My new Kona Electric and my first impressions

Finally got BlueLink working today. Still have some learning to do. I can get the doors to lock and unlock but haven’t been able to pre warm or set the climate system to operate. It appears you can’t get a report of the charge level but I imagine they can improve it over time.

 

how long did it take to activate? how did you get it working?
been almost a week now for me, gives me an error message everytime i try to sign up with my vin#.
talked to Hyundai bluelink support, still trying to resolve the issue.

 

I tried every day from Monday and it finally worked today. It wouldn’t recognize the vin number but it did today. If it’s been a week for you I would suggest phoning again.

 

Got my ceramic blue unit yesterday. So far it is a dream to drive. I briefly tested the active lane keep assist today, and it worked quite well. It even turned through some fairly sharp curves, but it left me nervous and it drifted to outer lane markings a little on curves. Setting regen at three delivers good braking. I seem to like regen level 2 in town, but level three if there is a lot of traffic. Holding left paddle brought it to a stop nicely. My brakes are going to last forever!!

 

The Hyundai BlueLink Alexa skill is not available in Canada yet. I’ll have to wait a while before it will warm up the car!

 

I just signed up with FLO and Greenlots. Talked to a nice LEAF owner who filled me in on charging. FLO have signed a roaming agreement with Chargepoint so apparently you only need one RFID card for level 2 charging. The LEAF owner has had his car for 3 years and his average electricity cost is 1 cent per kilometre, that’s pretty good I would say. He found that Kal Tire would rotate his tires for free so his total maintenance costs are pretty low too. He didn’t do much DC charging as he finds the chargers normally busy and unreliable.

 

Why not use Amazon.com? I have all my devices registered there. I see Blue Link is available, but I can't enable it yet as we don't have a VIN registered with Blue LInk. I find linking all my devices with .com so much better than .ca and all the glitches with them.

 

What is a RFID card? I have a Flo Card and Chargepoint apps. What is DC charging? Thanks.

 

An RFID card is any sort of keyfob or card that you can just tap to activate, similar to the tap function on a credit or debit card.

DC charging is your Level 3 charging. Level 1 and 2 both use the charger built into the car which is powered by AC, or household voltage. Level 3 charges directly into the battery system, similar to hooking booster cables from one car battery to another. Traction battery in the Kona already used DC voltage, so Level 3 doesn't have to convert, whereas the onboard charger for Level 1 and 2 converts from AC to DC.

Hope that makes sense!

 

Forgot to mention, your FLO card will be RFID!

 

The FLO card you have has an embedded RFID chip in it. I should have been clearer about DC charging, it’s actually called level 3 or CCS charging or Rapid charging and can charge the car to 80% in less than an hour depending on conditions.

 

Makes total sense! Thanks for the clear explanations.

 

That’s an interesting idea, I didn’t know you could do that. I think I’ll wait until you get yours setup and see if it works for you.

 

We had the first Echo they brought out and brought it to Canada set up on .com, and we have 3 Echo Shows, I use Amazon Music on .com. All are on .com nothing has not worked. I had the Alexa App in Canada before they were here. It really is much smoother for everything on .com. Many Canadians on the Amazon Alexa forum feel the same.

 

I do see the little symbol for the chip now that I look at it. Thanks. No car to use it yet though.

 

Just tried my first Rapid Charge, worked well. I was lucky to meet a B.C. Hydro manager responsible for charging infrastructure and he talked me through the process. I had the Greenlots app installed. Charged from 65% to 88% in just under an hour and found out that a level 2 charger is faster above 90%. The manager told me that the Kona actually has a 72Kw battery so it’s fine to charge to 100%. One test he suggested was to charge to 100% and then try the regen braking, he thought the Kona would work just fine but cars like the LEAF wouldn’t work well at that charge level. He also suggested getting 5 apps on my phone, FLO, Chargepoint, Plugshare, Chargehub and Greenlots.

 

Please charge up to 80% only with fast chargers. It’s charging etiquette. After 80% charging rates go way down and take much longer. When done charging to 80% please vacate the spot for other EV’s to charge. Charging 101 with EV community.

 

Not sure I agree with that. Firstly the Kona charges much faster than level 2 up to 90%. Secondly I was standing next to the charger the entire time with no one waiting. What’s wrong with that?

 

Thanks for that info. I wondered why all the comments not to charge to 100% at fast chargers. Makes sense.

 

Just politely giving out the info, not ragging on you. If no ones there waiting by all means squeeze that little of juice.
There are too many a** making others wait over an hour while they squeeze every bit of juice into their car as much as possible.