Hyundai Kona Electric

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jlv said:
OrientExpress said:
I just went through all the photos of BEVs that I have tested over the last three years and other than the current '18-'19 LEAF not a single one had a numerical percentage display of battery charge.
Click to expand...
you didn't test a Tesla? It can display SOC% (but only by replacing the remaining range with the SOC%).
Click to expand...
A setting changes range remaining to SoC
 
jlv said:
OrientExpress said:
I just went through all the photos of BEVs that I have tested over the last three years and other than the current '18-'19 LEAF not a single one had a numerical percentage display of battery charge.
Click to expand...
you didn't test a Tesla? It can display SOC% (but only by replacing the remaining range with the SOC%).
Click to expand...
I forgot to look carefully when I test drove the Fiat 500e in the past but it looks it that car has it: https://www.allpar.com/cars/adopted/fiat/500e.html.

Bolt unfortunately for some stupid reason doesn't but the % SoC can be viewed via the My Chevrolet app, which is slow to update unless connected via KeyPass (near/in the car). Someone (here, I think) pointed out the KeyPass fact to me and also that the value can be displayed on the large LCD when connected via CarPlay.

From the gallery at https://www.smartusa.com/models/eq-pure-coupe, the gen 2 Smart ForTwo ED has it, as well. From https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1089774_2014-smart-fortwo-electric-drive-what-its-like-on-the-road, looks like the previous gen had it, as well.
 
Any word on the supply and markup situation? It's funny that at https://www.facebook.com/groups/nissan.leaf.owners.group/permalink/3038031162934371/ (a closed group), many people keep bringing it up, assuming the OP even lives in a state where it's available.
 
cwerdna said:
Any word on the supply and markup situation? It's funny that at https://www.facebook.com/groups/nissan.leaf.owners.group/permalink/3038031162934371/ (a closed group), many people keep bringing it up, assuming the OP even lives in a state where it's available.
Click to expand...

Anecdotal, but there are none at dealers in Minnesota. I did get a chance to sit in one when the generous owner brought it to one of the EV events I attended.
They had bought it in Maryland, and drove it back to Minnesota :)
Nice looking vehicle and the UI seems better than most. If the Model 3 wasn't available, I might have bought one :cool:
 
One Bolt former lessee and now an owner of a new Bolt posted in several Bolt FB groups that he encountered a dealer marking up Kona Electric by $4K! So, he passed due to the high price.

I wonder if this is still widespread.
 
I just returned from the Phoenix car show. No Kia or Hyundai EVs are available in Arizona and no timeline for when they may start selling them here. I looked at a gasoline engine Kona--it is a nice, small car and seemed about the same siz as the Bolt I sat in. Luggage space in both Kona and Bolt is much smaller than Leaf.
 
The US availability of EVs from Hyundai, VW, etc. might soon get even worse because carmakers are likely to further prioritize deliveries to the EU, due to new regulations (they need to lower fleet CO2/km average or pay huge fines) that take effect in January.
 
DougWantsALeaf said:
It does seem that cars carry a premium price in Europe/UK as well as other parts of the world compared to the US. I would go after high margin regions first as well.
Click to expand...

FYI: in the EU prices are listed with (~20%) VAT.
 
webeleafowners said:
DaveinOlyWA said:
Hyundai has all but said no real deliveries in 2020. VW, nothing till "maybe late 2021" Both are hitting EU "soon" though.
Click to expand...

You mean just for North America or anywhere.
Click to expand...

Just us. As mentioned EU will be supplied more than a year before us. I am guessing we will still get token deliveries to the states that require it but nothing more
 
IEVS:
Comparison Between Kona Electric And 1.6T Shows Another EV Burden
Click to expand...
https://insideevs.com/features/395345/kona-electric-16t-burden-evs/


Reporting a Motor Trend "fuel" cost comparo for a road trip (LA to Paso Robles, 220 miles) using QCs. ICE, $63.03 for gas. BEV, $140.97 for electricity. If charged solely at home, $25.87, but 9.6 hours to charge. BEV 258 mile EPA range, ICE 396 miles. Note that they were using EA and EVgo chargers, both using a per minute rate, and they charged to 100% twice.

