Back in February after many stressful trips in the car with a crazy dog, I was wondering about the suitability of a 4 door sedan and having a border collie puppy.

The 4 door sedan was a Hyundai Sonata Hybrid, a car we bought as we planned our move to British Columbia with its $1.50l gas prices, currently $1.52 in places. When I checked the trade-in value of the car I was shocked, its value was dropping like a lead balloon.

I started to look around at Electric Vehicles, EVs and found several models out there, some, like the jaguar, were just out of the price range, then some of the others just did not have the range. Ever what we bought had to make it from Jasper to Grande Prairie as my son still lives there and will be for a few years yet.

I started to look more at the Hyundai Kona EV, it is a small SUV, but as we don’t live in Alberta anymore most of our road trips are not that far, after all, Vancouver Island is not that big. The Kona also was within the price range for both the BC provincial and Federal EV rebates, $5,000 and $3000 respectively. This brought the price of the middle model, the preferred, down to a price we could manage and it has a range of 430kms, enough to get from Jasper to Grande Prairie, well in the summer, not sure about winter.

So in February we took the plunge and traded in the Sonata, an awesome car, for a white Kona EV Preferred, the higher model had some features which would have been nice to have, such as a soon roof and cooling seats, but it put the price over budget and the preferred has what new needed including adaptive cruise control which has become a must-have for me.

Over the past few months, I have been super impressed with the Kona EV, it is very nimble, stick to the road around the corners thanks to the battery location creating a very low centre of gravity. It is fast off the mark and will beat pretty much most ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) cars off a standing start up to about 60/80 km.

Due to the pandemic, we have not been able to go on any road trips, but this weekend I am heading off to Grande Prairie for a few days to see my son. I am fully vaccinated and if the government is not letting fully vaccinated people know what they can or cannot do then I will do what I feel safe. I will not be staying in any hotels, so aside from that will be doing just what I do at home, social distancing and wearing a mask.

First off the map, this is from a system called PlugShare that covers pretty much all the EV chargers out there.

So the various types of charges are.

So as you can see the charger that comes with the car will take a while to charge the car, if you just used it to drive to work and home then an overnight charge would work for you, anything beyond that then you need a level 2 at home or work, but you could also take advantage of a fast charger.

So I will add a few tech details as it relates to EVs and the Kona from ime to time.