hi guys welcome to webby on cars
today you join me in the 2021 hyundai kona electric uh we've got the highlander specification
so i thought i'd start off by doing things a little bit differently so we're starting
inside the car for this video um if you've not seen my videos before i basically do new
car reviews here in australia try and get my hands on the latest and greatest cars to um
to obviously review for you so if you're new to the channel um hit the subscribe button
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so as I said we've got the 2021 uh Hyundai Kona electric
highlander specification so it's top of the range so today we're going to go for a bit of a drive
and then I'll talk you around the spec of the car show you what it looks like on the outside
and um yeah basically what I think to the car as an overall package
Now
Hyundai claim that you can do up to 484 kilometres from a full charge from the Kona electric
but I've been getting around about 450 um which I don't think is actually too bad
um and I calculated that a full charge would actually cost about 7.50
from zero to 100 percent which i actually think is pretty reasonable you know to do 450 k's and 7.50
that's really cheap motoring the bit that isn't quite so cheap about this Kona electric is
the price there are two trim levels you get the elite and then the highlander,
the elite starts at about sixty-seven thousand dollars as a driveway price and this highlander is
just over seventy-one thousand dollars uh to start with so it's not exactly cheap so you'd want to be
uh saving some money on your fuel costs wouldn't you to get that to get your money back basically
so as with all electric cars power is instant as soon as you put your foot on the throttle
you've got three driving modes economy normal and sport and if you've got it in sport mode if you
hit the uh the throttle pedal you know flat out you'll actually get a wheel spin even in the drive
i think that's a combination of the amount of power going through the front wheels
plus also the tyres on this car are designed for maximum efficiency
so they're quite a hard tire because designed to you know generate better rolling resistance
for the car um to make it more efficient the downside to that is you don't get quite as much
grip because the tyres are much harder i'd actually prefer to get some different tyres
that you know would give you a lot more grip particularly in you know the weather for example
you know if you get a rainy day you want to know that your tires are going to grip and not send
you all over the road if you put your foot down a bit too enthusiastically um you know you might
lose a few kilometers of range because of that because you're not on the most efficient tyres
but personally i think i'd rather have a bit more grip from the front end
and um yeah lose a few k's and that's a small price to pay i think
as you'd imagine for a top-of-the-range car from hyundai it's packed with all the equipment you'd
probably ever need on the safety front you've got the typical autonomous braking blind spot monitor
lane keeping aid adaptive cruise control front and rear parking sensors reverse camera you get
the picture everything's standard you've even got a head-up display as well you've got a 10.25
inch digital display in front of the driver and another 10.25 inch infotainment display as well
that gives you built-in satellite navigation apple carplay android auto
but as i'll show you when we stop you can also look at different modes for your driving style
set up your different driving modes as well and then adjust your regenerative braking
um between the different modes so it's actually quite a handy little feature
we've got leather seats as standard as you can see this is the lighter sort of
ceramic color i suppose you'd call it the seats are heated and air conditioned
great for the summer um particularly here in australia when you get up to 40 degrees on a
summer's day the steering wheel is heated as well which these last few days when it's been
a bit cold in the morning has been fantastic and the good thing about electric cars over
a petrol or a diesel car is in the morning when you get in the car you haven't got to
wait for the engine to warm up to get heat out the heater because electric power is instant
the heater or the air conditioning warms up or cools down a lot quicker than a standard
petrol or diesel car and that goes for the heated seats and the heated steering wheel as well
in terms of warranty you get the same five year unlimited kilometer warranty
like every other hyundai but they then do a separate warranty just for the battery and that
gives you eight years or 160 000 kilometers warranty uh purely for the battery itself
so being an electric car it's obviously there's no noise from the engine or
anything so then it does make you aware of how much road noise you get inside the cabin
um because a lot of road surfaces are sort of fairly coarse so you do get a lot of sort of
tire noise and road noise coming to the cabin uh unless you go on like a really like a brand new
piece of road um then it's lovely and quiet yeah generally you do get quite a bit of road noise
and tyre noise coming to the cabin which you might be able to hear from the camera as well
servicing costs are a fair bit cheaper than a petrol car as you'd imagine
being in there's less moving parts to um sort of replace or repair and uh hyundai actually
do a couple of service packages as well and i'll put the details on the screen for you
the seats are really comfortable in here but also the driving position is really good as well
being slightly higher up um because it's an suv you get a really good view of the road
ahead your visibility to the side and the back is pretty good too and you've got that head-up
display that i mentioned earlier so you can see all your information on there like your speedo
sat nav directions what music you might be listening to um so it's actually a really easy
car to drive so now we've actually come to a nice place to do a bit of filming uh so i'm gonna jump
out the car and show you around the outside and then also talk to you about some of the features
as well so the exterior styling has changed a bit for 2021. um on last year's model the front grille
had this kind of cheese grater effect i suppose you'd call it it looked like lots of little holes
so they've smoothed off the front of the car this year the only downside to me personally
is that the flap for charging is right at the front i think it would have been better
if they put it on the side which i think would have looked a little bit better in
terms of just a one piece finish but other than that it's actually quite a nice design
in terms of lighting being this is the highlander model we've got the daytime running lights at the
top which switch over to become your indicators when obviously you put your indicators on
and then you've got the led headlights just down the bottom here
this color is called surfy blue there's a couple of different colors you can choose from
this is quite a nice one it's actually a metallic finish you can't tell until you get it in
you know sunlight like today but it's actually quite a lot of metallic fleck in the paint uh so
it's actually quite nice on a day like today. this car's got a black roof which is an alternative to
having the sunroof so you can either have the factory fitted sunroof or the black roof it's a
shame you can't have both because obviously having both would be quite nice because this black roof
