Hi everybody, it's Peter. In today's video we are gonna do a complete in-depth review of the Hyundai Kona Electric. Now this is a car I'm excited about because I drive a car with a very similar powertrain and layout the Kia Soul Electric. So I know about this car and I also used to kind of work in an area where professionally I used to be an expert on this exact vehicle. So we're gonna talk about this in detail, but before we get into it too far, we are filming here at  Jim Gilbert's Wheels and Deals and they sell all kinds of electric vehicles. And in fact, we're gonna do a future video telling you how to level three charge this vehicle and other vehicles like it. Cause there's a new level three charger here and there's all kinds of inventories. So on the lot right now we have this Kona Electric, there's a Nissan leaf 2023, a leaf coming in very soon.

There's all kinds of Teslas and there is a Prius Prime, which we filmed yesterday. If you wanna compare an electric vehicle side by side with other brands and not wait a year plus for it, Jim Gilbert's Wheels and Deals has it in stock. They can help you out and they can get them uh, fairly regularly. So lots of choice here. So we're gonna get going with this review. So one of the first things I should point out here in this review is this is kind of the lost electric vehicle right now. This was kind of the hit of the show for a while, but in the Hyundai lineup, the Ionic five has sort of taken over and a lot of people are kind of looking at that and ignoring this. And I'm gonna tell you why maybe you shouldn't. This one's a little bit more compact and in its time, it still had the absolute best range you could get out of just about any EV vehicle outside of a Tesla. 

This one is rated for 415 kilometers. Now this generation of Kia and Hyundai EVs underrated the range for three seasons of the year. We're filming in the middle of winter here in Canada and we're gonna show you that this car will not get its 450 kilometers of range in the winter, but three seasons of the year. It's not uncommon to see this car regularly get 450 kilometers, 480 kilometers and even beyond 500 kilometers of range just as it sits. So they kind of underrated this for the way a lot of people drive and that makes it a pretty good value Ev that gets you a whole lot of range And there are other benefits here as well. This is a very compact platform. Most of the EVs you're gonna see are much, much larger vehicles. They're harder to park, they're harder to fit in your garage and frankly they're just a little bit different to drive. (02:25)
So this gives you a much more traditional, uh, traditional style. And if you've looked at the Kona EV before or the Kona Electric before, you may not notice some of the upgrades that came with this redesign. Something like the Kia Soul didn't go through the same redesign at the same stage that this did. So this received a number of upgrades, sort of halfway through the, uh, the package here that gives it refresh styling on the outside. We'll have a little bit different nose to it, a little different lights and that kind of thing, but also some new technology on the inside. And that's what we're gonna cover in this video. So let's start by taking a look at the front end of this vehicle. If you've seen previous konas, you may notice this is cleaned up a little bit from the previous generation. It's also cleaned up a little bit from the gasoline version.

You've got that electric fuel fill or electric fuel fill, electric charge port right out front here. Oh boy, it's gonna be the one of those days. You've got that out right out front here. But a really smooth front end. You've got your radar plate way down low here. We'll talk about the use of that. And this is a preferred package. So the preferred package is a little bit better value, but it still gives you that 450 kilometers of rated range. One of the ways you can identify the preferred package. This is one of the very few vehicles, the EV vehicles that has halogen headlights down here. Why not? Sure in some ways you could say that's a cost cutting measure, but the other thing to keep in mind is that those halogen lights are actually pretty good in the winter because they still create a little bit of heat. 
So if you're driving at night with your headlights on and it's a snowy slushy day, you do have the ability to have some of this melt through those halogen lights, which would be a little bit different than in an L E D light. You still have your L E D marker lights up here. And again, a nice clean fresh look. Taking a look along the side of the car, a lot of the Kona lineup is known for their sort of plasticy areas over here, which are not body color, a lot of like, a lot like the current Subarus do, but this one here in the EV is still body color gives it a cleaner look. And this is still basically a crossover. It's kinda that hatchback crossover kind of mix. This one here has roof rails up top, which is really nice to have. Not many EVs have those roof rails built in.

