Special Edition - Hyundai Inster
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Car
Shundai i10
The Shundai i10 is a small car made by Shundai. It's designed to be affordable and easy to drive, especially in cities.
Car
Shundai i20
The Shundai i20 is a slightly bigger car than the i10, made for people who need a bit more space and features in their vehicle.
Car
Hyundai i20
The Hyundai i20 is a small car that is bigger than the i10 but smaller than the i30. It's a good option for people looking for a reliable and efficient vehicle that is easy to drive and park.
Car
Renault 4
The Renault 4 is a compact car that was made by the French company Renault. It was popular for being practical and useful, similar to some modern hatchback SUVs.
Car
Fiat / 2100 Familiare
Car
Fiat Panda
The Fiat Panda is a small car made by Fiat that has been around since the 1980s. It's known for being easy to drive and very practical, much like some modern hatchback SUVs.
Car
Shundai Casper
The Shundai Casper is a small electric car that was first shown as a design idea before it became available for people to buy. It's made to be affordable and is mostly sold in places like the UK and Canada.
Term
kWh battery
A kWh battery measures how much energy a battery can hold. More kWh means the car can go further on a single charge.
Term
horsepower
Horsepower is a way to measure how powerful a car's engine is. The higher the horsepower, the faster and more powerful the car can be.
Concept
electric vehicles (EVs)
Electric vehicles are cars that run on electricity instead of gas. They are usually better for the environment and can save money on fuel.
Term
colour tax
Colour tax is an extra fee you might have to pay for specific car colors that cost more to make. Some colors are more expensive than others, and this fee covers that difference.
Term
metallic paint
Metallic paint is a special kind of car paint that has tiny bits of metal in it. This makes the paint shine and sparkle when the sun hits it, making the car look more attractive.
Car
Renault 5
The Renault 5 is another small car from Renault that was popular in the 70s and 80s. It was known for being fun to drive and had a sporty version called the Turbo.
Term
EV platform
An EV platform is a special design used for electric cars. It helps make the inside of the car more spacious because it doesn't need parts like a gas engine or transmission, which take up space.
Term
inverter
An inverter is a part that changes the type of electricity from the battery so that it can be used to power the car's motor. It's important for how electric cars work.
Car
BMW E34
The BMW E34 is a model of the 5 Series car made by BMW in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It was designed to be both sporty and comfortable for drivers.
Car
BMW E30
Car
BMW E32
Term
drive mode
Drive modes let you change how the car feels when you drive it. You can make it more fuel-efficient, normal, or sporty depending on what you want.
Term
sport mode
Sport mode makes the car feel faster and more responsive. It changes how the car reacts when you press the gas pedal, making it more fun to drive.
Term
eco mode
Eco mode is a setting in the car that helps you save gas. It makes the car use less power, which can help you drive further on a tank of fuel.
Term
body roll
Body roll is when a car leans to one side while turning. If a car has less body roll, it feels more stable and controlled when going around corners.
Term
suspension
Suspension is what helps a car stay smooth and stable when driving over bumps. It includes parts that connect the car to its wheels and help absorb shocks from the road.
Car
Bmw I3
The BMW i3 is a small electric car made by BMW. It's designed for city driving and has a different look and feel compared to traditional cars, including its tires.
Term
regenerative braking
Regenerative braking helps electric cars recharge their batteries while slowing down. Instead of wasting energy, it saves some of it for later use.
Term
AC
AC means air conditioning, which cools the air inside the car. It makes driving more comfortable on hot days.
Term
range
Range is how far a car can go before it needs more fuel or a recharge. It's important to know so you don't run out of power while driving.
Car
Lexus Is 400
The Lexus LS 400 is a fancy car that was first made in 1989 and is known for being very comfortable and well-made. It's a great choice if you want a luxurious ride with lots of nice features.
Term
miles per kilowatt hour
Miles per kilowatt hour tells you how far an electric car can go using a certain amount of electricity. The more miles you get per kilowatt hour, the better the car is at using energy.
Car
Ioniq
The Ioniq is a car made by Hyundai that can run on electricity or a mix of gas and electricity. It's designed to be very efficient, which means it can go further on less energy.
