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Ooty-Bangalore in Hyundai Kona EV: Made it home with just 5% battery!

15th May 2025, 12:10 by Utkarsh Chaudhary

I started babying the electric vehicle. Switched the AC off and drove with regen at zero.

BHPian shankar.balan recently shared this with other enthusiasts:

Adventures of the Day.

So we left Ooty this morning with a 100% charge.

There was minimal traffic down the hills, so I was able to set a pretty spanking pace.

All the way on Zero Regen and constantly leveraging the paddles for braking around curves and down those slopes. I note that when one uses this style of driving, there is hardly any need to step on the brakes.

I saw a lovely Land Cruiser VX and couldn't help asking my wife to take a snap.

Stopped to take a nice photo against the backdrop of the Pykara Dam. And one shot of the water on the downstream side.

There were only three places between Ooty and Mudumalai where I needed to ‘step on the throttle’ and overtake. The rest of the time it was plain sailing.

At Gudalur, we actually had 100% juice, as can be seen.

And we actually reached the KA border with only one bar down on the battery, because of regen!

From the exit of Bandipur right up to the Mysore Toll after Nanjangud, I was on cruise at 80kmph. Superb clean run.

Stopped for lunch at Aashirwad Grand and sadly, there is no charger there yet.

Went to Shell, but both chargers were occupied.

Drove to the Mall of Mysore and went to Zeon. Here is where the adventures took a turn.

In the first place, it connected when I scanned and then abruptly stopped, saying network failure. I'm surprised because I've never had this issue before at the Zeon charger at Mall of Mysore. So I took a hotspot from my wife and started charging. It is a 50 kW charger, so it started juicing up from 60%.

We went into the Mall and did a bit of shopping. At the shop while paying the bill, I noticed that the charge had reached 72%. We were inside for just 20 mins. When we reached the mall exit, the Zeon app showed that it had stopped charging abruptly. Reaching the charger unit, we noted that it had indeed undergone some failure.

So we unplugged and I said hey, we have 72% so let's buzz off to Bangalore.

Mind you, I have been using only Eco Mode during this entire trip. Anyway, when we hit the Expressway, I put the car on cruise at 95kmph and kept at it. No slackening pace. No need to overtake. Traffic was well-behaved and the drive was pleasant.

We went past Ramanagaram and suddenly we seemed to have only 99kms of range. We hit Bidadi and seemed to have only 66kms of range. We hit the NICE Road with only 32kms of range.

Yes, the drive between Mysore and Bangalore has a gradual gradient as well as some long stretches of ups and a few downs.

I started babying the car. Switched the AC off. Windows down a bit. Stayed in the left lane. Drove with regen at zero and feathered the accelerator all the way.

By the time we hit Bannerghatta Road exit, we had come down to 25kms and critical low battery levels.

When we reached the Hosur Road exit, we were at 7% battery and 18kms range. At Hosa Road, we were at 6% and 17kms range.

As we hit Kudlu gate we were down to 5% and on the back roads in HSR, just about 1km from home, we went into Turtle Mode.

We pulled up at home. And immediately plugged in. The car was still showing 5%.

That was indeed an interesting and adventurous experience. But the Kona behaved extremely well all the way, and it was fun!