Hyundai Kona SUV - Reliability & safety (2017-2023)
The Hyundai Kona comes with lots of safety kit as standard and the brand has a reputation for good reliability
The Kona has won praise from its owners in our Driver Power surveys for its reliability, cheap running costs and array of safety features. This is backed up by its very strong results in independent crash safety testing, which will inspire buyer confidence too.
Hyundai Kona reliability
According to our readers, the Hyundai Kona is one of the best cars to live with in the UK. It came top in our 2021 Driver Power owner satisfaction survey, with every area except practicality regarded as excellent, and it only dropped to fourth spot overall in 2022’s results. Owners told us that the Kona’s ride and handling is superb, while the infotainment system, reliability and cheap running costs also came in for very high praise. In our 2020 survey, only 4.5% of owners reported any faults. It seems many people will never need Hyundai’s five-year warranty.
As a brand, Hyundai finished in a reasonable 11th place out of 29 manufacturers in our brands survey, and a middling 21.3% of owners reported a fault within the first year of ownership.
Safety
The Hyundai Kona emerged from Euro NCAP's rigorous crash-test regime with a creditable five-star safety rating. Its adult occupant protection score of 87% narrowly beat its rating for child occupant protection, where it scored a solid 85%.
While these statistics mainly reflect the strength and design of the Kona's structure, it was rated highly for its standard safety equipment, too. This includes driver fatigue monitoring, lane-keeping assistance, hill-hold and hill-descent control. Ultimate also gets blind-spot monitoring and a system that makes sure it’s safe to exit the car. We’re pleased Hyundai has started to fit autonomous emergency braking as standard, as it was previously limited to top-spec versions.
