The first all-electric vehicle for India by Hyundai has managed to receive 300 bookings since its launch earlier this year
At the time of its launch, Hyundai had set a target of 500 units to be sold yearly. However, the all-electric SUV has received a tremendous response from buyers. Hyundai says that the Kona has already been sold out for the rest of the year, and the carmaker is having difficulties in keeping up with the demand.
Priced at Rs 23.71 lakh (ex-showroom), the Kona SUV has received 300 bookings in total since its launch in July this year. According to Puneet Anand, Group Head Marketing, HMIL, the company made a sale of 88 units last month, and the EV is sold out for five months! The company claims that it is looking to increase the deliveries, and hence will order a larger fleet from the parent company in Korea.
The Kona has a driving range of 452 km, which is way more than any fully electric car currently sold in India. Under the hood, the SUV gets a high voltage 39.2 kWh battery that generates 136PS of peak power, helping the Kona achieve 0-100 km/h in just 9.7 s.
The Kona is assembled at Hyundai’s Chennai plant. Hyundai is looking forward to increasing the localization of parts for the SUV to bring the costs down. The production of the Kona EV is not at par with the demand since its battery has to be imported from Korea, and the car has a high demand in Korea itself. This is the reason why India gets a smaller number of total allocations. “From November we should be able to improve on these allocations“, added Anand.
In India, the only other two fully-electric cars sold are the Mahindra’s electric Verito and Tata’s electric Tigor. However, with a claimed range of about 120-140 km and a price tag of around Rs 10 lakh, these two offerings do not compete with the Kona.
It is certainly not a secret that Tata Motors, Mahindra, Maruti Suzuki, MG Motors are a few manufacturers that are looking to electrify their Indian line up.