AN EV, EVERYDAY!
Is India ready for EVs? Are we ready for EVs? We spend a month with the Kona Electric to find out
What’s it like living with an electric vehicle in India?
HAVE DRIVEN ELECTRIC CARS BEFORE but, weirdly, only at a racetrack. It’s about as natural as taking a hang glider to a dogfight, especially considering both the electric cars were primarily designed as city runabouts. Electrics, sure, have the accelerative power to shrink apex to exit to nothing but that’s not why you buy an EV, do you?
Which brings me to the point of this story. I needed to drive and experience an EV in its natural environment, on streets that regular people who buy them would drive them on, and most of all discover if an EV adds or reduces the stress of daily life. So here’s a story that involved fitness trackers, a friend’s bungalow, and dogs. I promise you there’s a story here.
Question 1: Does it get you attention?
Priorities. I wanted to know if an electric car was capable of showboating. More specifically, I was interested in was whether it would indulge my peacocking to get the attention from the fairer sex. So I took to Tinder. I’ve seen plenty of men upload pictures of themselves in symbols of masculinity and alpha-ness, G-Wagens and Mustangs (and how do you know
THE LACK OF A GRILLE, THE GREEN PLATES, EVEN THE FACT THAT IT WHIZZES AROUND SILENTLY GETS PEOPLE TO TURN HEADS
that? — Ed), all in the hope that this would impress women. Could an electric car do the same?
I hypothesised that the Kona Electric would represent my progressive thinking. It would showcase my awareness for the issues this planet was facing. It would show my willingness to take charge of and create change in my immediate vicinity. I’m no expert but I’d like to think that women dig that sort of thing.
Anyway, to cut a long story short, I didn’t get any more Tinder matches than I normally do. The few women who found me interesting enough to have a conversation with, said that while the car is cool, they are more interested in my personality. Is that a thing? I thought it was all about big cars and bigger biceps. Nevertheless, I didn’t see the spike in activity that I expected. An intern in the office recommended I replace the cars with dogs. Apparently that really reels ’em in.
However, I got plenty of attention from elsewhere. Mostly from men. The Kona Electric looks funky and it draws a crowd. The lack of a grille, the green plates, even the fact that it whizzes around silently gets people to turn heads! People strike up conversations at the traffic lights, at parking
lots and even my neighbour who normally does nothing but glower at me after I told him to put a stop to his dog peeing on my test cars, asked if I’d bought the Kona Electric. I guess electric cars do make the world a happier place.
Question 2: Better than a regular car?
When talking about EVs, it is hard to not bring up the internal combustion engine. They are the current benchmark, and all our perceptions of motoring have been formed through them. When someone says an EV is ‘silent’, they mean ‘silent in comparison to a petrol car’. It’s only normal for the human brain to use the known to understand the unknown, but perceptions can only tell you so much. We wanted data. Hard data. So we strapped on the Apple Watch Series 5.
This nifty little device can monitor your heartbeat in real time to give you data about your heart rate, your sleep cycle and can raise the alarm if it senses an incoming heart attack. What I wanted to get at is something the entire motoring community has been up in arms about since EVs started elbowing their way in to the mainstream. How exciting is the electric car?
With Series 5 on, I did two identical runs through Pune traffic in the Kona Electric and a Hyundai Tucson. Heart rate is directly proportional to excitement and, I wanted to see which one caused a bigger spike. The results will shock you. If you think an engine is inherently more thrilling than an electric drivetrain you, sir, may have put your foot in your mouth. Peak heart rate in the Kona: 102bpm. Peak heart rate in the Tucson: 100bpm.
I put this down to how they accelerate. Where the Tucson momentarily dropped a gear, picked up revs, and then delivered a wave of torque — the roar from the engine acting like a warning to impending surge in speed, the Kona just darted forward as soon as I touched the accelerator. No sound. No warning. Just a whack to the back of the head and a speed breaker approaching faster than expected.
Question 3: How real is range anxiety?