Direct link to MT article:
Gas vs. Electric: Which Is the Better Hyundai Kona?
Here's how the Kona Electric compares to the Kona 1.6T
Click to expand...
https://www.motortrend.com/cars/hyu...ndai-kona-electric-vs-2020-hyundai-kona-1-6t/
 
GRA said:
IEVS:
Comparison Between Kona Electric And 1.6T Shows Another EV Burden
Click to expand...
https://insideevs.com/features/395345/kona-electric-16t-burden-evs/


Reporting a Motor Trend "fuel" cost comparo for a road trip (LA to Paso Robles, 220 miles) using QCs. ICE, $63.03 for gas. BEV, $140.97 for electricity. If charged solely at home, $25.87, but 9.6 hours to charge. BEV 258 mile EPA range, ICE 396 miles. Note that they were using EA and EVgo chargers, both using a per minute rate, and they charged to 100% twice.

Direct link to MT article:
Gas vs. Electric: Which Is the Better Hyundai Kona?
Here's how the Kona Electric compares to the Kona 1.6T
Click to expand...
https://www.motortrend.com/cars/hyu...ndai-kona-electric-vs-2020-hyundai-kona-1-6t/
Click to expand...

Charging to 100% is a waste of time and money. The only exception would be if it was a meal stop. You would spend much less of both by doing a few 30 minute charges. On a 100 kw station, I only charge to 45 KW and unplug, on 50 KW, I charge to 35 KW. Beyond that, the cost escalates considerably.
 
As Dave pointed out, they charged the car too full. The Kona is also at a disadvantage on the EA pricing scheme. It advertises something like 80kW max, pushing it above the 1-75kW tier and into the much more expensive 1-125kW tier, which is nearly 3x the cost! Even though the car rarely pulls more than 75kW. And then when they charge to 100%, they are pulling 10kW and paying for 125kW!

So yeah, a lot could have been done to improve the Kona EV experience.

That said, their goal was to just go without planning, just like they did in the gas Kona. Unfortunately, it's too early in the game for that. A little planning goes a long way!
 
DaveinOlyWA said:
GRA said:
IEVS:
Comparison Between Kona Electric And 1.6T Shows Another EV Burden
Click to expand...
https://insideevs.com/features/395345/kona-electric-16t-burden-evs/


Reporting a Motor Trend "fuel" cost comparo for a road trip (LA to Paso Robles, 220 miles) using QCs. ICE, $63.03 for gas. BEV, $140.97 for electricity. If charged solely at home, $25.87, but 9.6 hours to charge. BEV 258 mile EPA range, ICE 396 miles. Note that they were using EA and EVgo chargers, both using a per minute rate, and they charged to 100% twice.

Direct link to MT article:
Gas vs. Electric: Which Is the Better Hyundai Kona?
Here's how the Kona Electric compares to the Kona 1.6T
Click to expand...
https://www.motortrend.com/cars/hyu...ndai-kona-electric-vs-2020-hyundai-kona-1-6t/
Click to expand...

Charging to 100% is a waste of time and money. The only exception would be if it was a meal stop. You would spend much less of both by doing a few 30 minute charges. On a 100 kw station, I only charge to 45 KW and unplug, on 50 KW, I charge to 35 KW. Beyond that, the cost escalates considerably.
Click to expand...

Of course and they noted that:
The most common argument I hear about electric vehicles—Tesla or otherwise—is that you plain can't travel long distances because the charging infrastructure doesn't exist or because it takes too long to charge.

That may have been the case as recently as five years ago, but things have changed. Companies like ChargePoint, EVgo, and Electrify America have Level 3 fast charger stations sprouting nationwide, with the latter already offering more than 1,700 fast chargers (and counting) spanning coast to coast and border to border. You can thank Volkswagen's dieselgate scandal for that.

So we devised a plan: We'd drive both cars north to the growing vineyard town of Paso Robles, with Reynolds driving the gas Kona and me the electric one on the northbound leg, swapping cars for the return south.

Normally a 220-mile trip that would take between 4 and 5-and-a-half hours, depending on traffic, the drive is about the same distance as a trip from New York to Washington, D.C. or Chicago to Detroit. In other words, it's a realistic distance that the average American family may expect to travel to visit family or friends in a distant city a couple times per year. Too near for an airplane but too far for an EV?

