Hyundai Kona Electric 0-60 time: 7.6 seconds Tesla Model X P90DL 0-60 time: 3.2 seconds So, the tie in this apparently rigged and rather lackadaisical* road trip "race" proved that, if you cherry-pick the places to stop and charge at**, a small BEV engineered for high energy efficiency by sacrificing performance, can charge en-route fast enough to keep up with a larger, much higher performance BEV, even when the low-performance BEV is limited to lower power DC fast charging and the high-performance BEV is using Tesla Superchargers. Try to imagine my lack of surprise that a rigged "race" managed to get the apparently pre-determined outcome the drivers set out to achieve. No, try harder. *It has been pointed out that both drivers stopped to talk along the way. Clearly neither made actually winning the race a priority. In fact, given the fact that both finished the trip within a few seconds of each other, it appears that their goal was to hit exactly the same trip time rather than to be the fastest to the finish. **Given the range, the Model X should only have had to stop for a recharge 3 times, with properly spaced Supercharger stations. The fact that it stopped 5 times indicates either rather poor planning on the part of the MX driver, or else the route was deliberately picked to favor the Kona. I'm guessing it's more the latter than the former, altho the driver of the MX was driving a loaner.
Maybe he was talking to me. I didn't mean to dis the Kona; I just think that comparing it to a Model X P90DL is a rather silly comparison: Comparing a fairly compact, energy-efficient car to a much larger and heavier performance-enhanced luxury premium CUV. Why not compare the Kona to something more in its class, such as a Bolt EV or an eGolf or maybe an I-Pace? If you're gonna compare it to a Tesla car, then at least pick something closer: the Model 3. Or at least have Bjørn drive his own car, the Model X. Handing that off to someone else makes it look like they didn't want a driver who knows how to get the best out of the car. That's just one of several things that suggest to me this was a rigged contest. But again, that shouldn't reflect badly on the Kona. Nor did Hyundai set up this apparently rigged "race", so far as I can tell. Likely just a bunch of EV enthusiasts who wanted to give some exposure to this new BEV, and set up a pretense of a "race" to make the video more dramatic. At least, that's my impression. I could be wrong.
I don't see this as a competition between the two. They're very different vehicles. I just saw it as a way to make a comparative analysis.
We agree that it was rigged: Hyundai has history with their Ioniq of targeting the Prius family. Everything from the press releases when the Ioniq was announced to follow-up, reviews. We even saw it in PriusChat when Ioniq advocates showed up with 'chip on their shoulder' attitudes with threads titled: https://priuschat.com/threads/hyundai-ioniq-prius-competitor.160120/ - started Dec 2015 and most recent post July 2018, 117 pages. So this one was in news, its only salvation. https://priuschat.com/threads/prime-vs-hyundai-ioniq.174202/ - starts Dec 2, 2016 through Mar 21, 2018. Actual test drives and Fuelly.com owner reports revealed the problems: "stepped" transmission, and; 10% lower user mileage than the suspicious EPA numbers. There car reviewers with rare exception included the Prius in what looked like an effort to cannibalize Prius owners . . . it didn't work. So we're seeing the same playbook in this contest with the Kona only now kicking sand at Tesla. The follow-up Kona vs Tesla YouTube tried to explain how the Kona lost in spite of being more efficient in kWh per km. Was this any worse than the I-Pace vs Tesla comparisons? Before the Ioniq vs Prius 'contests', the hypermiler owner of CleanMPG went out of his way to do stunt drives with pretenders like the cheating TDI Jetta. Water off a duck's back, no measurable effect. A retired engineer, facts and data with honest benchmarks (i.e., see Car and Driver and Edmunds) work. But there is an odeur rising from some reviews and stunts that turn me off. Bob Wilson ps. Sorry for the long and wandering post just I wanted to give some background why the Kona vs Tesla videos did not work for me.