contrasts really well against the blue paintwork i actually quite like it as a combination
so as you imagine on a car costing this much money we've got keyless entry to start with uh
obviously push button start as well when we come inside we've got these beautiful leather seats
which are fully electric down there as well including lumber support on the driver's side
full leather steering wheel with all your buttons controls for your audio system and
your safety systems there on the right hand side we've got a harman kardon sound system uh which
you would think would normally be pretty good but in practice it's it's okay it's not the best sound
system i've ever heard in a car so coming to the dashboard there's a 10.25 inch digital display
that i mentioned to you earlier in the video it's really nice and clear to see
obviously speedo to the left your power meter over to the right hand side
so you can see whether you're using power or putting charge back into the battery
um and that middle section you can actually change what you see in that bit there
i've currently got it on energy flow so you can see when you're taking power out of the battery
but you can also see when you're putting power back into the battery um just a little bit of a
game to play while you're driving along i suppose if you look at the bottom um part of the screen
there you can actually see i've been averaging 16.7 kilowatts per 100 kilometers um so that's how
much power it uses to drive 100 kilometers um so that's actually not too bad all things considered
we come over here we've then got the 10.25 inch display
um which is your sat nav apple car play your android auto there's quite a lot of functionality
on here that's unique um because this is the electric model so if we just go on to the home
screen and we pop into the ev mode so here you can see different information about the battery itself
um so you can see over here uh maximum amount you can put in there's obviously 100
i'm currently at 94 so there's plenty of charge in the battery at the minute but this section
over here if you click on there you can actually get a list of all the local charging places where
you can actually go and charge your car up so it tells you what type of charger it is and then you
can actually click on the individual sort of list of chargers and go into the one you want to choose
so it tells you exactly where the charging place is gives you the address it also tells you what
type of charging outlet it is as well so you know if it's going to be suitable for your car coming
slightly further down the dashboard you've then just got your controls for your air conditioning
and climate control and it's actually quite a neat feature which does just the driver only
i'm assuming that's to try and save a little bit of battery power but actually quite a neat little
feature um that i've never seen on any car before um just below that under here we've actually got
a wireless charging pad we've also got a usb in there as well i think it's a bit of a shame that
you don't get wireless apple car play because you'd then be able to make use of that wireless
charging pad then we come down to the gear selector and as you can see that's pretty easy
that's nice and simple to understand you've then got an electric handbrake as well and then this
is where you get all the goodies so you've got heated heated and ventilated seats for
driver and passenger we've got the driving mode that i mentioned earlier so you can go between
economy normal and sport on this highlander model we've also got a heated steering wheel
uh which the last few mornings here in melbourne has been a bit cold has been absolutely fantastic
uh you've then got an automatic hold function for your electric handbrake
and then it allows you to switch between the different views on the the front and rear
cameras so as you can see the general layout here inside the kona is actually really sort of nice
and clear everything is laid out nicely nothing sort of too confusing with too many buttons
it's actually quite a nice interior and it doesn't feel like an electric car which is good
now if you're short like me i'm only five foot six space in the back isn't actually too bad
i've got the front driving seat in my position so that's exactly where i'd have it so the legroom
actually isn't too bad but you can't actually get your feet under the driver's seat um which for
someone who might be a bit taller than me might be a bit of a struggle because you'd probably want
to stretch your legs out on a long journey you do get a really nice feature here in the back though
the outer two passengers actually get heated rear seats which for this size of car is quite
you know quite unusual to get even on bigger cars you don't normally get heated rear seats
headroom is actually pretty good this car hasn't got the sunroof so i don't know whether having the
factory fitted sunroof would then encroach on a bit of headroom um yeah without the sunroof it's
perfectly fine one thing i would have liked to have seen would actually be some rear air vents
um because then you rely on the air conditioning coming through from the front of the car to cool
down the passengers in the back so that's probably a little bit of an oversight on
a kind of cost is this amount of money you only get one usb port down here to share between the
rear passengers which again feels a little bit stingy on a car of this sort of value
it would have been nice to at least in sort of one each for the uh you know for two passengers
in the back um to sort of try and share but you do get some sort of averagely sized door pockets
so you do get these nets on the back of the front seats and then of course we've got
the fold down arm rest with a couple of cup holders in here as well which is quite nice
outer rear seats get the isofix child point settings um so you can actually attach your
child and child seats in there as well but there's not a massive amount of space back here but it is
a small city suv so it's not like it's a a main family car for a lot of people the rear styling
is also quite nice as well um the rear tailgate isn't electric which i'd have thought for a car
that cost the best part of 72 thousand dollars you'd have an electric tailgate at least um but
hey ho you can't have everything i guess um boot size isn't too bad you lose a little bit of boot
space because obviously the sort of batteries underneath the car you don't get a spare wheel
you just get one these sort of tyre inflation kits but underneath the boot floor uh you've
actually got the charging cable under there and this nice little sort of box so that's sort of
quite neat and hidden away um but yeah you've got like a little luggage net here as well
you can fold your seats down like normally in every other sort of hatchback or mini suv
so it's actually fairly practical i did manage to get a suitcase and a holdall in here as
well the other day and so i'll overlay a bit of footage for that so you can actually see how much
room you can get in there so that brings us to an end to the video for this 2021
hyundai kona electric highlander i hope you've enjoyed it i've certainly enjoyed my week living
with the car uh it's been interesting to see what it's like to live with an electric car full-time
um so yeah it's been a really good exercise from that point of view
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i can in the meantime thanks for watching and i look forward to seeing you all in the next one
you