Hyundai Owner Reviews

The 2025 Hyundai Santa Fe Elite Hybrid features a rich suite of multimedia and safety technologies, including a large panoramic dual 12.3-inch digital display that combines the instrument cluster and infotainment touchscreen, with wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto connectivity for maps, music and apps. It also offers Hyundai Bluelink connected services and over-the-air (OTA) software updates, premium audio systems, wireless phone charging and multiple USB ports to keep devices charged and entertained. On the safety side, the model is equipped with the advanced Hyundai SmartSense suite of systems such as Forward Collision-Avoidance Assist, Blind-Spot View Monitor, Surround View Monitor with 360° cameras, Lane Keep Assist, Rear Cross-Traffic Collision-Avoidance, Driver Attention Warning and Safe Exit Warning, all designed to help prevent accidents and protect occupants.The 2025 Hyundai Santa Fe Elite Hybrid delivers practical interior space and cargo versatility that suits families, daily life, and adventures. Its cabin offers generous headroom and legroom for front and rear occupants, making longer drives more comfortable for adults and children alike, with thoughtful storage cubbies, cup holders, USB ports and a dual-access centre console adding everyday usability. The rear cargo area provides ample boot space — around 628L with seats up — and expands to nearly 1949L with the rear seats folded flat, so you can easily carry groceries, luggage, sports gear or camping equipment. The wide tailgate and flat load floor make loading bulky items easier, while flexible 60/40 fold-down seating lets you balance passengers and cargo without hassle.The 2025 Hyundai Santa Fe Elite Hybrid is smooth, quiet and confidence-inspiring to drive, especially in everyday conditions. The hybrid powertrain delivers responsive acceleration with minimal engine noise, while the electric motor assists at low speeds for relaxed city driving. On highways, it feels stable and refined, with well-controlled suspension that absorbs bumps comfortably, even on larger wheels. Steering is light and predictable, making the Santa Fe easy to manoeuvre despite its size, and overall handling is tuned more for comfort and composure than sporty driving, which suits family use well."Fuel savings and capped servicing help keep the everyday running costs more efficient than many petrol SUVs, but total ownership costs still include insurance, registration and periodic maintenance typical of a modern hybrid SUV.Its hybrid powertrain claims around 5.6L/100 km combined, which helps reduce fuel bills compared to petrol-only SUVs.Hyundai offers capped-price servicing with intervals of every 12 months or 10,000km, and pre-paid packages cost around $2405 over five years (roughly under $500 a year).The vehicle comes with a five-year/unlimited-kilometre warranty, and the hybrid battery is for eight years or 160,000km in Australia."Because the model is new, long-term reliability trends aren’t fully established, so warranty coverage and regular servicing are important for peace of mind which I do. Manufacturer and community experiences suggest you may see typical new-model teething issues, but I am still enjoying the car without major faults.

Very good. I have owned lots of Ford Falcons, but I would rate my Sonata ahead of most of the Fords I owned. In fact, I rate this Sonata as one of the best cars I have owned. It has a 2.4 litre and in Sport mode it really flys. Very quick. It surprised me. Fuel average depends on how you drive and what mode. Servicing I find expensive at $400, but it is only once a year. Insurance is about average. Overall, this car is great. Very reliable in every way. Only one issue is the passenger window has to be controlled on the driver's side of the car. Other than that, it is superb and always garaged.

The screen sometimes just goes black. The volume of a text message coming through the speakers, if a phone is plugged into the USB port, is extremely loud and no one can figure out how to turn it down, so as soon as I get in the car, I have to silence my phone, which is a pain. The car has a great safety rating, though. I know it's a super safe design, but the high windows in the back mean the people sitting in the back can barely see out the window!Interior seems hard-wearing, but the seats are full of stains, even though I have no idea how they got there?! A drop from a leaking drinking bottle maybe, but they are very dirty. The rear cargo is tidy and easy to clean.It is smooth to drive when nothing is wrong with the engine! I've driven smoother cars, though. It is affordable to run. It is not a thirsty car and I get it serviced annually. This is a reasonable price and insurance is what I would expect it to be.I purchased this car as an upgrade from my 2006 Hyundai Tucson, which I loved and it never had any problems. I have had constant problems with my 2016 Tucson and I wish I had never purchased this car. Constant issues include weird noises and broken buttons etc. I have gotten to know my mechanic very well! He sees me coming and says, "What now!?"

