Hyundai Kona, a game changer? | Fully Charged

Hello and welcome to Fully Charged, my name's Jonny Smith. This is the Hyundai Kona. The reason why we're going to be reviewing this car, well starting in a train, is because we're not just going to do a straightforward drive, we're actually going to be doing a full road trip over about five and a half days. We're going to be covering a thousand miles in it so we can really get under the skin of what is a sub 30 grand 300 mile EV that's had a lot of interest. It's amazing to look down and see you've got not even full charge, like just over three quarters charged and you're showing 212 miles on the on the range graph. Amazing. So you can get into an electric Kona from £25,000 and that includes the four and a half grand government grant which they give you. So £24,995 gets you a 39 kilowatt hour Kona and the range of that is apparently 193 miles which is more than the quoted e-golf, more than the Nissan Leaf. But this, the 64 kilowatt hour Kona starts at £29,500 with the government grant. This has a range of 300 miles and part of this road trip I'm actually going to see if that's really to be believed. Now there's steering wheel paddles on the Kona and these are for your three levels of brake regeneration. It seems a bit counterintuitive to me because with a geared car or a paddle shift auto you have the right paddle which changes up a gear and the left paddle which changes down a gear. On this the left hand paddle makes the regen more aggressive and on the right it makes the regen less aggressive. You've got three stages of recuperative braking but the Kona has auto brake recuperation and that uses apparently the radar on the front, the cruise control radar. That was a blind spot warning. You can turn that off, there's a button down on my right knee to turn that audible warning off if it bores you. And the auto recuperation uses the radar in front on the front for the adaptive cruise control and even when you're not using the actual cruise control it utilizes that to decide how hard or soft to regen the braking so it's very very wise. Let's go for a touch of Chad Emo, lovely guy. While we're pausing we've got you know 40 odd minutes to kill let's just have a look around it. This is not the sole Kona you can buy, it's not so relevant for fully charged but you can buy a petrol one and you can buy a diesel one. They've only just brought the diesel one out, the electric one came out before the diesel one but that's less relevant. How you can tell this is the electric Kona, it's got the blanked in grille here with this little pattern which is quite cool. It's got active air flaps obviously to allow air in when it wants air to come in. It's got these cool little well all of the Konas have this sort of Citroen C4 cactus face which is a good model by Citroen. It's got these aero wheels like a lot of the eco cars we're seeing, like the Ioniq actually, they're sort of flatter in profile. It's got these grey arches which look like they're going to be kind of rough to the touch but they're not, they're smooth. It's got some quite nice little creases in it actually, it's quite a strong body with nice little arches and things. I think it's good proportion. Weirdly it looks bigger than the Nissan Leaf but it's actually smaller than the Leaf. The one we've got is the 30 grand premium SE so that's the top of the range. It comes with heated and cooled seats, leather faced seats, two-tone paint. It comes with the 64 kilowatt hour battery pack. It's good, it's good. 204 PS 0-62 in 7.6 seconds. It feels pretty quick and responsive but I mean it's effortless in its range. Like I said before 190 miles we've done today, good temperature admittedly but on the motorway which is not ideal for EVs, we've still got 80 miles in the tank left. That tells you it's electric which I think is pretty cheap that badge, I would probably take that badge off. The bumper is different to the petrol Kona, slightly different but what I would say is the paint finish is not very nice, it's a bit dirty but I don't particularly like the sort of orange peely paint finish which would have been applied by a robot. Those are the sort of telltale signs where you think the quality is not quite there with say the Volkswagen E-Golf but really really good car. We're on a road trip so I've got my bag in it. Now the boot is smaller than the Nissan Leaf but it's a flat entry point in the boot and it's actually quite square. The Leaf is a deeper boot so it depends what floats your boat. It's like an organiser in here which could double as a cutlery drawer perhaps. So although it's smaller than that, it's got a better range than that, it's got better acceleration than that, the price is very close and obviously you can buy a lower ranking one to this 64 kilowatt hour, you can buy a 39 kilowatt hour which does 195 miles range apparently but this thing is, it's weird because it's so unassuming it just sort of goes about its EV business, doesn't boast, doesn't try and look too different. In fact I quite like the fact it's it's just an honest kind of soft roader, it's not being too try hard and at the same time it's not that heavy considering the range this can do. 1685 kilos, that's lighter than lots of piston cars. If I was at home with my seven kilowatt wall charger this would take 9 hours 35 minutes