And that means you can add the same accessories you could add to any other Kona or frankly any other Hyundai vehicle. The the uh, roof rails are basically the same across the lineup and that means you can throw your canoe, your kayak, your skis, your bikes, all those things up top here. Yes, that'll affect range a little bit, but for a lot of us we can do these things in town around town. And uh, even on the highway you can take a little bit less range and get to where you want to go by throwing your stuff up here, which is really nice to be able to have on an electric vehicle. One final glance at the refresh here, you do have a much cleaned up rear end here compared to the previous model. Kona. Again, a little bit different here. You've got the L E D lights down there, L E d sort of marker lights and brake lights up here, signal lights down there. 

This one does have parking sensors in the rear. So even though you have the backup camera, you also have little uh, parking sensors and beepers in there. And I should point out the trunk as well. We showed yesterday the Prius Prime, which has a little bit of a step up in here as they put the extra batteries there. On this model here, there are no batteries underneath here because this is a lot like a Tesla. That battery pack is underneath the floor out of the passenger compartment way and that means you have some under floor storage here and also the ability to drop this down a little bit, get an extra couple inches of space, which gives you a little extra clearance underneath this cover here. Of course this cover comes off, the seats fold down and you have a true hatchback with a lot of space to be able to fit the things that you need. As we head into this vehicle, we're gonna show you some of the updates that happened and again, in this mid model refresh that really make it a nice

Vehicle and step it up from where it was when it first came out. So jumping in here, you do have the preferred package. So you have manual seats, no powered seats. I'd like to think of this trim as everything you need and nothing you don't. So let's go wide angle. We're gonna hop inside and instead of just turning the car to the on position, we are gonna fully start the car because even though we're indoors, there's no emissions in this car. So we're gonna go down here, press the start button once and you have this gorgeous digital dash that comes up. So I'm gonna zoom into that just a little bit here. Ice possible drive with care. Now again, this car, it's sitting outside, it's like minus 10 outside. I brought it in, it's been in here for a while. It's up to minus two. 

This car again rated for 415 kilometers. Let's took it. Take a look at that. Range loss in the winter, you do have range loss. This one does have winter tires on it right now. Really good Michelin winter tires. It's available here, uh, with both your winter tires and your regular tires. So one of the ways to find out how much charge you will have, and this is a little bit of an estimate, but it's pretty accurate. I've been around these vehicles a lot, is you tap into here and tap into there and you will see when this car is to a hundred percent it is gonna be a 320 kilometers. So that's a significant range loss in the winter, but 320 kilometers is still pretty good for all the things that you need. And again, like I said, in those summer months, it is not uncommon to see this car with the regular tires, not the winter tires and the warmer temperatures to see it jump up to, like I said, 450 is not uncommon on these. 

Now what you have here is AC and DC charging. So if you plug it into a wall socket right there, we've got this at 40% for a reason cuz we have a fast charger here, we're gonna do a video on a little bit later, but if you plug it into a wall socket, it's gonna take a long time to charge in these cold weather. So again, when you look at the specs, some of these charging times are faster in warmer weather, but 37 hours in 40 minutes if you plug in the wall. So you're not gonna do that if you own this car, you're gonna want a level two charger, eight hours, 40 minutes. Now I think it'll go a hair quicker than that, uh, if you p park it in a garage, but it's kind of giving you a conservative estimate. Eight hours, 40 minutes on a level two charger, what we used to call, uh, you know, ac fast charging is what we call it now. 

Then there's a DC charger, which that fast charger. Now this can charge about 80%, um, in about an hour and a half. Oops, let's just go back there, cancel that 80% in about an hour and a half. Now that last 10% is gonna go slower. It's saying two hours and 25 minutes to fill it. So keep in mind you will be faster charging than those two hours, 25 minutes to get to that 80 ish percent. It's the last 20% that really slows you down. Uh, cuz it just, it's sort of like I used to say, it's kinda like filling a glass with uh, milk. If you feel it's 80% you can just pour it in a hurry. But that last, uh, couple percent, you gotta pour a little bit carefully, especially in Canada here. Well, we've got milk bags. If you don't know what those are and you are not from around here. 