I drove the Kona Electric down from Mumbai, starting off from Bandra with two bars down on the charge meter and 280km of range, plenty enough for the 170km drive to my place. Crawling through Mumbai’s hellish traffic the range
actually went up — the city in fact is the perfect environment for a city car where the stop-go traffic plays into the strengths of an electric. Then I hit the expressway and discovered, oh wow, the Kona gets a proper move on. This is one quick electric car, not just in terms of acceleration but also in terms of cruising speed.
The Kona Electric might have low rolling resistance tyres but on the twisties it’s actually great fun, grips very well and has a sharp pointy front end. I don’t want to say this but I have to say this, an EV can also deliver thrills.
Except all this kills range. At the toll booth on the Pune side the range had dropped to 60km. And home was 40km away. That was my cue to stick to the speed limit, range went up, and I got home with 30km range left — something that I’d need to search for a charging station.
Question 4: What is all this battery charging business about?
Look, I’m not the owner of this Kona Electric. If I was one, Hyundai would have set up a charging box in the parking space at home. But what if that isn’t an option? In Pune, I could not find any public chargers. Google Maps throws up a bunch of irrelevant electric scooter stores and the one charging station it actually did recommend, isn’t operational — something we found out when we actually went to check it out. Hyundai has an 7.4kW fast charger at one of its dealerships in the city, and it will pick your car up, top it up and return it to you when needed. Public infrastructure is coming, though. Tata Power has announced plans for a public grid in five cities including
THE KONA ELECTRIC JUST DARTED FORWARD AS SOON AS I TOUCHED THE ACCELERATOR
Pune, and Ather should be launching the Ather grid in a few more cities soon. Delhi and Mumbai have some semblance of public charging infrastructure, with a few stations scattered across the cities. While there is no infrastructure on our highways yet I don’t think that’s such a big problem because if you were to drive back to Mumbai from Pune you will, like I did, swing by a friend’s bungalow and charge it up over a regular 15A socket. A full charge from empty takes 19 hours, which leaves you with plenty of time to catch up on the birds and the bees.
Question 5: What happens when you run out charge completely?
Okay, we have established that range anxiety is a thing. The question here is, what are we getting anxious about? In our final test, we pretended to run out of charge, and called the toll-free road side assistance number in the Kona Electric’s owner’s manual to find out.
First, we provided the regular details you need to furnish when you make such a call. Name, car model, chassis number, location were all shared over the phone. Within an hour a technician from Hyundai’s roadside assistance turns up and when he realises you haven’t reported a dead battery that can be jumped, he makes another call to call for another technician who will — if your car is really out of juice — take charge of your car, get it juiced up and return it to you as soon as possible.
HYUNDAI HAS A RECOVERY CAR FITTED WITH A GENERATOR ON STANDBY
If you’re in Mumbai, Delhi or any of the major metros, Hyundai also has a recovery car fitted with a generator on standby that will juice up the Kona Electric so that it can drive to the nearest plug-point. In a nutshell, running out of charge isn’t an apocalyptic event and in any case we only needed to charge the Kona once a week for our Pune city commute so there actually isn’t much stress in driving an EV.
Question 6: Does it add to your stress?
Honestly, no. Charging, as we have established, isn’t such a big deal. More than that though, driving the Kona Electric is surprisingly relaxing. I particularly enjoyed the 2-pedal driving that you get when you ramp up regeneration to its maximum and the car slows down strongly when you get off the accelerator. Keep the left steering wheel paddle pulled and the car will come to a complete stop so you actually don’t have to touch the brakes at all.
Then there’s the obvious silence. There’s a serious novelty factor associated with zipping around in absolute silence, something that did not wear off even after a month of living with it. I can’t figure out why but the Hyundai Kona Electric is actually easier to drive than, say, an automatic Creta. And, finally, the Kona Electric actually made me feel like a cleaner, more responsible citizen of the world. Everyday I looked forward to taking out this bubble of silence in to the chaos of our city streets. It made me feel, dare I say it, good. And isn’t that what we enthusiasts are always on about — how a car makes you feel? ⌧