for the Kona. As it stands here I can do 85% charge in 75 minutes which is using this 50 kilowatt rapid charger so that's pretty cool. Now I like having the charger at the front in the nose just like the Leaf sort of started. I think it's great because you don't have to think about what side the car is on but, and this is a very wise thing that a few fully charged viewers have said, these are vulnerable. What's the first thing to get damaged when you have a tap in a car? It's usually a front or a back bumper. If you smack the front bumper even at low speed does that mean that this deforms and you can't charge it anymore even though the car's largely unbroken? That would concern me as well. I'm gonna use this little brake to have a little goosey under the bonnet of the Kona because I haven't seen what it looks like and I'm always intrigued to see how these things are packaged. These are always just on suckers. I'll pull that off like that. That's what it really looks like. 356 volts, 150 kilowatt electric motor, capable of delivering 204 PS, 291 pounds feet of torque, a 39 kilowatt hour Kona which is cheaper by about £5,000 is still pretty good in terms of range and still pretty good in performance. It's just a really good car. Would you like this Robert? I mean what amazed me when I saw it from over there, I wasn't concentrating, I was sending texts for the next bit of the trip trying to organise it but it looked empty because normally you open the bonnet, even electric cars, it's jammed full. Well look there's quite a lot of space down there. It's a really compact drive train isn't it? Really compact system but then I didn't know you pulled this off. Are you sure that's meant to come off? Yeah look they're just on like rubber suspended suckers, they sit on a plinth. I love the confidence you have just to rip a huge piece of... Well I know it's just cladding, this is just superhero. It's a superhero, it's a massive codpiece. It's a huge codpiece, exactly, it's just rubbish. This is the question I want to know is how do they make this car so incredibly fuel efficient when in, you know, in the grander scheme of things, I mean if that was a delivery van that was three and a half tons, yeah of course, but effectively it's the same size car, that's got four wheel drive. Density of the chemistry in the cells. It's insane what you're getting at. I know. There we go, what part number is that three? I'll give you a bit of... So we've done like 700 miles now in the Kona and it's been 700 quite enjoyable miles actually I have to say, yeah quite effortless. I must say I do, it feels to me, it feels very unelectric in terms of the fact that I've actually forgotten at various points in time that I'm driving an EV in a good way. That's fantastic. Like I'm not really, the battery seems to be so good or maybe it's the regen or whatever it is, it just doesn't want to lose power. You know some electric cars seem to lose quicker than you feel they should. This just seems to hold on to its range so well. It's just amazing. I mean I'd say I've been getting a good 270 miles-ish for range, but I haven't done many 100% charges like now we're going to do an 80% charge. I mean bearing in mind this is the one, this is the all bells and whistles edition and it's 31 grand. It's 31. I think this is about as expensive as you can make a Kona. I mean yeah you can buy piston Kona's from 16 and a bit grand but that's 11. They start as 24 and a half thousand pounds. This? The 39 kilowatt hour. This is a game-changing electric car, it really really is. This is extraordinary. Well I say my first impression Johnny, it's very comfy, it's a very comfy car. You know this is not rewriting the rule books. No. A chap who was at the charging point with us this morning who has a BMW i3, he craned his necking because he'd heard about the range and he said in in Holland they've been trying to get hold of them for ages and the waiting list is ridiculous. Yeah yeah. And the first thing he said was oh yeah yeah. I don't think much of that and I said well it's funny you say that. I think it's perfectly acceptable for the price, however you're a bit sport with the i3 because the i3 is so concept-y. Yeah yeah. And all the the cool materials. They haven't gone to town on materials. No. They haven't broken any convention. It looks pretty piston car like. It could be a wide range of piston cars couldn't it? A similar interior. Yes. But there's a lot of usefulness. You've got your two cup holders. That's good. Which everyone loves. This little cubby in here. With all your charging. I've got my charging gubbins in it and then there's a second layer. There's a sub area. You've got you've got two charging little thingies there. Tons of storage actually. But because this is the premium SE model you've got eight inch touchscreen. Krell. This Krell premium audio eight speaker system which is fine. Yeah. Bum cool. Three stage bum cool. So easy to find. It's just there. Yeah. Three stage ass warmers. Right. And heated steering wheel. Right. So all the stuff you get on the Jag I-Pace. Yeah yeah. But that's a. There's no way of saying it other than it's over double the price. It's a different beast. Yeah. I quite like also the fact they've combined a bit of touchscreen but also real world. Oh right. So you can do that. Right. So when I'm driving and I