Hyundai Creta Electric long term review, 2,500km report

The Creta just celebrated its 10th birthday and is an SUV that's practically defined Hyundai India as we know the brand today. At this milestone, as we looked back on Autocar India's decade-long relationship with the ubiquitous midsize SUV, we realised the long-term fleet has been home to every single generation and facelift of it. And this newest entrant to the fleet represents the latest and largest leap for an SUV that's constantly evolving. Is it any surprise that Hyundai's first mass-market EV for India took the shape and name of the Creta? It seems like a winning formula, but the sales charts tell a different story. After running it for a month, however, I can't figure out why people aren't falling over each other to buy one. It’s brilliant!

There's the argument that it doesn't look or feel wild enough, and to each their own, but that's precisely what I like about it. Personally, I'm past the novelty phase of EVs, where they had to wow you with their looks and hurt your eyeballs with their acceleration. I've come to realise that an EV's ultimate application is the daily grind, and for that, it needs to be comfortable, refined, practical, soothing and full of features. You know, like a Creta.

3-pin plug point under the rear seat lets you charge larger devices like laptops.

I loved the spell in our Creta 1.5 petrol CVT long termer, and frankly, stepping into this felt almost no different. Tall seating position, comfy seat, great view out over the unexpectedly low dual screens and a clean if somewhat plasticky dashboard. It's got the same enormous equipment list too, including my favourite feature – the brilliant 8-speaker Bose sound system. One big change – the centre console is now split, with a floating bit between the seats and a large storage space freed up in the dashboard. It may not seem like much, but it shows Hyundai was at least trying to pass on some of the space efficiency benefits of an EV to the customer.

The steering wheel is new, borrowed from the latest-gen Kona Electric, and as a long-time Hyundai user, I'm still not used to the steering controls having been swapped between the left and right spokes. What I got used to surprisingly quickly was the twist-operated drive state selector behind that steering wheel, although I will admit I may have gone into R instead of D a few times initially.

Another pleasant surprise is how little it gives away in terms of boot space. Not something I usually have to put to the test, an emergency requirement for some plastic chairs meant I had to play a hurried game of Tetris in the luggage compartment. The parcel tray came off, chairs went in, and a bit of push and pull later, I managed to pack it nearly to the roof with stuff. Probably couldn't do that in some newfangled, low-slung coupé-EV.

I'll tell you more about how it drives in a future report, but I will leave you with one last detail that left me gobsmacked, and that's the efficiency. The Ioniq 5 always wowed us by delivering upwards of 6.5km/kWh regularly, but it was a big, heavy car. The smaller Creta averages 7.5-7.8km/kWh, and if there's less traffic, it can nudge 10! That's an insane figure for a low-slung aero-efficient sports car, let alone a boxy SUV based on an ICE model.

Battery protected and high enough, but easily visible and untidily executed.

So you see, underneath that conventional and recognisable body shell lies the best of Hyundai's tech and engineering. If that's the only barrier to purchasing this EV, I’d encourage more people to give it another go. I’m still learning more about it as we go along, but for now, colour me impressed.