Term
WLTP
WLTP is a testing method used to measure how much fuel a car uses and how much pollution it produces. It gives a better idea of real-world driving conditions than older tests.
Term
electric vehicle battery
An electric vehicle battery is what powers electric cars. It's like the fuel tank in a gas car, but instead of gasoline, it stores electricity.
LIVE
Welcome to the Motoring Podcast at Shundai Insta Launch Special Edition.
Hello, I'm Alan.
Hello, I'm Andrew.
Insta?
What is this Insta you speak of, Alan?
It's a new small Shundai, the likes of which we have never seen before.
In the UK.
It is a new small electric SUV from Shundai which sits between the i10 and the i20, so
it's somewhere between an A and B segment.
Maybe kind of closer to B segment.
Hatchback SUV thing.
It's not really, is it an SUV?
I mean, if you're going to call it an SUV, it's really you're stretching the definition
of an SUV, but it is vaguely sportier, more crossover-y.
Well, it's sporty and it's utility and it's a vehicle.
It kind of fits into that category, but it's kind of tall.
To me, it's sort of somewhere, I don't know.
It's like the new Renault 4 or the old Renault 4 or any of these things which would be an
SUV at the time.
Yeah, like the Fiat Panda, that sort of idea behind it.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's that sort of concept.
Anyway, Shundai invited me along to the UK launch of the Insta down in Bournemouth.
They flew me down from Edinburgh.
They fed me food.
They put me up for the night in the nice hotel room and then they flew me back the next morning.
It was awful.
That was great.
Well, it was fun because I haven't been on one of these for a long time.
But yes, this is also quite an important car for Shundai and as we'll go through in just
a second, it's towards the more value-slash-budget end of the EV world.
The Insta itself is a global car, although I very much doubt it will reach the USA.
Maybe Canada because they do sometimes buy small cars, but we'll see.
It was originally a concept called by the name it's sold as in Korea, which is the Casper.
I think we covered it a new car on use some time ago when it was still a concept.
We did.
But it's not a concept anymore.
And it is available in the UK in three different trim levels.
There is the 0102 and the Cross.
Prices start at £23,495 for the Insta 01 with the 42kWh battery and putting out 97 metric
horsepower.
They rise to £25,045 for the 01, again 49kWh battery and 115 metric horsepower.
Then the Insta 02 with the same drivetrain is £26,745 and the range is capped off by
the Insta Cross, which is fair chunk more expensive, at £28,745.
Again, it shares that same higher power drivetrain and higher capacity battery.
Okay, compared to some of the more affordable budget conscious EVs, affordable.
Well, yes, some of the other small EVs in that same size, those prices do seem relatively
high.
That is until you start to compare the trim levels and what's included beyond the normal
electric windows and alloy wheels and these kind of things.
All of the trim levels include things like keyless entry.
They all include a heat pump and a battery conditioner.
I know that there are vehicles I've driven recently which were twice the price, at least
twice the price, where those are still options.
Which is insane.
Which is mad given there's something that I definitely desire.
Certainly in this part of the UK up here in frozen Scotland, it says it's only 11 degrees
outside.
It's not bad.
Up here in frozen Scotland, they are things that I would say were a must for most EVs for
most purposes.
The Insta are available and the availability does vary between spec but use a configurator
on the Hyundai website to work that one out because otherwise we'll be here all night.
It is available in a number of colours.
Ooh, colours.
These colours are inspired by the natural hues of handji paper according to the press
release.
I'll just let that one sit for a second or two.
Natural Ivory Solid is free of charge.
That is your non-taxed non-colour.
Actually it is a colour.
It is Ivory so slightly yellowish as opposed to just white.
Atlas White Solid is a £300 option.
Jungle Kaki Solid, which sounds unfortunate, is £600.
Metallic, so Sienna Orange and Pearl colours, that's Buttercream Yellow and Abyss Black
are £600 extra.
If you choose Atlas White, Jungle Kaki, Sienna Orange or Aero Silver, which Aero Silver being
a metallic colour, which I realised I had listed before because I was cross-referencing
three different documents and missed one, and you want that black roof on an Insta 02
then that will cost you £500 on top of the colour tax.
