Want to buy a used 2019 Kona -- how should I deal with the battery recall and price inflation?

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Tam

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I am new car buying and even newer to EVs, but doing my research. I would prefer to buy a used car, for the price and because I generally prefer used items. I recently drove and fell in love with the 2019 Kona. Thanks to this forum I knew to ask the dealer about Recall 200. I also noticed when I test drove the car that the battery charging was set to 80% max (suspicious, given that charging only to 80% was Hyundai's initial recall instructions?). The dealer stated that they checked (whatever that means) and there's no recall on the car I drove. How do I know they're telling the truth? If there is a recall on the battery, is my only option to demand that they replace it?

Also, I've read that the price of used cars is up 40% over last year. This 2019 Kona with 20,000 miles on it is priced around $28,000. How inflated is that? With Hyundai buying back a lot of 2019s due to this recall, could I expect to see more 2019 in stock at dealers soon, and will the price go down?
 
You didn't mention the trim level so hard to give you an opinion if this is a good deal. You can go the the Hyundai recall site and plug in the VIN to verify if its got any outstanding recalls. If it does have a open battery recall I would personally either pass or negotiate for significantly less than their current asking. To give you some perspective a few months before the battery recall Tesla offered me the equivalent of U$ 22K on my 19,000 mile 2020 Canadian preferred which is kinda something in between an limited and ultimate in the US market. Now its worth nothing to them. Basically if it has an outstanding battery recall any half decent dealer won't touch these things as a trade at the moment. That is a huge bargaining chip if your really hot for this car.
 
It is currently a jumbled mess with Kona EVs (in particular 2019-2020 models).

You can try taking a picture of the car battery sticker (it's under the car, in the back according to gofunko), and enter that serial number to determine when it was made. Other than that, you can do what Apu suggest and check if there are still open recalls on the car. But since that Hyundai dealer is the one who is selling the car (they are obviously the one who bought it from a trade in before this whole fire recall had started), they can claim that the car is not one of the affected vehicles.

There is really no way to know if the battery you have is the newer battery.

As for price inflation, unless the vehicle has no previous owner, but is an older model (say 2019 or 2020), I would be very suspicious if the car already has 20,000 miles on it.

From posters who had their vehicles bought back from Hyundai due to the recalls, all of those returned cars seems to go to an auction lot, because it looks like Hyundai is not keeping them.

You know the old saying: "If the price is too good to be true, it usually is..."
 
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If this is the one listed on Edmunds in Northampton, MA I checked the VIN on the nhtsa web site and the car shows zero outstanding recalls there as well. I trust that site. As for price, you won’t be getting the $7500 tax rebate because it is a used car so figure that into your calculations. The only other figure I can compare it with is a listed $18000 residual value of a 2019 Limited at the end of a 3 year lease and 36000 miles.
 
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