Hyundai KONA Electric

Kona cracks conundrum by delivering affordable EV range

Hyundai has delivered just what the fleet sector ordered, says Andrew Walker

The first EV I got to drive was the Nissan Leaf, back in 2012. The range was a claimed 100 miles, although in the real world this was more likely to be around 65-70 miles and you really needed to drive conservatively, especially on the motorway, to achieve even that. The Mk2 Leaf improved this, with a range of 125 miles, but about 100 miles being achievable.

While not perfect, what the Leaf proved was that the market for EVs was definitely there; customers really wanted an affordable family car, preferably one that looked like an SUV, with a decent EV range of between 200 and 300 miles.

Step forward, then, the Hyundai Kona EV, which was launched in late 2018 and was the first fully-electric sub-compact SUV in Europe. With a more realistic price point of £34,695 – before the Government grant of £3,000 – for the entry level SE, with a 39kW battery, the Kona EV was the first affordable electric car that offered a 200-mile range.

As fleet customers are more likely to want a greater range than 200 miles, Hyundai loaned us the range-topping Premium model, fitted with the larger capacity 64kW battery. This offers a claimed range of nearly 250+ miles and retails at £38,900, again, before the government grant of £3,000.

At first glance the Kona EV looks just as attractive from the outside as the petrol Kona. It shares all the same overall design cues, apart from the lack of a front grille on the electric version, where the charging plug is located. Inside, too, the EV mirrors the petrol Kona with a functional, well laid-out dashboard and on-trend connectivity and tech. There’s a reach-and-rake steering wheel and the electrically adjustable seats mean that there’s no reason you can’t get comfortable in this car.

The dashboard fixtures and fittings are pleasantly finished, in a mix of hard and soft touch plastics, in a colour combination of silver and grey. The seats and steering wheel, are finished in light grey leather.The quality is good, as you’d expect from a Korean car, with the infotainment screen, steering wheel controls and general layout familiar to anyone who’s driven other Hyundai or KIA models before.

There are some notable differences in the cabin, between the EV and petrol models. There’s no traditional gear selector, just four buttons located between the front seats, offering a choice of Drive, Reverse, Park or Neutral. There’s also three drive modes: Eco, Comfort and Sport, which can be selected using a switch just behind the electric parking brake. The Kona EV also comes with clever steering-wheel mounted paddles to increase or decrease the braking regeneration. This gives

TECH DATA

Hyundai Kona Price: from £34,695 CO2: 0g/km Running cost: 92p per mile BIK: 0%

you a choice of four regenerative levels: 0, 1, 2 or 3. As we discovered, the lower settings work best on the motorway or open roads, the higher ones best in urban areas or in slowmoving traffic.

As far as practicality in the cabin goes, the Kona EV offers a decent-sized glove box, an armrest box in the centre binnacle, a small push-shut cubby in front of the gear buttons, which hides the aux-in, USB and phone charger, as well as two smallish door pockets, big enough for one bottle of water each. In the rear the door pockets are slim, as are the storage nets on the rear of the front seats, so not a lot of useful storage is actually offered in the back.

The Premium model comes very well kitted out with a long list of goodies, including the battery-reducing heated front seats and a heated steering wheel. There’s also an Auto Hold function for the automatic hand brake. The heating controls can be adjusted to just warm or cool the driver’s side of the car which is energy saving and a nice touch. In common with all EV cars, when it’s cold outside, your EV warms up a lot faster than a petrol or diesel car. The inside of the driver’s door features buttons that control the electrically folding wing mirrors, four electric windows, window lock and the car lock/unlock button.

On the right of the dashboard are a row of switches that include Lane Departure Warning, which we always turn off, and something called VESS, which I discovered stands for Virtual Engine Sound System. When activated your EV to emits a noise to warn pedestrians of your presence.

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There’s a 332-litre boot on offer which is split three ways. The larger load space, which sits close to the boot lip, hides a lift-up floor, underneath which you’ll find a tray to store valuables. This too lifts up and underneath you’ll find the domestic 3 Pin charging cable and other essential car tools.