Well, okay, so we're £1100 then.
Say £1100 in colours, potentially maximum.
Potentially.
Should you wish?
I wouldn't bother with black roof.
But I don't really like cars but they split it that way anyway.
The car I drove on the day was Sienna Orange, which is a sort of metallic orange, just like
darker and sort of orangy browny colour.
Great metallic sparkle to it, looked great in the sunshine, looked really good.
Most of the colours here do look good, even the natural Ivory is not white enough.
Should you want one of those or take one in one of the plainer, flat colours then there
is a range of decals and stuff which you can add on or the dealer can add on to make it
a little bit funkier, maybe break up some of the flat colour.
Okay.
Lots of options beyond just the colour tax to jazz it up and make it yours and make it
how you want.
Speaking about the rest of the exterior though, it is, I would say it's a cute and non-threatening
shape.
Yes, I was going to say that whilst there is much echoes of SUV-ness even though it's
a smaller vehicle, it is done in a non-threatening manner and it's also, they've managed to,
I feel, keep it without going far too cutesy, so it will appeal to everyone, I feel.
I wouldn't feel ashamed, embarrassed or weird driving it or thinking it's a girly car or
it's too boring just for old people or it's too much just for young people.
It doesn't fit into any of those things.
It is generally, my notes here, I've said it's a happy little thing, and it is.
It's kind of graphical, so it's got big round DRLs at the front, it's got pixelated head
indicator and tail lights, but all of that is on quite a, you see, I'm trying to choose
my words here because anything I say makes it sound like I'm damning it with faint praise
and I'm really not.
It's a bit like the baby offspring of a classic Renault 4 and a Nionic 5.
Okay.
It's got that, but I don't want to use all that cute because I don't think it is cute,
but I think it is very much in that sort of, and it's not some angry toddler or anything.
It's not overmasculine and it's not over effeminate either.
It treads a very fine line that it's actually quite hard to describe, but I find it quite
hard to describe.
Yes.
To add to the chunkiness of it, the O2 and the Cross models get roof rails as standard
on both sides.
Then of course there's all sorts of other lifestyle accessories that you can bolt onto those on
the top.
Every model gets alloy wheels.
Zero one gets 15 inch alloys with a sort of, they're a cross type form, but they made
me think of Tetris.
You know how you get that T-shaped piece in Tetris?
You don't get a cross in genuine Tetris, but if there was a cross version, it's sort of
that made up of five squares type of pattern in the middle and the outer ones are hollow,
which I think is kind of cool.
Actually, I really quite like those wheels.
In fact, I probably prefer them to the 17 inch four spoke polished X design that the O2
gets, which is sort of paint and then diamond cut.
I don't really like diamond cut alloys as a rule, but they're pretty good for that.
But I actually prefer the 15 inches of the zero one.
Instacross also gets 17 inch alloy wheels.
They are a six spoke sort of bottle cap style, which is really quite cool.
I haven't seen a cross in the flesh yet, although everything at the launch was a zero two.
The cross wasn't there and the zero one wasn't there.
They would have made it to the country just yet.
Generally speaking, the cross gets more cladding and earthier colors in place of these sort
of sunny bright pastels and stuff that you get on the zero one and zero two.
When I had the choice, before I arrived at the launch, did I want the Sienna Orange or
did I want the yellow one and I chose the Sienna Orange, which I do prefer, but the yellow
one was much nicer in the flesh and I thought it was going to be.
In summary, the outside, I feel is sort of cool Fisher price.
If you ask Fisher price to do a little vehicle that is a little sort of crossover that isn't
be aggressive, then this is pretty much what it would look like.
And that to me as a kid who grew up with lots of Fisher price and stuff is a compliment.
Just to make that clear, it is not any description of cheapness or anything like that.
It has a Fisher price vibe to it and it has a Fisher price vibe in a good way.
Cool.
What's it like on the inside then?
The inside is surprisingly grown up and it's surprisingly large.
It really is big.
Are we about to insert the cliche of TARDIS like?
We are not about to insert the cliche of TARDIS like because it's a cliche and I'm going to try to avoid it.
