It's hard to know where to begin discussing driving dynamics.  There are multiple nuances in play at once, but many of them are hidden or second-order effects.  Let's start with the most visible fundamentals emphasized in the sales literature for the Kona and other electrics -- the drive modes or "curves", and regenerative braking.  There isn't a whole lot else for a driver to mess with or change!  Most electric cars have no gear-ratio shifting, just a single-speed reduction gear from motor to wheels which is quite enough to cover the entire speed range of the vehicle.  Electric motors have much wider RPM limits than internal-combustion engines where useful power is produced, including down to a total standstill; they don't have to "idle" at 900 RPM and be carefully kept alive while applying power to a drivetrain.  It makes electrics very simple to drive, once you figure out how to shift one to "D" in the first place -- it's a big golf-cart, you have a "go" pedal and a "stop" pedal to control speed, and you just steer it and keep an eye on the guess-o-meter range estimate.

There are many ways to describe the experience.  This review from Robert Llewellyn and the Fully Charged team, which I've referenced before, is worth a watch for comparison.  It presents a nice rundown on the observations of a long roadtrip, where the keyword seems to be "effortless".  For the most part, I agree with that.

Like most other vehicles, the Kona applies some "creep" in the selected direction when the brake pedal is released from a stop.  It's no longer a function of physical automatic-transmission drag, but as described in several references, that old effect became such a natural and expected kinesthetic thing it's now considered a safety feature [updated link].  Under a few circumstances the Kona will remain still with no feet applied to the pedals, notably during a "hill hold" scenario, but usually it will start gently and smoothly moving in D or R.  [And making that silly Jetsons-jingle, unless you've pulled the speaker.]  Unimpeded drift rate seems to be about 4 mph on the flat.

Now we press a pedal, and drivers are given some degree of control over what happens next.

Even with all the advances, regenerative braking is also one of the least understood sciences on the road.  While researching around for my own EV decision I saw a lot of confusion and misinformation posted in forum threads and even supposedly "informative" articles.  In principle, it's simple -- the substantial force of a car slowing to rest is used to spin a "generator" against a controllable load, utilizing the same drive shafts, gear train, and motor that got it going in the first place.  But many people still seem to think it's still done "in the brakes" somehow, as though friction is magically turned into electricity captured in a battery.  It is often an eye-opener to the public when the simpler reality is explained, along with how the physical brakes get very lightly used and pad/shoe changes will be *very* infrequent as a result.  Once they get the concept, then they have to also realize that it's not a 100% capture and replay, there are always losses through the system.

For rough comparison, regen 1 feels about like a Prius in "B" mode.  Even that is still too much for a lot of almost-float conditions.  Another mild annoyance is that the manual *lies* about regen 0 being a settable default for any of the drive modes -- the lowest setting is 1, so every time I boot up and get going I have to bap the right paddle once to get it back to 0 for the rest of that run.

After extensive experimentation I dropped my conclusions into a long rant over at Insideevs, in part building on what some other posts had expressed before.  Naturally, a few haters came out of the woodwork to try and shoot me down, but whatever.  Those are probably the same people spinning their front tires on wet leaves and whining about it, while deluded that they're doing really well at 3.6 mi/kWh consumption.

Regeneration has its limits, though.  It amounts to a burst of *very* rapid charge into the battery, sometimes more than it can safely handle.  A hard stop at speed can easily produce over 300 amps, and while large EV batteries can usually suck that up for a short time, it's far more than most smaller hybrid batteries can accept.  Regeneration control has to change dynamically and fast, responding instantly to driver demand, road conditions, and variable limits based on factors like temperature.  It also has to know when to quit, such as over complex bumps when forces and currents change too quickly to maintain control of.  We can sometimes feel that relinquishing of control as a brief little "sag" in braking force as hydraulics take over, because the ultimate task of the system is to stop the car.

What's interesting is that even in regen level 0, a *tiny* bit of energy recapture happens -- all of -2 to -4 kilowatts or so, and vanishes down to 0 on shifting to Neutral.  The difference between D and N are indistinguishable by feel, so there's no particular advantage to entering a full "neutral glide" at speed like we sometimes need to do in the Prius.  Most of that power trickle seems to go to keeping the 12V system alive, as its voltage reliably shoots back up to that excessive 14.8 float in the process.

If the car's speed is above some minimal level like 2 mph, one can freely shift between D and N and back without having to press the brake pedal.  It's only at a full stop that stepping on the brake is needed to move to D, which I suppose is a reasonable assumption such that an inadvertant tap on the button doesn't unexpectedly *start* the car moving.  But if it's already moving forward, that was the driver's intent so no lurchy additional brake-press is needed then.  Knowing this is important to me because there are several circumstances where shifting to N on the fly is useful.  One is to deliberately use the friction brakes to slow, usually to clean rust off the rotors -- a couple hundred feet of gentle hydraulic-only braking takes care of it, and then it's back into D.  [Moving to N *during* a braking event immediately disables regeneration in just about any hybrid/electric system, and is the easy way to reproduce that "hydraulic takeover" transition to learn what it feels like.]  I also usually shift to N at stoplights and such -- it allows sitting there and watching the rearview to know when to pulse the brake lights toward someone approaching from the rear, without having the car try to creep forward in bursts.  It also makes for a much smoother stop over the last couple of MPH.  Being able to do all that without looking or fumbling was the main reason for the shift button mod to make it easier to find.

