New EV's on the Market - Hyundai Kona Electric, Mini Electric & VW I.D News!

Not a day passes without something happening or being announced in the world of Electric Vehicles…so let’s rattle through.

THE all new Electric HYUNDAI KONA has finally arrived

Major news for Volt-Age this week as the new electric Hyundai Kona finally rolled onto our fleet. The compact SUV has already proven to be a huge success for Hyundai, with around a 10 month lead time on new orders, and rave reviews from motor journalists. It’s not hard to see why.

 
 

Our Kona’s are all the highest spec Premium SE 64 kWh flavour, which packs 279 miles of range (WLTP) and comes with everything you would expect, including Apple Car Play/Android Auto, Sat-Nav, Adaptive Cruise Control, Lane Departure Warning to name a few. One of the Hyundai Kona’s most intriguing features is the ability to set the regenerative braking to suit your own taste. Two paddles sit either side of the steering wheel (akin to the flappy paddles Jeremy Clarkson harps on about) with the left paddle increasing the strength and the right lowering. The Kona is a great everyday family car, with a range that will fulfill most peoples needs.

The Hyundai Kona Electric models are available for hire now! Learn more here.

THE MINI ELECTRIC IS FORMALLY ANNOUNCED FOR PRE-ORDER

You’ve got to hand it to BMW for keeping Mini’s iconic brand going. Everyone recognises a Mini instantly, including my 3 year old son, so when they announced plans for the Mini Electric last year, I was keen to see whether or not it would come as a completely new style of vehicle, or whether it would be a continuation of the current Mini guise. The latter it is then. Very little has changed from the ICE version, in fact, apart from the subtle additions of the plug logo on the front grille, and the yellow accents, you wouldn’t even know it was an E.V.

As important as the styling is, what really counts is the guts and how much of your hard earned cash they expect you to part with. BMW have revealed that prices will start at £24,400 OTR (including the Government Grant), which is the around an Automatic Cooper S price point, with pre-orders open now for a March 2020 delivery date. The electric Mini borrows the powertrain tech from the BMW i3, (no surprise there then) which means 0-60 in 7.3 seconds, and uses the 94Ah/33kWh battery found in the older i3 variant. This really means a likely range of 100-115 miles, which should be okay for a City Car, especially considering it’s close to £10,000 cheaper than an i3. BMW also confirmed that the vehicle will be built at Mini’s Oxford plant, which (considering everything that is going on politically) can only be a good thing for Mini’s workers.

VW ID.3 HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT

We’ve already covered the upcoming VW ID.3 here, but since then, we’ve had more information, the pre-order books have opened up, you’ll be able to hire one from us in the not so distant future. What we haven’t seen until now though is a non camouflaged version, that is until now. Thanks to twitter user @gregkable, we now have some photos of a lightly disguised ID.3, out and about in Stuttgart, Germany.

In terms of size, the ID.3 looks placed firmly between a Polo and a Golf in terms of external size, while it’s fair to assume they’ll be lots more space on offer (as is the case with most EV’s). It’s still a while before the ID.3 is set to launch at the Frankfurt Motor Show with the cloak off, but from these pictures, I think it’s fair to say that the car that VW dubbed “the most important car since the Beetle & Golf” will launch with a tonne of expectation on it’s shoulders. My money is on it delivering the goods. The car is too important to VW to get wrong.

James O'Toole