Did a 700 km drive in my 2023 Hyundai Verna; returns 15 km/l on highway

October 9, 2023

If you are cruising around 110kmph, the car loves it and gives you 16-18kmpl but if you go faster, the FE drops immediately!

BHPian vignesh207 recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

Just completed a ~700km drive on the highway and hills with my Verna and also hit the 1200km mark and got the 1st service done after 3 weeks of delivery. Let me sum up my experience so far.

What I like:

The car is very comfortable on the city runs but transforms into a beast on the highway!
The 160HP engine has enough power for all practical scenarios. It handled long highways cruising at triple-digit speeds, winding hill roads, and very steep climbs like a breeze.
When cruising at triple-digit speeds, if you need to do an overtake and need some extra power, just a little bit more pressure on the accelerator, the DCT gearbox takes a fraction of a second to kick down and you get pushed back with that power!
The NVH levels are really good and on the highway, you hardly feel any bumps inside. The rear seat comfort is also really good.
I felt the space in the rear seat was a lot higher compared to the Older Verna or the VW/Skoda twins.
The boot is massive and swallows anything you throw inside. I had a couple of large trolleys, a baby car sear (as my toddler refused to sit in it), and a few duffle bags, and still had a lot of room
The fuel economy is good for an automatic car this size. On the highway, while cruising, I consistently got 15-16kmpl and got 10kmpl in city traffic.
Auto-Hold is a God-send feature. In city bumper-to-bumper traffic, the car moves slowly when you lift the foot off the brake pedal. When you want to engage auto-hold, you press the pedal once the vehicle comes to a stop (kind of like a long press on smartphones) and auto-hold engages till you press the accelerator again. More on this here (Auto Hold: Most convenient yet neglected feature!)
ADAS works great, especially on the highway. I had Lane Keep Assist (LKA) on for my entire highway run which maintains the car bang on the center of the lane and takes control of the steering wheel for all the curves on the highway. When you try to switch lanes, say for an overtake, the steering will resist first but then let you do it and engage LKA once back on the new lane. This can become a pain and the best way is to let your car (and the cars behind you) know that you are switching lanes when the indicator. If you tap the indicator stalk and then try to switch lanes, the LKA won’t resist and let you make the switch. This takes some practice to get used to, but once done, it is extremely comfortable.
I didn’t get a chance to try Adaptive Cruise control as I never found anyone cruising at the same speed for a long time on the TN highways I went.
AC is really good and kept the cabin cool in the scorching TN heat. Ventilated seats are always on in my car in TN’s heat.
I’m no audiophile, but the Bose speaker system is really good IMHO. The infotainment screen is very smooth and Android Auto on the large 10.25-inch screen looks really beautiful.
Bluelink – It’s really useful to monitor the car and get some nice statistics about your drives. There were a couple of times I forgot the lock the car and Bluelink notified me promptly on this.

What I don’t like:

Brakes! In spite of being 4 discs, the brakes are not confidence-inspiring. A slight press on the brake pedal does not slow down the car as you expect and if you press slightly harder, the car will slow down faster than you want. You really need to get used to the way the brakes behave to get some confidence here.
Front headlights, it is decent on normal days, but on days with heavy rain, I just can’t see a thing with these lights. Need to upgrade to better lights soon.
Engine Auto-stop, it’s annoying and jerky. It stops the engine when you don’t want it to, then after a minute turns the engine back on (as AC is still running). It is straight-up irritating in city traffic and doesn’t even retain its setting from the previous run. I have to turn it off every time I take the car.
Space for water bottles on the front doors has 2 slots. The larger one can’t fit a 1L bottle and is too big for a 500ml bottle. Looks like Hyundai should sell bottles that fit in this as official accessories!
The Full Digital Instrument Cluster is just a gimmick. The left and right are just static Speedo/Tacho and only the middle screen displays all the information. For the information available (like ADAS, trip meters, D2E meters, and TPMS, a fully digital instrument Cluster (like the one in the new Kia Seltos) would have made much more sense.
Wireless Charging without wireless Android Auto is just meaningless IMO.
Bluelink (yes it’s on the What I Like list also above!) is very unreliable and needs improvement. It reminded me that I didn’t lock the doors (which meant the car was parked in a place where there was connectivity) but the lock command keeps failing due to connectivity issues. I was walking towards the car at this point and kept trying and eventually ended up locking with the key once in the range! One more thing is the “My Trips” section with the drive statistics does not work if your trip ends in a place without a signal (like my home basement car parking!!)

Some minor nit-picks:

I have 3 Hyundai Car Garages (2015 i20, 2019 Santro, and the Verna) and I expect some things to be common because they are all Hyundais, but NO!!
The wiper stalk – Tap up on the Santro and i20 for one wipe (mist) but on the verna, it’s a tap down!! Move down for slow, INT, and fast but in Verna the stalk needs to be moved up!
Media control on the steering – In Santro and i20, Up arrow for the next track and down for the previous, but on the Verna down arrow for the next track and up for the previous!
The horn sounds for door lock and unlock are just too loud! There is a milder beeper that beeps for the Smart Trunk, why not something like that for the door lock/unlock?
The soft-touch plastics on the door insides are a big fingerprint magnet.
The power window controls are too far ahead. From my seating position (I’m 5’11”), I end up hitting the rear window controls if I don’t look at them

Adding some pictures from my trip to end my post! The Red color is a head-turner and catches a lot of people gazing at the car as I drive past or while I park at my workplace or home.

The last image is of the trip meter after my long drive. Got a FE of 13.5 kmpl including city sections, a lot of highway runs, and 40-50 km of hill sections. One thing to note is if you are cruising around 110kmph, the car loves it and gives you 16-18kmpl but if you go faster, the FE drops immediately!