There is a LOT of pure-D BS being spewed all up and down the internet about EV battery charging and most of it is by people who don't even own one, but sit and pontificate based on what they read.
From the perspect of an actual Kona EV owner for 16 months and 24,000 miles, including low and high temps, and 80 mile per day commutes I have a few real observations. The Kona EV is far more robust than is presented by the arm-chair experts. I've been charging mine primarily on a 240V 50A home charger, and since I have a healthy commute I don't really have the luxury of babying the car. I can make three full trips to and from work without a charge - that's 240 miles. I've experimented with driving as economically as possible and achieved over 6 mi/kWh in town driving and average 4.0-4.2 on the highway when operating in warm weather with some restraint. At the same time I've driven at a solid 75-80 mph on the freeway with surprisingly little consumption of additional range...around 95 miles "used" for 80 miles driven at high, steady-state speeds. I've also discovered that in stoplight driving it's better to accelerate quickly to just above the target speed, then let off with 0 regen and coast all the way to the next light with the mi/kWh pegged to the right, then add regen in stages to slow down. It's easy to stay in the mid-5 mi/kWh using this technique. Since the car has a high performance mode I finally decided I should enjoy the use of it since it's a total blast to launch away from a traffic stop like being fired from a carrier, leaving all the ICE cars far behind, and because Sport mode unleashes the car's full power, I suspect driving "economically" in Sport mode may be more efficient than in ECO. There are so many ways to change-up how the car is driven to try and unlock more range, but for sure I have not been disappointed in the Kona's range.
As for charging, I've used the DCFC a few times just to see how it worked and of course the reason to limit charge to 80% has NOTHING to do with the battery per se, and everything to do with the cost of charging! All batteries charge faster when empty and slow as they near full due to the nature of flowing electrons. To charge from 80-100% on a DCFC takes as long as it does to charge from 0-80%, and at .27-.30/minute, do the math. It's simply not cost, nor time-efficient to squeeze in that last 20% unless absolutely needed.
On my home charger I generally plug in every day simply because it's convenient to do and why not. I also generally charge to 90% and seldom go below 35% before charging. As of my last charge, with my eclectic style of driving, range is listed at 258 miles at 90% and this has proven to be reliable. It's summer now so of course the battery has greater electric potential. I DO however charge to 100% when the mood strikes me, because, why not...my last 100% charge on a 16 month old, 24K mile battery showed 297 miles range available which is pretty respectable. Granted, living in the center of Hell demands full use of AC in the hot summer which cuts into range, but thanks to the amazing efficiency of the Kona's regen, even with all this, my miles driven usually end up correlating very closely with what the range estimated started out showing.
In every conversation I have with people who don't own an electric car they throw out the cost of replacing batteries as if it's required every few months, YET it's about time for people to start looking around at the ever growing number of Teslas that are pushing 10 years old and still have ample battery capacity. Talking about changing batteries in a EV is akin to replacing the engine and transmission in an ICE car and is that cheap? Nope. Do you need to do it every few years? Nope. Same thing for electric cars. I'm not going to try and "preserve" my battery because I didn't buy an EV to baby, but to drive everyday and so far it's been solid across the board.
Sadly for EV adoption, the price of gasoline has plummeted which is what has REALLY driven EV sales down.