Starting on the back as is traditional for us.
It's a good size as it sits for an A or B segment hatchback.
That good size definitely fit a week's shopping and stuff in.
Size can be varied.
So the rear seat slide, that means volume can change depending on your needs.
You don't have to fold seats if you need to bleep it more room.
All of these kind of good things.
It also has a proper hard luggage cover at the back with the sort of bellows curtain expansion bit that sort of hangs between it and the seat.
So whenever you move the seat forward, everything remains covered in the luggage compartment.
That's good.
There is an undercroft under the boot for charging cables or whatever.
Things that aren't in the boot area are carry hooks.
Okay.
Massive.
That's minus a start.
Shame.
Shame.
But there are plenty of other hooks and modularity further forward in the cabin.
Which could be said to make up for it.
The rear seat splits 50-50 on each side.
It includes a, there is a sort of panel to bridge the gap between the seat back and the sort of lid of the undercroft as you fold the seat forward.
And if the seats have been slid forward a little bit.
So there's, it's always flat but slightly lumpy floor in the boot.
If you know what I mean, there's a small step together onto that panel.
And it is.
That's it, practically flat with the seats folded.
You could slide things in relatively easily and you can slide some pretty large things in.
Okay.
A normal sized washing machine on its back will probably fit it.
I mean, obviously there wasn't one on hand to test.
Well, I suppose that was difficult to get through his hand luggage on your flight down.
Yes, it was.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Those Logan Air flights.
Because it is our normal, one of our normal measuring.
No, it isn't.
Rear seat belts have holders to stop rattling or getting in the way when they're not being used.
They're the kind of slot type.
So you sort of put the metal tearing into the slot, bolt them out to the side,
as opposed to the clip style that player to use, which can get broken and that kind of thing.
Also, it means that with the clip type, the actual metal bit can rattle sometimes if you're unlucky.
I like that.
You just mentioned the back seats there.
You said it was 50-50.
So is it just two seats in the back?
It is just two seats in the back.
No center armrest or anything.
It is two seats defined with two seat belts as well.
Very clearly.
Yes.
In case NHTS wants to pay attention.
Yeah, in case it does get sold in America.
Also, each side slides independently as well.
Yeah, I heard that they could slide and move and stuff.
That's actually a really helpful and interesting touch.
Worth saying, you just reminded me that that's actually from the O2 and the Cross of that.
Okay.
In the O1, they just fought.
Right.
However you decide to configure them and fold them, there is a lot of space in the back seat.
I know I'm not the tallest person in the world.
I have the longest legs.
But I could do the whole sitting behind yourself.
Ding, ding, ding the bell.
Ding, ding, ding the bell.
I know.
You have to do it.
You have to do it.
And I couldn't just do the whole sitting behind itself.
I could do it with four inches of nearem to spare.
My feet were barely under the seat in front.
I've seen the picture.
It does look.
And I've had a little quick brief poke around an insta.
And the space is, no, I didn't.
I didn't need to because you had.
All right.
And it is remarkable how much space is in that vehicle and makes me feel that perhaps manufacturers
are beginning to get to grips with the fact that they have a EV platform.
Well, that's it.
And they feel the freedom to do it as well.
Because, I mean, the back seat floor is completely flat.
The front seat floor is completely flat across.
There is no transmission hub or anything like that at all.
If there was a third seat belt, which there isn't, so don't do it.
And you had three people across, then they would actually have room for their feet and
their knees as well.
Yeah.
Which is almost unheard of.
Even in much, much bigger cars.
Those little Renault 4 proportions I was talking about before, they mean that you have loads
of headroom as well.
Okay.
Actually, my height is in my back.
So I tend to sort of end up with my head brushing the ceiling in the back of smaller cars.
I could have worn a Jean-Dame's hat in the back, which is one of the design criteria
for the original Renault 4 supposedly.
But you could have sat there wearing a hat inside the Insta.
I've just noticed something running through the pictures and this is my fault because
I've taken this forward before we've checked this.
But there is an undercroft to the boot, which does appear to be quite large.
It is, yes.