All right, let's just show you a few other things here in this updated redesign. We do have this updated dash, which is very nice. You can customize the look of this in a whole bunch of different ways. We can show you through your drive modes here. If you go to a sport mode, it looks like that if you go to eco mode, it looks like that. And the normal mode looks like that sport mode really does ramp up the sort of throttle mapping and the feel really makes this car punchy. Keep in mind you've got 201 horsepower and a, oh sorry, yeah, 201 horsepower and 291 foot pounds of instant torque in this car, which is very, very impressive. So you've got some ability to have some fun with this car, uh, in the different drive modes. So we'll leave it at eco there. And uh, again, range, don't worry about range yet because this car's been sitting in the cold and probably when dealership cars never show great range anyways, so we can show you a whole bunch of things in there. 

But the other thing I wanna show you here is one of the updates. Now we have the smart cruise control, which is something that can keep its distance from the vehicles in front of you, which is super good to have. But you also have Lane Follow Assist and that is different than Lane Keeping Assist. Lane Follow Assist is a more precise lane watching system that can actively steer the car for you, keeping you centered in the lane. It works so, so well that when I drove from Ontario to a New Brunswick, I almost didn't have to steer the car myself. Yes, you have to keep your hand on the wheel, but the car drives almost by itself when you have this lane follow assist uh, on. And that works really, really well. So again, it's not a self-driving car, but it feels like it when you use that button.

You've also got a new uh, uh, star button here, which is a custom button. And you can see this star is kind of colored in. There's an other star on the dash over here, which is a, um, open star not colored in. These are different buttons. You can customize this button. So what I like to do is when I have Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, I program it to that button, which brings Android Auto and Apple CarPlay up to this screen right here and I can just tap that button to bring it up. And then this button is a custom button you can do all kinds of things with. You can use it to hang up the phone. It used to be pick up the phone, hang up the phone, you can just use the button twice now or you can use it for a whole bunch of different things. 

So you can customize this car a little bit to your liking. Now every EV does have a climate system tied into the powertrain system essentially. So automatic climate control is pretty much standard. It's a single zone climate control system in this uh, vehicle here. You do have a driver only mode, but let's just show you what driver only does. It is not gonna save you a whole lot of range. Oh, we saved an entire kilometer. So driver only mode on a hybrid car can keep your vehicle, uh, especially in the Kia Hyundai lineup. It can keep your vehicle from running the gas engine driver only mode in an electric vehicle. It's just not worth it. Don't freeze or roast your passenger by not giving their air vents or not turning their air vents on to save that one kilometer. Just let them, uh, stay warm and get them to push you that extra kilometer if that's how close you cut it. 

All right, coming in here, you do have a little area here to put your phone. You have a USB port down there to charge. The climate system is turning itself on nice and loud. So we're just gonna turn it off for a second. The Kona little interesting, it has push button, uh, um, uh, push button gear shift here, but it is a different gear shift order than other Hyundais with the push button gear shift. So it does take a little bit of adapting to park neutral, drive reverse. Uh, you get used to it very quickly, but if you've come from a push button Hyundai, this is slightly different. Electronic parking brake is right here. What I like to refer, refer to as rump roasters are right there. Drive mobile button there. Key to steering wheel as well. Auto hold is part of the parking brake system. 

You can uh, let your foot off the brake and something like a drive-through and the car won't creep forward. So that's an option you have. Uh, very common on uh, Teslas, they have that non creeping forward type mode. So uh, don't creep kind of thing. Anyways, over here you have what's called Hyundai's blue link. This is an app system which you can use to find out all kinds of things. Now on a regular car you can do things like remote start your car. On this car it would be remote climate. One of the reasons I like it is you can check the app to see the state of charge. So if you haven't plugged in your car that night, um, to uh, your plug, you can go see what it is on your app without having to walk out to your garage and you can check that out as well. 

Final thing I wanna show you in here are these little tiny paddle shifters. Now these are not paddle shifters. There's no real transmission in this car. Uh, what these do is they vary the rate of regeneration. Now you can set this car up per drive mode to have various levels of regeneration. So in other words, when you let off the accelerator pedal, the vehicle will either coast or it will have some level of braking. Oops, I'm hitting buttons here on the uh, stereo system. But if you, uh, let, wanna let it coast like a regular gas car, you can most people driving electric vehicle like the feeling of one pedal driving. Now this isn't exactly one pedal driving, but it does allow you to either set the vehicle to a set level of regenerative braking. So in other words, you let off the accelerator pedal, the brakes do activate, the regenerative braking does activate, but you can also on the fly tap this various levels 1, 2, 3, up and down. 

