Living with a Kona EV – City slicker

Hyundai New Zealand has thrown us the keys to a Hyundai Kona EV for three months to really see how living with the popular little EV is. We have big plans for the car – more on that to come – but first our city-based petrol-car driving staffer Robert Barry tested it out in a city environment.

Our long-term Kona EV is as happy tootling around central Auckland suburbia as it is doing the longer commute to the managing editor’s home in the Kaipara region.

As a city clicker we found the Kona EV is just the right size to fit four people inside for short urban jaunts. It is suitable for parking in increasingly tighter car parks and it’s turning circle is quite remarkable. The rear parking camera is also a godsend and provides a wide view for manoeuvres. You quickly acclimatise to the silent progress of the Kona EV and also become aware that pedestrians and cyclists in shared spaces and intersections, particularly those wearing earbuds and headphones, are often completely oblivious to the presence of the car.

Fortunately, the Kona EV is equipped with forward collision avoidance assist with pedestrian detection and we can confirm the system works well. No humans or companion animals were harmed in the creation of this story.

Most owners will charge their EVs at home overnight, but unfortunately the writer’s residence doesn’t provide external access to electric power and using extension leads is verboten. This was not a concern for two reasons, one the Kona will provide up to 482 km of range at 100% battery capacity, and there are multiple public chargers located around central Auckland.

It’s very easy to make plugging in part of the daily routine, by choosing a supermarket, café or restaurant close to a public charger, it is easy enough to keep the battery charged up.

The average urban commute is 30 to 50km daily, so because the car wasn’t required to cover big distances, we just topped up to 80% of the car’s battery capacity, which provided more than enough range. Using the air-conditioning certainly diminishes range quickly. Returning to the car on a hot sunny day meant opening all the windows at first to let the breeze through, rather than expect the air con to pull the temperature down inside. The option to have the air-con solely directed at the driver is also a smart feature of the Kona EV. Living with an EV requires a different mindset to driving a fossil-fuelled internal combustion engine (ICE) car, much like a cellular phone you get used to plugging it in at every opportunity, but this is an easy behavioural change.

Another common behavioural change with EVs is your personal driving style. Much like an ICE car, if you drive the Kona EV hard it will eat up stored power more quickly, but unlike an IC car, you have three levels of regenerative brake capacity, and it’s very easy to drive the car with one pedal, taking your foot off the throttle early to allow it to come almost to a standstill.

In a very short time with the Kona EV your levels of anticipation improve and driving style becomes far smoother, which leads to far less energy being consumed. It’s a win-win for everyone.