The car has every safety feature. What I find interesting is that insurance companies will insure this car for less than my previous car due to these features. A lady walked across behind the car when I was reversing, it hit brakes before I could. The seats are very comfortable. The driver side is well laid out, with most things easy to find. The voice command feature doesn't work very well. It's just good enough to call someone. The interior lighting is nice especially in the evening.The HUD is an essential feature for me now, as it saves my head checking the speed. It also shows when to turn and what the cruise control is set to.The rear cargo area is fairly big and suits our needs. Can't say I love the automatic opening door, but have worked out I can stop it fully opening when I have a 6m paddling ski on the racks. Hop in the seat and press the 'Start' button to get things going, then confirm your acceptance of driving the vehicle, and then press the settings roller to turn off the annoying 'Speed Limit' warning. Okay, we are good to go and roll out of the garage with warnings going off as we go past posts.Off we go. It's so quiet and comfortable, with a spacious surrounding. The car accelerates when needed instantly. I just love it every time, as there's no lag and no noise. Handling is reasonable with the weight all down low. It is not a sports coupe but a sedan, so I think it is fine. The efficiency of the EV is just amazing. I have really noticed the reduced cost. Charging is mainly done at home, but when charging on a highway run, most times we haven't clashed with others. There is still conversations had as we charged, sharing stories of our EV experience. Insurance has been a real surprise with it being far cheaper than my previous car. Tyres and wiper blades are the main consumables. I just enjoy that as well. It is early days, but to date we haven't had an issue. There have been a few over-the-air updates for screen updates, I think, but not sure what they did. I have been using the ABRP app to workout where to charge and when. This takes all the hard work out of planning a trip.Also, I love the Bluelink app that shows the current status of the car, allows you to remotely lock and unlock, see what is around the car and look at the stats of your drives.