To level the playing field, we decided to treat the two cars as equally as possible. We'd both leave our L.A. headquarters at the same time, fully charged and gassed up, take the same route on both legs, and drive in the same manner north and south. To make matters more difficult for the EV, we weren't going to bother with any fancy route-planning apps—we knew there were both ChargePoint and Electrify America fast chargers along I-5 near Paso Robles, so if we needed a charge, that's where we'd go. Once in Paso Robles, we'd fully fuel both vehicles, turn south, and start out again.

Before the trip I was a bit apprehensive that the Kona Electric would only make the journey with great difficulty. Truth be told, though, the experience couldn't have felt more normal. . . .

After a sole half-hour stop near Bakersfield, with me snacking at an Electrify America station and Reynolds at a Taco Bell, both the Kona Electric and 1.6T arrived no worse for the wear 4 hours and 25 minutes after we'd set off. Ducking an illegally parked non-electric Mazda CX-5 and Mercedes-Benz C-Class (no respect!), we plugged into Paso Robles' sole remaining free Electrify America fast charger space, charged the Kona Electric's battery to full—in retrospect an expensive decision—and went off to brim the gas Kona's tank and grab lunch.

The return trip, this time with me in the gas Kona and Reynolds in the electric, went much the same as the first—uneventful. Although I missed the electric car's smoothness and quietness, I didn't hate getting back to L.A. about 90 minutes before Reynolds, whose 5.5-hour journey included a stop at an Electrify America station to charge and grab a late lunch—and heavier late-day traffic. . . .

Our over-reliance on Electrify America stations, which charge a $1 session fee plus a per-minute fee based on the charge rate your vehicle is capable of accepting (which, in our case, works out to $0.69 per minute for up to 125 kW) to fully charge the Kona's battery is largely to blame for the massive cost—especially because EV charging rates slow significantly once a battery exceeds 80 percent capacity.

Our two times charging to 100 percent were blow-out expensive, Reynolds said, calling the decision "stupid" in retrospect. Per-minute charging by Electrify America and EVgo puts a preposterous penalty on charging to 90 or 100 percent, particularly Electrify America, which has higher dollar-per-minute rates.

"Our loosey-goosy planning exposed how eye-wateringly expensive minimal planning can be if you choose to travel across Electrify America's network," Reynolds said. "The Kona Electric cost us over double what the gas version did to do basically the same trip—even while using far less energy. This is completely upside down from the usual situation where the EV is about half the cost per mile of a gas car, based on far cheaper home charging. If we fumbled like this all the way across the country, we'd be broke by Brooklyn."

It would break with the spirit of our story, but a little planning would've gone a long way. Although there's no app available for other EVs as easy to use as Tesla's Trip Planner (because it's built into Tesla's infotainment system), free websites like ABetterRoutePlanner.com show that we could've easily saved $40 or so if we'd fast charged the Kona's battery only enough to get us to our destination and then opted for slower Level 2 charging overnight at our hotel. Hindsight and whatnot.

The Verdict?

As with all things in life, both gas and electric powertrains have their compromises. The former offers a less refined experience, is generally more expensive to run day to day around town, and pollutes more. But there are refueling stations everywhere.

The latter is generally more expensive up front, will cost more to travel with, requires some planning before embarking on a long journey, and will take longer to refuel on the way (though we predict that ever speedier fast charge times will soon enough minimize the recharge/refuel time difference).

We set out with our two Konas to answer two questions: All things being equal, is gas or electric better to drive? And can the average American household get by with an EV as its only car?

When it comes to driving these two Konas, we prefer the electric one. "Just about every minute you drive the EV is better than that minute in the gas car, except for braking to a stop," Reynolds said. The Kona Electric is silky smooth, powerful, and refined. The Kona 1.6T is good, but the Kona Electric is better.

The latter question has a more complicated answer, but we think the answer is yes, with some obvious caveats. . . .
Click to expand...

The MT writers were even fairly positive on the current state of the charging infrastructure, although it obviously has a long way to go to equal that serving ICEs.

As GetOffYourGas noted, part but by no means all of the excessive charging cost is that Hyundai and Kia BEVs get especially screwed by EA's pricing. I suspect if they'd been using EVgo they might have saved $20-$25 or so.
 
Yeah, I've wondered about that. the car must report a max. rate of 75kW or less, even though it can take more. I emailed Kia to tell them to reduce the max. rate to 75kW from 77-78, or else let owners dial a rate.
 

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