My new Kona Electric and my first impressions

Tell her the delay is because they are sending you the 2020 upgraded model with a 10" screen

 

Look what my awesome salesman sent me!!

 

Refresh my memory. Where is this, E-shark?

 

Just got a phone call from my local Calgary Hyundai dealer --- ta-da ! My ceramic blue on pebble-blue/grey has arrived. He said it would take a few days to remove the shipping protection and do the PDI -- I told him I'd be there tomorrow morning to take photos. So the wait from my 9th August pre-order to 5 Feb 2019 was not too bad after all.

 

7 months is not too bad? Is your middle name Job 'cause you've got patience to burn!

 

Beautiful Sunny BC

 

Congrats! I miss getting your RO-RO ship updates, now you won't have any reason to keep looking them up!! Maybe Wildeyed can convince you to find the next one?!

 

We have our Kona EV as of 2 PM this afternoon. I'm not going into details other than saying that if I hadn't inquired as suggested by E-Shark, we will still be waiting. I don't want to describe how we got this car, but basically it was me throwing a tantrum.

The car is lovely! We were pooped by the time we signed all the papers, re-assigned our insurance to this car, and got lots of instructions from our salesperson who was professional throughout. We turned down extended warranty and all extra packages. We are two plump people and it is very comfortable and plenty spacious in the cabin.

The navigation seems good, the nav screen features seem very intuitive. Someone suggested in the user interface to turn on all the features at first and then turn off what you don't like so we did that.

The wireless charge pad works fine, but remember to have the doors closed and the car turned on to test it (we thought our iphone and Samsung weren't working due to thicker cases, but it was having the car turned off or the door open at one point).

First impression is a quality built sturdy electric car. Two thumbs up.

Heated steering wheel and heated seats are great. I think the heated seats are nicer than my C-Max heated seats as it covers more of my back and up higher on the back so feels good when chilled.

All the automated features like the headlights dimming automatically, rain sensor wipers, etc. are nice.

Suspension of the car seem okay--not super floaty over bumps but once again better than my C-Max, but not as good as the Lincoln MKC lol.

Turning radius is excellent.

The horn is not loud, but suits me. The VESS sound is muscial sounding and not annoying. The cabin seems pretty quiet but we haven't taken it up to speed.


I did use Smart Recuperation/Auto Regen on the way home and like that it slowed me down automatically at traffic lights, but I did the final braking.

Very easy to set up automatic radio stations. Sound seems great, but we didn't play around too much with different music but I think it is very good quality of sound.

By the time I got home I was very taken with HUD as it saves moving your head or eyes down and around as the info you need is right where you look at the road.

My husband found that the inscription on the buttons on the console a bit hard to read on first ride, but they do light up at dusk.

When backing the emergency warning with a line of arrows came on and it was a pedestrian walking behind our car as I was backing out. Very good to have!

We had Michelin CrossClimate all weather tires put on so we will let you know how they are as we are in a bit of a snowy icy period in the Vancouver area.

Car was only charged half way so we stopped at a level 3 charger built for two cars, but quickly found that only one car can charge at a time on that Green Lot charger. The Bolt owner walked by and said he would be another 15 minutes so we went home.

Alice (the Kona) is currently being charged via level 1 charger in our garage as our ZappBC level 2 won't be installed until next week. Two thumbs up so far.

 

We'll I'm super happy for you. And I'm also happy you kicked some butt. Wish you were more of a gossip though. This sounds juicy!

 

Congrats! I'm glad you didn't take no for an answer! Alice seems like she will be a joy.

 

Thanks E-Shark as you lit the fire.

 

Congratulations CJC.
Now it's out with the bad - delivery fiasco - and in with the good - Alice is in your driveway! Get out there & drive her. I'm still trying new things every day. I tried Sport mode today, wow I like the extra acceleration pop & tight steering you get. I really can't wait to try it on a trip to Whistler, I think it'll be a lot of fun on that Sea to Sky highway.