Overall, once all these things are worked out and gotten used to at the muscle-memory level, the experience of driving is very smooth and pleasant.  I don't really notice the road/tire noise that others complain about because the windows are usually open some way, my hands are locked into a very stable position on the wheel crossbar, and I'm relaxed and one with the machine just like always.  And pulling 5.5 mi/kWh on a summertime mix of local/highway, I might add -- that's about like high-fifties MPG in a Prius.  The *only* differences I really notice on getting back into the Prius are the longer expanse of dash-top in front of me, and a slightly heavier steering feel.  Oh, and of course that "old car smell".

My foot demand was about exactly the same in these two shots, with the terrain at the time somewhat reflected in the outer arc and obviously needing a lot more output than suggested in the left-hand one just to keep going against air resistance.  Oh no, into the red zone!  But in general, driving in a "constant power" model with a bit of speed loss on the uphills and getting it back on the downs is overall more efficient than trying to rigidly hold a speed.  Thus, in this car as well as the Prius or any other, cruise control tends to defeat the purpose if one is trying to maximize range.  Interestingly, the ECO mode also allows configuring a soft speed limit, past which power sent to the wheels will be limited.  That's almost a rough high-limit cruise-control in itself, where a driver's foot can relax into a "just anywhere" held position on a sufficiently open road for a while.  Beware, though -- past a certain pedal demand point, the speed limit is suddenly defeated and the car obeys *that* level of command with one's foot way into it asking for lots of power.  Surprise!  Great if you want to pass someone like a total dick, I suppose.

All four tires are kept around 60 PSI, which is perfectly safe to do and makes for much better rolling and wear profile.  The TPMS sensors or the system they talk to tops out at 51, which happens to be the sidewall rating of the stock Nexens.  So basically when starting off, I can check that they're at 51 all round and assume they're higher, and if any pressures show lower it's probably time to go around and air them all up a bit.

What's not in these shots is the "power/regen" indicator along the left side, which isn't all that much use either.  It has a segment *hysteresis* of up to 10 kilowatts, e.g. my foot has to go from 10 kW to 20 kW before it lights the second bar of the graph, and then back down under 10 before it drops back to one bar ... and then a similar game between 20 and 30, etc.  The little yellow number in the "electricity use" head-unit display, or even a battery-current reading taken via OBD2, is more useful and immediate.

Between LKA and generic cruise and confusing "auto-hold" settings and clumsy features of the paddles, all of this feels more like "driver interference" than "driver assistance" to me.  LKA might be a useful brief reminder to use once in a while if I'm poking at the GPS, which is probably my worst window of attention vulnerability.  I'll give it all an honest go and try to understand how some people might like to use these features, but within about ten minutes I'm like "my airplane" and go back to actually driving the vehicle.  At this point I can often tell just by looking at other cars and their motion dynamics when their drivers are trying to rely on these overly-automated nanny systems -- that so often get it wrong where real-world safety is concerned.  Most notable is those fucking "auto-follow" radar cruise controls, which I am constantly having to yuppie-button off my ass because their supposedly "safe" systems still ride too close.

As much as things may have advanced recently, if you want to spin the tales of people sleeping inside moving Teslas as "progress", we're stll a long way from fully autonomous vehicles that can deal with all possible conditions.  It's not even clear that people want today's partial solutions, if they are still called upon to intervene when needed.  A telling indictment of that human factor comes from a section starting around 05:40 in this "Autoline" interview where a senior figure *in the industry* of autonomous-vehicle research learned that his wife turned *off* all the safety crap in her new car because it was just too annoying.  At least she was able to; that may not be true in their next car.

Tesla is making impressive strides in the field of neural networks, on both hardware and machine-learning fronts, but after learning more about their approach in some very long videos from their "Autonomy Day" presentation a while back I still have serious doubts that golden "level 5" target.  Their approach is essentially a data-intensive rote-learning model, which is highly unlikely to reach a point where it competently handles human nuance any time soon.  Failure fallback is also too slow for most traffic situations.  I dropped some fairly deep thoughts about this into a forum post in the Tesla area, which I'm sure the fanboiz over there view as me simply pooping on their lawn.  Still, there seems to be growing agreement that true "autonomy" especially in populated areas is going to need a lot of direct infrastructure support, and possibly be kept separated from where human drivers are still doing their thing ... at least until the very last human driver is forcibly removed from the loop.

Good luck getting that to happen.