12 month review – Hyundai Kona Ultimate
I learned so much from this forum and this thread in particular whilst waiting for my Kona 12 months ago, so I thought Id share my thoughts with new and current owners.
Firstly and most importantly, I really do like this car. It flies when I need it to and is really efficient generally.
In the winter, its great to get into an already warm and demisted car.
The really annoying points:
The bongs are so monotonous I just end up ignoring them.
Whilst driving around town in active cruise, the car very often doesnt see there is a car in front, especially if its a large closing gap. Unfortunately, it does see cars in side roads, or cars that pose no problems whatsoever and decides to activate crash avoidance, giving us whiplash.
The Bluelink app is really wooden.
I dont drive that much at home, but we do travel 250 miles to the south coast fairly regularly. The public charging network is dreadful and planning is essential. The recent opening up of the Tesla superchargers at Banbury has been a real help. We now set off on full, top up at Banbury and save time and money . Great chargers, great price. Oh, for a Tesla!
Because we couldnt have a home charger, Motability provided a membership with BP Pulse. We persisted for a long time with them, but havent used them for over 6 months now as they are dirty, have heavy cables and are usually occupied or broken. Like Shell Recharge, they are always on petrol station forecourts.
We use the Bonnet app for virtually all public charging now (not Tesla) and have found it reliable and efficient.
Public charging on a long journey is tedious due to the slow max charge rate of the Kona.
I like the car controls, but the buttons for heated seats, rear camera, heated wheel, auto brake and change of drive are all together and difficult to see, therefore a pain.
In April, both screens just stopped working one evening, so I had to drive home estimating my speed. The RAC unplugged the battery for me and overnight, it reset itself and has worked fine since. Hyundai werent remotely interested.
Last week I couldnt gain access to my car which was completely dead. My 12 volt battery had died and had to be replaced.
Probably the biggest dislike for us is its small size. Our 4 previous cars have been SUVs (Kuga, CRV etc) and the Kona is significantly smaller both in capacity and elevated driving position.
This has been a steep learning curve and the Kona has been an excellent platform, but it will be something different next time.
