The Expected Mileage Of A Hyundai Kona

We’ve written extensively about the Hyundai Kona and its features on this blog. Today we’re going to talk about the potential mileage you can reach with this car and whether or not it’s a good buy. Let’s start with a quick answer:

On average, a Hyundai Kona can be expected to reach a mileage between 200,000 – 240,000 miles. However, since the Kona has been on the market for only a few years, no Kona has ever achieved this mileage, and it’s therefore based on reliability assumptions of Hyundai as well as comparison to the competition. Furthermore, annual maintenance will be around $468.

However, that certainly doesn’t answer the question entirely. Below we’ll first take an in-depth look into the performance of different generations of the Kona in terms of mileage. Also, we’ll compare the Kona to its main competitors and other cars manufactured by Hyundai. Finally, we’ll look at maintenance costs and common problems to make sure you have an excellent feeling for what this car has to offer. Read on!

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Also read: Types Of Gas A Hyundai Kona Takes (All Generations)

How Does The Kona Perform As A Group?

Let’s first talk about how well the Hyundai Kona seems to perform in terms of mileage as a group. For this comparison, we used the database of Autotrader.com. There, we selected all Hyundai Kona’s available for sale. This gave us a sample size of 5,305 vehicles.

Normally, we only select the vehicles that are five years or older to get a clear image of the potential mileage of this car. The reason for this is that these cars have had time to reach decent mileages and the results aren’t skewed by younger models.

However, in the case of the Hyundai Kona, this is not possible. The reason for this is that the oldest models went into production in 2018 and that most of the Kona’s on sale are fairly new. Dividing the Kona up into group based on their mileage, therefore, gave us the following results:

Amount Of Miles	Percentage Of Cars
Cars With 150.000+	0.00%
Cars With 100.000 – 149.999	0.26%
Cars With 45.000 – 99.999	4.26%
Cars With 0 – 44.999	95.48%

As you can see, it’s currently quite difficult to give a conclusion about the mileage of a Hyundai Kona. A total of 0.26% (or 14 cars of the complete sample size) have mileage between 100.000 – 149.999 miles. The majority of the group currently hasn’t even passed the 44.999 miles mark.

This is a clear indication that it is currently very difficult to give a reliable conclusion about the mileage of a Hyundai Kona. However, there are things we can do to figure out this question in more detail.

How Well Does The Kona Do Compared To The Competition?

One of the things we can do is compare the Hyundai Kona to its competition and look at the highest recorded mileage. What we created by doing so is the table that you can see below. We picked the three largest competitors of the Kona and put them through the same method.

We found that the highest recorded mileage of a Kona is 150.000 miles. Currently, this is in line with the highest mileages of the three major competitors. Furthermore, we can see that all the competitors also have very few cars with a mileage of over 150.000. This is once again because most of them have been on the market for only a couple of years.

Now, what can we conclude from this? Currently, we would say that Hyundai has always had an image of reliability (more on that in a moment) it’s very unlikely the Kona does not life up to that standard. Furthermore, so far, the Kona also seems to be right in line with the Honda, Kia, and Toyota which are all reliable brands as well.

It’s of course very difficult to give conclusive numbers of the expected mileage of the Kona at this point in time. What we can do is dive deeper into the reliability of Hyundai and also look at the reported problems that the Kona currently has. Very few problems is of course a good sign whereas many problems already indicate this is probably a car to stay away from. We’ll look at the problems of a Kona as well in this article.

Model	Sample Size	Cars With 150.000+ Miles	% Percentage Of Cars With 150.000+	Highest Mileage
Hyundai Kona	5305	0	0.00%	150,000
Honda HR-V	9016	24	0.27%	165,000
Kia Niro	1712	0	0.00%	140,000
Toyota C-HR	2033	0	0.00%	150,000

How Well Does The Kona Do Compared To Other Hyundais?

Let’s first take a step back and look at the reliability of Hyundai as a brand. To do this, we selected numerous Hyundai models and compare them in the exact way we explained before.

What we found here is that Hyundai, as a brand, does seem to build incredibly reliable vehicles. Most of the Hyundai models have a few hundred cars for sale that have a mileage of 150.000+. In general, that’s a very good sign. Furthermore, the highest recorded mileage for these models across the board is also somewhere in the 240.000 – 310.000 miles range.

This again indicates that Hyundai seems to build vehicles that last a long time. Therefore, this is a positive sign for the future outlook of the Kona.