 

Thanks Tom. Yep onward and upward! Today is hubby's turn to try everything. So we will take a wee road trip perhaps White Rock to Abbotsford. Hubby is chomping at the bit to try SCruiseControl. We had to plug into our level 1 charger when we got home. We had only a partial charge at 220 kilometers left on the range. It has been plugged in for about 15 hours and still has a flashing 3rd bar so I will check in another hour. Hubby is coming from a Lincoln MKC with all the cushy suspension so it will be an adjustment, but he is a technology lover so I think he will love the stop and go of the SCC. We have some snow predicted tomorrow and Friday so we will have a chance to try out the Michelin CrossClimate tires in action. Dealer says 5 other customers have bought the same tires in the last week. UK reviews have been good on them. More first reactions later. Still waiting to hook up to BlueLink and then try to hook up BlueLink to Amazon Alexa so we don't have to use the app. Amazon Alexa is great for appts, reminders, music etc. so we are fans and hope BlueLink will connect up in Canada to our Amazon.com account under skills.

 

Being a newbie with my car, how does one set up stop and go on the smart cruise control please? Easy directions please as I am on overload here from trying all the buttons known to man on the Kona. lol
PS I did the regular turn on of cruise control and it did not appear to be stopping when we came up behind another car so I applied the brakes. So there must be something I am missing.

 

One week in.

After a week of much learning and a moderate amount of driving, I can offer a few thoughts.

• If it isn't a "smart phone on wheels" it's getting close. The lack of a violent machine under the hood adds to the feeling that you've arrived in the future, where your car sees and knows more than you do and is in constant dialog with you as it smoothly does your bidding.
• The manual is pretty thorough but poorly organized and indexed. It's worth having the PDF file (various versions and online sources) just to be able to word search.
• Somebody started counting the buttons and quit at 60. Some study is involved, but I love that so many options are literally at your fingertips instead of buried in menus. And knobs! Two for climate and two for media/navigation. How cool is it that you can zoom in on the map with the turn of a knob?
• The storage under the flying bridge is pretty useless. I've got a tissue box lying on its side in there, but it's awkward to get at. Otherwise I've found nothing to complain about in the cabin.
• I climbed into the Gen 3 Prius today, and it all seemed unfamiliar. The impression was reinforced that, as lovely as the car is, it's a big old boat compared with Kona, which just feels tight and steady.
• I'm somehow comforted by the fact that in a pinch I could spend the night curled up in the back with the heat on, using Utility Mode to avoid draining the 12 volt battery and with no fears of asphyxiation.
• The paddles, the brake, and the accelerator are all ways of modulating the regen. Everyone will develop their own style of using them, which is part of the fun. I don't see much advantage in one-pedal driving, and for me it poses the risk of not being ready to stomp on the brake. I just tried smart regen today and it seems to make sense, as long as you remember that you must still use the brake or paddle to stop.
• The back end is a dirt magnet. Snow and ice easily get into the charge port.
• The Level 1 charger is going to be fine for me because a busy day is 50 km. And I'm getting used to the idea that I don't need to keep it near full for unexpected trips, since a free fast charge is ten minutes away.
• I had a moment of buyer's remorse after seeing a video praising the Kia eNiro, but then I remembered: sunroof!

 

Skookumpete - doesn’t the Niro EV have a sunroof? I like the looks of the Kona interior better but I do like the bigger storage in the Kia. The drive of the Niro isn’t as sporty based on what I read as well.

I think we made a good choice. I’m 3 days in and really like it so far. The one issue with EVs we’ll see is that they’ll keep getting better at a rapid scale like we saw with smartphones.

 

My bad! I didn't see one in the video and made a false assumption. Funny, though, I still don't feel any remorse.

Yeah, it's sad to think that in a few years Kona will be like a flip phone.

 

Did you set up your car length distance?? Maybe you have it on the most closest setting of 1 car length? It is the button below cruise to the left, if you press it a few times you will see the car icon on the screen change from 1 to 3 or 4 car lengths.

 

Thank you. I was wondering if the Kona could be flat towed behind an RV. I found my answer in your link, sadly it cannot. It appears the Atlis is the only EV that can be.

 

Yes I have it at 4 lengths. One thing I noticed was our salesperson set a setting for slow stop versus fast stop and I wonder if that impacted on the stop and go? I will look for that setting.