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3 road trips in 3 weeks in my Hyundai Kona EV: Glad I bought this car

24th October 2024, 13:41 by Utkarsh Chaudhary

I have become an EV fanatic and purchased another electric vehicle a few months ago - an MG Comet EV.

BHPian GKR9900 recently shared this with other enthusiasts:

It has been quite some time since I took my Light Fury for a longish trip. There was a Perumbavoor-Trivandrum - 460 kms round trip - that I had planned a while back to see some of my relatives at Trivandrum. But work and family commitments kept pushing it back. As fate would have it, I ended up doing 3 such trips within 3 weeks due to some family reasons. With each trip, I patted myself on the back for picking up the Kona.

The first one was on October 2nd. I didn’t spend much time planning as I was fairly confident that the Kona would make the trip without charging as it could easily do 320kms in a full charge. But boy, did the car surpass my expectations! My dad and I were traveling together and we decided to take MC road, as the Alappuzha Kollam road was having heavy construction. There were also ample chargers along this route, should the need arise. This route also had many hills, so the frequent ups and downs could help in regen. We decided to start at around 6 am. The entire journey took around 6 hours including a charging stop/breakfast that lasted 25 mins.

After completing the family visits at Trivandrum, we headed back the next day.

While returning, caught up with an EV fan at his home before coming back to my hometown. The return trip took slightly longer at 6.5 hours.

The efficiency for the trip was around 10.3 km/kWh (forgot to click the pic of the onward trip). This was with 2 adults on board, mainly eco mode, AC at 23.5 degrees, and driver-side ventilated seat on throughout the journey. Extrapolating, these figures are good for 400+kms, which was spectacular.

During our return trip, had a puncture in the left rear tyre.

The TPMS promptly alerted us about the puncture.

Luckily, there was a tyre repair shop close by and the puncture was fixed.

The second trip happened on 13th October. All other settings were the same as the last journey except for the fact that the return was in sports mode, and there were 5 adults on board.

The round trip took almost 12 hours.

Midnight juice up

The third trip happened on 19th October. By now, I was getting hung up on the sports mode and didn’t want to dial down to eco mode anymore for long journeys, especially with other passengers in the car. The efficiency figures were again stellar.

The return trip included some peak hour traffic and idling, so the time taken was also longer.

Charging near Varkala

Midnight coffee break

20,000 km service update

Before the third trip, I completed my 20k kms service at Popular Hyundai, Kochi. This was a free service and the payments were only for brake fluid, air filter, and windshield washer fluid which came up to Rs 3300. The problem was after that when I went to New Bharath tyres to get the rotation, balancing, and alignment done. These guys always used to do a fine job, but this time the car was pulling to the left post-alignment. I couldn’t notice the pull until I got to a reasonably spaced road, but by then I was almost home and couldn’t go back to them to get it corrected.

Got the alignment checked again by a local tyre shop and it was corrected.

Ending this post with a rant to Hyundai. I know they have to make space for the Creta EV, but the Kona is such a sweet sweet car. Why did you guys have to pull the plug on it? Even with the small (by today’s standards) battery, it eeks out unreal efficiency numbers without driving as if there’s a landmine underneath one’s feet. I have become an EV fanatic (no pun intended to EV fan), and I have gone ahead and purchased a Comet EV a few months back. More on that in a later post.