Model	Sample Size	Cars With 150.000+ Miles	% Percentage Of Cars With 150.000+	Highest Mileage
Hyundai Elantra	22,574	331	1.47%	260,000
Hyundai Sonata	24,172	497	2.06%	310,000
Hyundai Santa Fe	18,059	418	2.31%	270,000
Hyundai Tucson	15,448	175	1.13%	240,000
Hyundai Accent	2,677	85	3.18%	250,000
Hyundai Genesis	814	43	5.28%	240,000
Hyundai Kona	5,305	0	0.00%	150,000

Maintenance Cost Of Hyundai Kona Per Year

Besides knowing the potential mileage a car can reach it’s also important to know what the annual maintenance of a car. Again, for the Hyundai Kona we’ll need to find a bit of a work around since reliable data for this car is not yet available.

What we can do however, is find the average maintenance cost of Hyundai as a brand and see what we can learn from that. For this, we used data from Repairpal.com. They’ve kept track of the maintenance cost of several different Hyundai models over the past years.

What we found here is that the average maintenance cost for a Hyundai is $468 per year. Furthermore, Hyundais need to go to the garage for unexpected maintenance around 0.27 times per year (almost once every three years). Finally, there’s a 10% change of a severe problem when visiting the garage for unexpected maintenance.

All of these numbers are very good and something Hyundai can be proud off. However, what does this tell us about the Kona? Well, first of all the maintenance cost are most likely going to be in the same range or maybe a bit higher.

The reason for this is that the Kona is an SUV which generally have a little higher maintenance cost than the average of a brands models. However, given the high reliability of the brand and the lack of major problems that Hyundais have it’s unlikely you’ll en up spending a whole lot more than $468 per years.

Another way to look at this question is by comparing the data of the competitors of the Kona to see what they would normally cost per year in maintenance. Please see the bullet points below for this (Toyota C-HR data is not available):

• A Hyonda HR-V has annual maintenance cost of $301 per year. Furthermore, it needs to go to the garage for unexpected maintenance around 0.1 times per year with a 5% chance of a severe problem.
• A Kia Niro has annual maintenance cost of $471 per year. Furthermore, it needs to go to the garage for unexpected maintenance around 0.42 times per year with a 9% chance of a severe problem.

The information of these cars suggests that, if the Hyundai Kona is anything like them, the maintenance cost will indeed be very affordable and the chances of major repairs are minimal.

Also read: The Complete Cost Of Maintaining A Hyundai

Common Hyundai Kona Problems

Because the car is still so young there are of course very few complaints. This is a good sign of course because it shows that the first few years of this car being in production have been quite trouble-free. However, some points should be noted if you’re in the market for the Kona.

NOTE: Before buying a used car, I always like to make sure the vehicle isn´t having any problems that you should be aware of. The easiest way to do this is by buying an OBD2 scanner. These scanners can easily be plugged into any car you’re interested in, and they’ll give you a rundown of potential problems.

Also read: 6 Common Problems Of A Hyundai Kona

Transmission

The second generation of the Hyundai Kona with the 6-speed automatic transmission doesn’t seem to be that reliable. Some owners have complaints of excessive noise when accelerating and Hyundai has issued a service bulletin (#20-AT-018) for this particular transmission.

The service bulletin involves the replacement of the solenoids, input, and output speed sensors, oil temperature sensor, inhibitor switch, and axle seals. Click here for the exact service bulletin.

Headlights

Another problem the Kona seems to have is water accumulation in the headlights, rear lights, DR lights, or fog lamps. Hyundai has issued service bulletin #20-BD-014H for this (this bulletin applies to all Hyundai models). This repair falls under the standard warranty of the car.

Other complaints

Other complaints include problems with the power steering that makes it difficult for the car to keep going in a straight line and problems with sudden acceleration. However, these are loose complaints, and there’s little evidence to back these claims up so far.

Is A Hyundai Kona A Smart Buy?

So, is the Hyundai Kona an intelligent buy or not? We currently do not have any reason to believe that the Kona wouldn’t be a smart buy in terms of mileage potential. This is because the Kona is manufactured by Hyundai, which has a solid brand reputation in terms of its reliability.

Furthermore, the Kona doesn’t seem to have any significant problems so far, although it may be wise to stay away from the six-speed automatic transmission or make sure that it has had its service bulletin maintenance. Otherwise, you may run into more significant problems in the future.

Finally, using data from Caredge.com, we found that the Kona depreciates around 47% in the first five years. Therefore buying a second-hand Kona that has been on the road for five years may very well be an intelligent financial decision. The reason for this is that a Kona most likely still has ten years left while you’ll get it at a 47% discount. Definetly something to consider.