want you know quick fire stuff I've got I've got rotary knobs for the climate. This is your climate area. Right. And this is your infotainment area. So you've got three vehicle settings. You've got eco. And is that what you've had it mostly on? I've had it mostly on eco because I went I flitted from comfort mode to eco mode and I actually thought eco was better. It has the regen set a little higher. It does have that the same as on the Ioniq. Yeah so there's loads of Ioniq stuff. Yeah. You've got your three stage recuperation on these paddles here. I have to say that the rest of it is quite easy to decipher. Right. Listening to joy radio. Joy radio. Lovely foreign radio station. I found it to sync with my phone really easily. Right. I haven't quite worked out Apple CarPlay yet. I'll be honest I haven't tried very hard. Right. But. I'm slightly nervous because it's obviously what people should can and should do. Yeah. It makes so much sense that you have a really simple screen in the car and you just put your own phone in and it's got everything all your stuff is on there. Well. That makes so much sense. I think it's the most future-proof way. Yeah. Of buying a car. Because your phone's going to update and then you'll get you know. And you just have a port you plug it in or you know this has um this has contactless charging. Why? Oh really? On the right hand side under all that. Well yeah. This this this range topping model. Right. It's got you know loads of other stuff. Yeah. Privacy glass and lane lane assist. And how is that? How's the lane assist? Is that quite good? It's pretty good. You've got you've got both. You've got two things. You've got lane keep and then you've got uh lane assist I guess. So one's it keeps it between the lanes. One of them it'll actually start turning the wheel for you. I think it's. Is that right? I don't like the. Right. You yeah you probably. Because I'm. What about what about cruise control keeping you the same distance from the car in front? Brilliant. Right. And it also. That's the one I really like. That just makes motorway driving a lot easier. Yeah yeah. And the Kona has auto recuperation mode. So when you when you do that it uses the radar to decide how aggressive or not the braking should be. Based upon all the street furniture. Right. The road and the car in front. Wow. Or you can just manually set it however you like. And to be correct. So it it's actually a pretty good driver's car. And it and the way it's it's comfortable and it doesn't seem to lollop around. Right. So I have to say it it's a huge amount of thought that's gone into it. And I would like to drive the lower ranking car. Yeah. The 39 kilowatt hour. Yeah. To see what that gets. Yeah. It's probably going to be impressive because well I mean that the stats that really knocked me out is your how many miles you're doing on a kilowatt hour. It's like two days. It's been 5.1 miles per kilowatt hour. Yeah. That is for a car this size that is remarkable. Yeah. Because those kind of stats were only I even now I'm only just going ah. Yeah. What you know getting what that means. Yeah. Because you know because and then seeing what other cars do and what you know what the Leaf does what the i3 does what the e-golf does. That is the thing right at the top of you know cars that are much smaller. Smaller batteries so lighter. Yeah. Extraordinary. Because on the one hand you could look at this and go I the dash is okay but it's not as cool as a BMW i3. Yeah. The BMW i3 is carbon with the suicide doors. So as a design freak. Yeah. You'd want to go for that. However everything is really good and it's really well appointed. Yeah. And the range is amazing. I mean I reckon I have been doing about 270 miles. There's nothing rubbish. Well the thing is. There's nothing rubbish. It's effectively the same price as a Leaf. If not cheaper than some versions of the Leaf. Yeah. And it goes literally twice as far. Well this is the thing. I mean even though. Literally not like almost twice. It was a 39 kilowatt hour supposed to go 193 miles. Right. And that's a 24 and a half thousand quid car. Right. Start. So I mean that's that's the low one. Yeah. Oh it's got a heads-up display. That's what this. Yeah. Now I love heads-up. I think the Tesla Model 3 should have it. Yeah. It should be an option. Yeah. I think they missed a trick. But what's weird about this. I got the seat. This is because it's a higher ranking model. Again you've got electric lumbar support and electric seats. I've got the seat set on its lowest setting and I am still a bit too tall for this. Really. Wow. I have to dip down to look at it. So it's not brilliant but no I'm really really quite impressed with it. I've done over a thousand miles in this car now and I have to say I'm completely blown away by its competence. It's really comfortable. It's well judged. The range is splendid. It's got fantastic technology in it. The price is really competitive. The biggest problem Hyundai has is making them fast enough for people. I have to say and I hate to say it. Yeah it could be a game changer. You know the word Kona in Hawaiian means a very strong wind leading to a storm. The word Kona in Norwegian means wife. I won't tell you what the word Kona in Portuguese means. You can decide that. But the word Kona to me means a bloody brilliant electric car.