Or you can go 1, 2, 3, up and down. Or even if you wanna come to a complete stop, you can hold this down and that will bring the vehicle to a complete stop. So those regeneration paddles are something like Kia and Hyundai EV buyers really enjoy once they've used them because there are times where you want to coast and coast and coast, but there are other times where you wanna activate those regener breaks. Now of course when you touch the brake pedal, your wheel brakes don't immediately activate. You are still regenerating first and then wheel brakes activate if necessary. So there's all kinds of ways to use regenerative brakes, but you do have some custom ability here. Uh, it's something that you don't get in something like a Tesla, which works very, very well. And it's something that a lot of us, uh, use. We talked about those parking beepers in the back here you have the um, ability to turn those on and off. 

You've got blind spot detection here with rear cross traffic alerts. So when you have the car in reverse, we'll do that just for a second. Right now you've got a nice clear backup camera. Oh, it's not a clear, it's a little bit dirty normally it's a much clearer backup camera. Uh, but you have a very clear backup camera. Again, as uh, vehicles cross our path, the vehicle's capable of warning you that hey, something's coming, something's coming, whether it's vehicles or people. And then you also have those parking centers with the beepers as well. So a lot of safety features built into this car. Probably too much to go over in this video, but if you have questions about the safety features, feel free to ask me. I'd be happy to tell you more.

So let's talk about who this car is for. Well first of all, let's just assume you've already decided you want an electric vehicle. One of the things you're gonna find with this car is it is just normal. Most electric vehicles are weird. They do weird things, they have weird dashes, even a Tesla. Very cool. But it's weird to have everything on one screen. This car, whether you're used to gas cars or electric cars, you can get in. You can figure out how to drive a PR and drive and go. It feels like a gas car. Much more power, much more torque less, more instant torque for sure. But it feels like a regular car. And it also gives you some of those regular vehicle type things. Like I said, the roof racks, the hatchback, the compact size, which you really don't get in most electric vehicles, Dakota does give you. 

So that allows you to have a very normal car but move to electro, it's very easy to charge at home. And for most people driving this car, that's probably what I recommend. If you do most of your charging from home, most of you're driving is within 300 or so kilometers. This car will probably be a zero compromised car. You can absolutely take it on long trips. You do have to keep an eye on where those chargers are and in most populated areas it's just not a problem to find chargers for this car. But if you're moving to a vehicle where the majority of your driving is gonna be done in town and you want some efficiency and you want some good power, but you want to keep things normal, Kona's a great option for you. One of the things I really like as well, Argo's roof racks, it just doesn't make you compromise from the types of vehicles that you have. 

A regular Kona shares a volume with. It shares a lot of the trunk space, shares a lot of the features. Rear seat space, a log is very, very similar and it makes a really popular car into electric car. And the one key piece, Kia Niro and the Kia Soul share a platform with this. They don't quite leak out the rated range of this car. This one is the range leader out of the shared platform. A little bit smaller, possibly a little bit lighter, maybe a little bit more aerodynamic. But this one is the range leader before you step into the larger class of cars from Kia Hyundai, like the Ionic five in the E six. So there you go. Is it right for you? Well, how would you know? The best way to find out is to come down to Jim Gilberts Wheels and Deals, Fredericton. 

Compare this to Tesla. Compare this to the Nissan Leaf that's coming in. Compare it to the Prius Prime plug-in hybrid. Compare it to all kinds of cars here on the lot. And if you want an electric vehicle and don't want to wait a year or two years or who knows how many years this car is a car that you can buy today and take home. So there you go. Thanks everybody for watching and if you have questions and comments, again, I'm supposed to be an expert on this vehicle and just kind of ran through some stuff, gloss over some stuff and skip some things. If you have questions, let me know because I can answer you both in the comments and in future videos. Thanks everybody for watching.