One big selling point for us was the presence of physical buttons for major functions such as temperature control, radio, other media, and the maps. Many other settings can be controlled via the 12.3-inch touchscreen, which is seamlessly integrated with a second 12.3-inch instrument cluster in front of the driver. There are plenty of USB-C charging points present in the front and back. One of the USB connectors in the front can be changed by pressing a switch, from a charging function to a USB media connector to allow playing music or video via USB. There are none of the older USB connection points, so we had to buy an adapter to use our older USB sticks.When we bought the Kona it had wired Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, but by the time we got it home an over-the-air (OTA) update (yes, the Kona also has OTA update capability) had changed these to wireless. CarPlay. Works quickly but we have not had the opportunity to test Android Auto. The Kona EV comes with Hyundai's 'Bluelink' connectivity via an app. This can remotely control things like charging, climate control, locking, battery conditioning, and heating or cooling the seats. It works well and is easy to use. Safety features are many in the Kona EV. These include smart cruise control, lane-keeping warning and assist, passing car alert when opening doors, forward and reverse automatic braking when detecting a collision, a 12-inch head up display, and dual projector LED headlights. Reading some reviews about recent Hyundai vehicles in general, many people get annoyed with the continual beeps they get from the safety systems such as speed limit detection or lane changing. Yes, it can get annoying at times and even if you turn the sounds off, they return when the car is turned back on. A solution we found was to create a shortcut to turn the sounds off via the steering wheel shortcut button. Two button presses when you start the car and they are gone! Another, of course, is to turn the radio up – then you don’t hear them!One feature found on the premium model is a blind-spot camera that shows up when you indicate. This appears in the instrument cluster. Other cameras on the car provide a 360-degree 3D image which turns on when parking or in reverse, and can also be manually activated at any time. The first thing that impresses about the Kona is the interior layout. It is just a peasant place to be. The seats are very comfortable and have full electric adjustment for both driver and passenger up front. The rear seats are equally comfortable and have a two-position reclining function, albeit manually operated. Both front and outboard rear seats are heated, and the front are also ventilated. The steering wheel is also heated. All can be pre set via Hyundai’s Bluelink app. There are some hard plastics in the cabin, but you wouldn’t really know it. All the soft touch stuff is where it really counts, where you rest your arms while driving. The steering wheel has a nice feel, too.Storage-wise, there is plenty of space in the Kona. Unlike the first model, which was very limited in the luggage area, this has plenty of boot space for several suitcases or whatever else you want to put back there. Indeed, one of our criteria for selecting the Kona was that it could fit our sporting equipment without folding the car seats down. When you want more storage the rear seats are split 40/60. The boot floor has two levels, and one big surprise is that under it all there is a space-saver spare tyre. None of this tyre-repair stuff! Under the bonnet is a storage trunk (frunk) big enough to hold our spare cables and other small things.Speaking of the bonnet, it is supported with hydraulic struts. The boot is electronic, which I suppose is a good thing and it does work well. Even has an automatic hands-free function. I am a bit old fashioned, though, and still prefer to open the boot myself!The Kona EV also has V2L functionality. This is via a power point in the back seat area. I have only tested it briefly so far and it ran a vacuum cleaner and some power tools without a problem. Still to try making coffee! It also has external V2L capability via the charge port and we have an adapter on order (this is an extra of about $500), so it will be interesting to see how this works.The driving experience is where the Kona stands out among other EVs we took for test drives. The power rating of the 2024 Kona EV is the same as the outgoing model at 150kW, but the torque has been significantly reduced from close to 400Nm to 255Nm. Despite this, it is still comparable to most other EVs and has enough oomph to quickly get off the mark and overtake with ease. Having owned a 2021 Kia Niro with similar outputs to the previous Kona, the lowering in torque is barely noticeable and does make for a more pleasant drive. The ride is very smooth and reminds us of a late model Citroen C4 we recently owned. Cornering feels safe; it is firmly planted and it irons out bumps very well. In fact, we had a 2023 Hybrid Kona as a courtesy car during our first service and this felt very firm and rough in comparison. So too did several other makes of EV we took for test drives. Another plus for the driving experience is how the Kona deals with some of the safety systems in place. Although it has lane keeping with steering assist, this is definitely not as aggressive as some others we have experienced. Haptic feedback, rather than an audible alarm can be set to warn when straying off line and this is gentle rather than violent. Steering assist is generally accurate and works with or without cruise control. In our experience so far, the Kona has not exhibited any ‘phantom braking’, something that has happened in several other EVs we have driven.The efficiency of the Kona Premium is not too bad, as it certainly suits our needs. We live outside of Launceston in Tassie, so it is a bit hilly, and a large proportion of our driving is at highway speeds of 100 – 110km/h. All our driving is with the climate control on. After about 3000km, the overall efficiency rating is at around 17kWh/100km, so that gives a realistic range of about 370-380km with our sort of driving. The official rating for the car is about 444km and this, and possibly more, would easily be achievable around town. We often see a usage of 13-14kWh/100km with town use. These are similar amounts to what we were seeing on our previous Kia Niro, and we had driven it from Tassie to Adelaide several times without any range anxiety. One thing that is disappointing is that the Premium model comes with 19-inch wheels and cannot be optioned with the 17-inch wheels of the standard model Kona EV. With 17-inch wheels the official range is over 500km. Not sure why Hyundai don’t offer this as an option because we certainly would have taken it. The 19-inch wheels do look good, though.Cost-wise, our charging is largely done at home, either using solar or off peak rates. If the battery were completely empty, it would only cost around $10 to ‘fill’. We usually top up once or twice a week at home using the slow charger supplied with the car, which uses a domestic 10amp powerpoint. This is adequate for most of our driving and we only use public fast chargers on trips over 350km.Obtaining insurance was no problem and is similar to a previous four-cylinder petrol car we owned and less than our previous EV which was a 2021 Kia Niro.Servicing is every two years or 30,000km.Reliability of the Kona EV Premium is difficulty to speak to as we have only driven it for 3000km.All seems pretty good so far, though. There are no rattles or squeaks suddenly appearing, and you would certainly notice these as the cabin is very quiet at all speeds. All the panels fit well and everything works as it should. The multimedia screen is responsive and both Apple Maps and the maps on the vehicle work without any glitches. As well as being able to operate the usual voice commands in Apple or Android, the Kona has its own voice control for systems such as heating, sunroof, radio, or maps, and this works well once you know what commands to use!