After the government announced a reduction of Goods and Services Tax (GST) on electric vehicles (EVs), which are now placed in the 5 per cent slab and not in 12 per cent, makers of such vehicles had to pass on the benefits to customers. One of them is Hyundai Motor India which entered the EV space with the Kona Electric last month. The model, which comes to India via the CKD route, had two price tags at the time of launch – Rs 25.3 lakh for the single tone colour and Rs 25.5 lakh for the dual-tone.

Now, prices for the Kona Electric start at Rs 23.72 lakh, a reduction of more than Rs 1.58 lakh, and go up to Rs 23.91 lakh, down by over Rs 1.59 lakh. The revised ex-showroom India prices are applicable on all units sold on or after August 1, 2019. Hyundai bagged 152 bookings for the Kona Electric in 20 days. That’s a gain of 32 bookings in 10 days since the company garnered 120 bookings for the EV in the first 10 days of its launch. Needless to say, all those bookings were made before this year’s calendar turned to August.

The Kona Electric makes the most intriguing case for an EV in India. Propulsion comes courtesy of a single electric motor which produces 134hp/395Nm. The motor gets its juices from a 39.2kWh lithium-ion battery pack. The whole powertrain is efficient enough to return a travel range of 452km (as per ARAI) on a single charge. When plugged to an AC feed, the battery can replenish from zero to 100 per cent in approximately 6 hours and 10 minutes. However, when the recommended fast-charging tech comes into the equation, the claimed charging time from zero to 80 per cent is nearly 57 minutes.

At present, the Hyundai Kona Electric is available in 15 dealerships across 11 cities in India. They are – Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Mumbai, Cochin, New Delhi, Pune, Gurgaon, Chandigarh, Kolkata and Lucknow. As things stand, the EV doesn’t have any direct competition at the moment. However, that will change by the end of 2019 as MG Motor India is readying the launch of its first EV and second product in the country – the eZS.