My new Kona Electric and my first impressions

I'm home now and slept for a few hours.

First impressions of the premium:
- I love the black outside with lighter gray interior
- after driving 320 miles right out of the dealer door:
- SCC has a little learning curve. Need to switch Lanes a little earlier than I'm used to for the car not to start slowing down
- scared the crap out of myself on my first leg: 180 miles on the gom, but ended up with only 12 miles left at the first charger after 120 miles due to wet roads, cooler outside temp and rising terrain!
- was very pleased with the charging session: 65 minutes from 12% to 77% continually at 47kw at a 50 kw charger at outside air temp of about 8°C (45F).
- second charging stop at a supposedly 50kw charger used only 37kw, but I was closer to home and got away with 30 minutes of charging.
- weirdly enough the 150 kw charger at the same site didn't want to start the session!?
- auto-brights are awesome
- SCC is great in following traffic
- but in-car navigation is not great. Charger locations are not current. I used Plugshare.
- charging on granny cable at home for now
- apparently I have some free public lv2 chargers close by (lucky me?). Have to check them out.
- music sounds good
- HUD is awesome too
- dealer activated blue-link for me, need to wait 24 hours, though.

So far ...

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Well I may, MAY have solved my charging mystery. If you recall I wanted to charge only off-peak while at home. I am also pretty much retired so I don't have a schedule. For those reasons I did not bother turning on scheduled charging DEPARTURE at all. I then set my off-peak hours and turned on location based charging (at my home address). It seemed like that should work. It didn't. Ever. Every time I plugged it in it started charging immediately.

I was just fiddling with menus in the parked car while plugged in (and STILL charging immediately!) when I hit the Scheduled Charging "on" button. Voila! The immediate charging stopped. A message popped up saying that charging will be delayed until Departure. So it turns out that Departure is integral to the whole thing working. I suspect all you kind people who tried to help me had not had the problem either because you simply DID use scheduled Departure right from the beginning OR you have always used Bluelink to schedule and control charging (and maybe heating).

So the big test is overnight tonight. If it's fully charged in the morning I will assume that it charged sometime, off-peak, overnight. Wish me luck.

 

Thanks. I've never actually received a Registration number/code. I've never even gotten to the point of registering. I just came from my dealership and they insist they have provided all relevant info to Bluelink. Now it's up to Bluelink to get their act together. I'm calling shortly to register with them on the line to assist.

Edit* I called. My VIN doesn't work. They claim there is a glitch with some of the Kona Evs that's a software bug on their end. He said it takes two or three business days to fix I reminded him that it's already been 5 business days. He says he'll be emailing me with an "update" on Saturday. I don't need updates. I need Bluelink. I'll also be looking for my end date to be extended by the same number of days as the delay. Let's see how that goes.

 

So much to learn! We just learned to unplug from a public charger before fully charged we have to unlock the car with the FOB or door button and unplug within 15 seconds. Nothing like making an *** of yourself trying to unhook the charging cable without success--repeatedly. lol

 

No worries, I just did that in my garage. Trying to unhook the granny cable. Looked like an idiot running around the car.

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Question: yesterday on my first level 3 charging experience, I was able to hit the "stop charging" button on the EVGO charger display and it stopped charging. That shouldn't be the case, right? I'm thinking it was me running around the car, opening it to check the status and thereby unlocking the chargeport? Because it should be locked when I'm away and it's charging so nobody can stop my charging session?

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Bad charger design that expects you to babysit the charge.

 

Yeah, either that or I unlocked it without realizing (I would hope). Only thought about it yesterday when I ran around the car trying to figure out how to get that cable out.

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I see a major glitch in owning an EV if you are traveling. We have limited public chargers. We have attempted 3 times to charge at a public charger and each time the charger is in use. Can you imagine what that will be like if you are on a road trip in the summer and people are waiting for a charger? Frustrating and they will need a system at the charger where people who are waiting can register to take their turn as next in line as I can imagine some people will attempt to butt into line. More reason to keep a PHEV as a second vehicle. I guess I didn't think of this as I watched so many Bjorn Nyland Kona videos in Norway where they have charging stations with 12 or more chargers. I just assumed we would face the same situation.

 

Yeah, that is the problem with the emerging nature of the charging infrastructure.

What I saw at the quick charging station on my way home after buying our Kona was disappointing as well: I stopped to charge and it of the 4 available charging stations only 2 were active. One was hung up on a screen thinking it was charging (unless it's a new EV with invisibility mode), another one was completely dead (black screen), the third one was a 150kw charger which didn't want to charge my car (after hooking up and confirming the connection was secure I hit start and then it would complain that I unhooked the cable).

The last and only working charger was a 50kw charger that only charged me with 37kw.

But it got me enough after 30 minutes to get me home.

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I've been meaning to mention that my XIce i3s winter tires are really quiet and smooth. I've had them on my previous gas cars and liked them but didn't know if the engine was masking noise or vibration. Nope. They are really smooth. And I don't think they affect range too much as they are very hard wearing.

 

Fast chargers are thin on the ground in Canada today, for sure. I expect that will change rapidly.

On the bright side, we are living in the happy time of mostly free charging.

 

I think that is likely why we can't find an available charger. i.e. people charging for free at public charger versus paying at home. And the few numbers of chargers. I sure can see if electric vehicles are going to be encouraged the infrastructure needs to be put in place pretty quickly.

 

I imagine that most people with off street parking will use a level 2 charger perhaps 90% of the time and occasionally use a level 3 or public level 2 charger. However if you live in a condo or apartment it’s likely that you would have to rely on the public infrastructure. I wonder if that’s why they are busy. I haven’t had the same experience in the limited times I have tried a level 3 charger but a couple of times the charger didn’t work correctly. I have thought about a long distance trip to Manitoba but the prairie’s are not well supported yet. Other than that I think the Kona is a no compromise EV.

 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNb96XUc53udQB6jEbbLsYQ <== some guy doing things to his kona ev

I find him while looking for floormat stuff.

 

I just got my Kona on Thursday from San Diego and drove it back up to the Bay Area (where I live) in a day. I stopped at 3 EvGO chargers along the way - Glendale, Visalia (lovely little town), and Ceres. The trip totaled 576 miles, used up approximately 83.291, and cost $33.42.

The driving experience was great. It's the least tired I've ever felt after doing a trip of that length. The cabin is quiet and a very comfortable place to be. Even though I got the basic SEL trim the seats are comfortable, the steering wheel exceptional, and the infotainment system has everything I need.

Performance-wise, I am impressed. I drove in the Eco mode in order to minimize charging stops and even then getting onto the freeway was a breeze compared to my somewhat sluggish Subaru Impreza (2.0L engine). The steering is light but really linear, which I appreciated. All the pedals are weighed just perfectly and the car's response is intuitive and linear. There are no spikes in power output or any sort of jerkiness you'd experience even in the best automatics when starting up from a stop.

So far so good.

 

Again, congrats! What do you mean with ”used 83.291”? KW? That's great mileage! That's almost 7 m/kw!

I said the exact same thing about the last tired drive ever!

Exactly my experience as well. Very good car to drive!

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Went for a ride today about 100km in mixed highway and local street driving and managed 15.1 kw per 100km in normal mode. The ambient temperature was 7C. I would be interested to hear other typical numbers. It’s also slightly annoying that we are stuck with two reporting methods. Converting miles per kw to kw per 100 km makes my head hurt.

 

On my trips to Burnaby from white rock I am averaging around 14-15.5 kw/100km. For some reason when I go to Vancouver and back to white rock I average around 16.5-17.5. Maybe it’s due to longer time spent on HWY 99 (averaging around 120km/hr)