Wheel Alignment

How many K on the car and how often have you done a wheel alignment?

 

Could the rear alignment have been off from new?

 

So, it seems you had excessive negative camber of the rears, curiously identical on both sides both before and after.
Also, notice that your front left and rear right had identical excessive toe-in before the correction.
I think an annual check would not be a bad idea! Even a factory defect would be unlikely to show up at both ends on a single car.

Just had a peek under mine to see if my tires had any issues. They don't but I'm hoping they will soon so I can buy some better tires than the Nexens...

The photo shows the adjustment for the rear camber (which you had noticed was incorrect). My left is set one click off center and has two marks of factory QA paint.

 

I had also wheel alignment done in Oct 2021, after around 80 000 km. Front axle required alignment as well, which I suspected by the not in the centre steering wheel. My dealer suspected that the heavy weight of the Kona EV is causing this. Sounds reasonable, if Hyundai uses the same parts as in the ICE Kona, then it has to deal with a lot more weight because of the battery and regular driving on uneven surfaces as I do might lead to that. So for me I think it has to become a routine to go to wheel alignment more often to avoid ruining the tyres too soon.

Both rear tires looked like that (I replaced the Nexens with Bridgestone Turanza T005-s from the start and they had 40 000 km done (half of my km-s are with winter tyres)), inner side rubber completely worn out on both

 

Can you post a couple of pics of your camber adjustments? A bit more straight-on than I did so the reading can be seen.

 

Every time you get your tires rotated you should get wheel alignment, so this means every 10k at the most. If changing tires, do it at that time. I left it for a year worth of driving and had to replace tires because of misalignment. The tire was worn on one side only on all four tires. I think the manual says every 5k KM.

 

So, first noting just for the record that on the alignment sheet the small icon for camber shows a wheel with excess positive camber rather than excess negative as you had, your adjustments pulled the lower links towards the center of the car by most of the available range.
Nevermind, that's what the adjustments are for. I wonder if the springs have sagged a bit causing the negative camber?

 

Our Kona is pretty new, less than a year old. When Mrs OK gets home I'll measure the height above ground of all four jacking points and post here FYI. (We have a smooth, dead flat horizontal garage floor. You will need similar to compare apples with apples.)

KiwiME, I'll also do the compass check for the magnet in the gearbox and post in the relevant thread.

 

I used to work at BMW as a software engineer. When I was there, I had the perk of driving more than a dozen brand new 3-series, 5-series, and Mini Coopers (BMW owns them). A lot of those cars would have alignment issues, even though the cars were new.

What I learned by asking around on this topic internally at BMW is that each car manufacturer has an alignment spec the assembly plant follows. Some manufacturers have a very tight spec - say the camber and caster must be within +/- 0.1 degree of spec. Other manufacturers have much looser tolerances. Additionally, cars' alignment can be thrown off during shipment: some cars get strapped onto flatbed trucks for delivery, etc.

On 3 different BMWs I owned or leased, I had to get them aligned within the first 5K miles. They had very responsive rubber (Michelin Pilot Sport 2) and you could feel every imperfection or misalignment flaw. In contrast, on 2 Subarus I owned (2012 WRX and 2016 Impreza) - I never had to touch the alignment, it came perfect from the factory. Those cars also had much more forgiving (squishier) all-weather tires. So, it might have been simply a matter of the squishier tires communicating less of the imperfections to the driver.

When I got my Kona EV in March 2019, I noticed right away the alignment was off. The car wouldn't track straight - I had to constantly keep adjusting the steering wheel to keep it straight. The car didn't veer to the left or to the right, instead it would always be wiggling around and trying to return to center. But it made for a very nervous driving experience.

There were two factors that contributed to that - the OEM Nexen tires it came with are very stiff. (I live in California so it's possible your Kona comes with different tires). The Nexens respond to every little wrinkle in the road and give a lot of feedback to the driver. The other factor was the actual alignment.

After about 10K miles, I changed the tires to Bridgestone Turanza QuietTrack SL's and got the car aligned. The alignment shop said the original alignment was just at the edges of the spec, but in all the wrong ways. Some tires were at the max negative angle, while others were at the max positive angles of the spec.

Both replacing the tires & alignment put together completely transformed the driving experience for me. The car started tracking perfectly straight and all the jittery / nervous behavior was gone. The tires are also quieter than the OEM Nexens on my car. The down-side? The car's efficiency took about a 10-15% hit. These tires have more grip, which also means more rolling resistance, therefore lower miles / KWh.

Long post, thanks for reading. I hope it helps.