo for a brand-new kind of car was a bigger leap than the spreadsheets made it look. The numbers helped me find my footing, but in the end I bought the Ioniq because I wanted it, and let the running costs reassure me that it was not a reckless choice. A few months in, it has been exactly that: quiet, effortless, and cheap to run straight from the wall at home. The Volvo was an old friend I trusted without thinking; the Ioniq still has to earn that. So far, it is well on its way.