Out and about, the Kona EV is naturally quiet – hence the need for the VESS system – and there’s instant torque available from the get-go. It feels rapid; the 0-62mph time is actually 7.6 seconds and on exiting a junction that torque can lead to a bit of wheel spin on wet tarmac. At faster speeds, the outside road noise from the low-rolling-resistance tyres on 17” alloys does enter the cabin, but it’s never overwhelming.

In town, the Kona EV is pleasure to drive. Quiet, nippy and small enough to park up on the side of the road. I really liked the simple button gear change selecter. To conserve energy, we selected the Eco Drive mode for our week in the Kona.

Despite its weight of 1685kg, after all, it is fitted with a 204ps (150kW) electric motor and a 64kWh lithium-ion battery – the Kona EV is comfortable to be in and offers okay driving dynamics. Certainly it’s no worse than many other cars out there. There is, thanks to the battery, reasonable body roll and you’ll also notice that the energy recuperation when braking makes smooth stops tricky. Motorway cruising is best done at no more than 70mph to retain battery range, but if required the Kona EV will happily push on from this.

I stopped off at Chester Services to check out the EV charging options there. The Kona EV has a CCS Combo port for 50kW public rapid charging, allowing it to charge up to 80 per cent in 75 minutes. Chester, I’m pleased to

say, does offer rapid charging. Charging at home on my Rolec 7kw home charger with the 7 pin Type 2 connector, from a range of 21 miles to a full range of 251, took 6.5 hours. If you don’t have a home EV charger, things are not so rosy. Using the supplied cable with a three-pin plug with a standard domestic electricity supply, it would take around 30 hours to charge to 95%.

Real world cost and range are probably the two things most potential EV customers want to know and, of course, to confuse matters, it’s not an exact science. Looking at our week in the Kona EV, we drove 246 miles. With the average kW costing 12.5p from UK electricity suppliers, if you multiply the size of our Kona’s battery which was 64kW, by 12.5p, this gives you a figure of 800 – or 800p / £8.

So the cost to charge the Kona EV fitted with a 64kW battery from zero to full, on a 7kW home charger, where electricity costs tend to be cheaper than at service stations, is about £8, which I think is excellent. Using a public charger, such as the ones on offer at Chester Services, will, surprise, surprise, cost you more than 12.5p kW. EV users can sign up to discount schemes which allow the use of public EV chargers at a reduced cost, however, so this is well worth considering if you buy or lease an EV.

A cost of £8 to get a range of 246 miles in the Kona EV and actually getting 202 miles on the single charge still compares favourably with what it would cost to go the same distance in the 1.0 petrol Kona we tested last year, in which we averaged 42mpg. Petrol prices are, as we all know, historically low at the moment, and fuel is costing little more than £1 a litre for petrol. Even so, the cost of going 202 miles in the petrol Kona would be close to £22, which is £14 more. If you’re more careful than I was and drive on the motorway at a constant 70mph and utilise the regeneration on offer, I do believe that 246 miles on a full charge would be possible. Indeed, other motoring writers have got the range in the Kona EV close to 300 miles which, when you look at the cost of one, is frankly brilliant!

And we all know that once Covid-19 recedes into our rear-view mirrors, that petrol price will be back at £1.30 and the saving will be closer to £30 over that same distance.

All sounds reasonable enough, doesn’t it? But here’s the Kona Electric’s trump card: pricing. Factor in the UK grant for plug-in vehicles and the 39kW model in Premium trim will cost you £31,000. Compare this to the similarly priced Nissan Leaf and VW E-Golf , both with almost half of the Kona’s 200-mile range, and it should be clear just how good the Kona Electric is.

I hope this review leaves you, the SME fleet manager or end user, more confident in considering an EV as your next company car. The Kona EV is well ahead of the pack. It’s well priced, very cheap to run and offers a battery range of 200 miles, on the 39kW version. To make the most of your EV, you really need a home 7.5kW EV socket and if there’s an EV charger at work too, that’s a bonus.

Verdict Beats the offers from rivals manufacturers comfortably. Only the KIA e-Niro currently matches the Kona for range.

CC&V RATING: N N N N N