And it looks like somebody's thought it through and that's where the cables go because that
is typically a problem that when you get a press car, and I know, by the way, this is
very much motoring journalist worries, but the cables are in the boot and they slide
around because not many companies have thought through how to deal with it.
Some put Velcro on the bottom and stuff.
But this looks like where are people realistically going to stick the cables?
We're going to put them in the boots.
Let's get them in a nice area.
They can hide them.
Especially if we've got home charger and they really need to use those cables.
I know we're at the back of the car still, but there is no front core fruit on the Insta.
It is all motor and inverter under the bonnet up front.
Speaking of charging and charging cables though, there is a USB-C charging port in the rear
of the front seat squab in the middle.
Why is it the front seat squab and not in the centre console?
We'll come to that in a wee bit, but there is a USB-C port down there for people in the
back to be able to charge their devices as you go in along.
Cool.
That's quite cool and useful because there is a whole bunch of modular accessories and
other bits and pieces which you can bolt into the interior.
In fact, you don't even bolt from the resonance latch.
The panels on the doors are certainly the front passenger and...
Oh no, front driver as well.
I actually had one in the test car, a driver.
You can have little photo frames, you can have little string holders for holding things.
There is a golf umbrella holder for the back which just magnets onto the back of the front seat.
If you fold the back of the front passenger seat forward, you can get a little table attachment
which levels it off so that it can become a little desk if you need that.
There is a whole load of stuff.
Hyundai Group seem to have really gone into this in a big way of living with stroke in your car.
I think it's sort of an urban career Japanese thing about that which is a little bit of
personalization but also it can be the only space that's necessarily yours as well to
an extent you can garnish and decorate it and make it right for you.
Not only is there that seatback tray which is a £98 accessory by the way, there is an
organiser for the seatback tray which you can put on top.
The seatback tray includes an extra cup holder and straps and stuff for holding down paperwork
and things but even stuff like little storage garnishes in beige or in black depending on
what colour of interior you have, you can contrast or match.
You can get a seatback table for the back of the driver's seat.
There's a whole load of stuff that you can get for it.
I think that's a really interesting idea to bring to Western audiences because it's not
something we've typically done.
However, as we go to the electric future, we are having to either sit in a roadside
calf or in our cars if we're on the move, if we're not at home, making the space more
usable or opening our eyes to how usable the space can be.
I think it's really interesting.
I think it's making it liveable when you're not travelling is what it's doing.
There's loads of stuff like that.
Similarly, the front seat, the one of the other cool things about the interior is that
it has a bench front seat essentially.
It is split in two so as a driver's side passenger side you can adjust them independently
but they do essentially form a bench across the front of the car.
There's two cupholders in the middle just to delineate it and make sure that you're
not trying to see a sixth person there, which I think they'd have to be very small, but
there we go.
There's also an armrest that falls over the top.
The cupholds and stuff in the UK are built into the driver's seat side.
I imagine that that becomes the passenger seat side in a left hand drive country.
I haven't seen a left hand drive one to test it.
No, I like that.
Yeah, it's just a really nice feature when you see it when you go in.
If you don't want to snuggle up to the person next to you, there is an armrest.
There are cupholders in the way.
Yeah, yeah.
As I said before, there's a flat floor in the front and right down at the base of the
dashboard because there isn't a binnacle that runs right down and back.
Obviously, it turns into the seat with a space in between.
At the very bottom of that dashboard area is the V2L 230V socket.
That's optional in the tank panic.
Above that, there's a little cubby for, I don't know, plushy toys, something, suki
sweeties.
Then above that was a little tray with a built-in Qi wireless charger for your phone.
Above that, really, the dashboard proper.
Inverted comma starts.
There's buttons for parking sensors and camera buttons as parking cameras and stuff, as well
as the auto hold switch.
On the O2 and cross models, there is small switches for the heated seats.
Nice.
Yeah.
Again, explaining or underlining why the price is the price.
Yeah, and that's really quite high up.
You're barely lowering your hand from the steering wheel to reach those.
There's no fumbling about them between the seats or anything to try to find switches.
Above that is a panel of buttons and a little screen dedicated completely to the single-zone
climate control, which is standard across the whole range.
Cool.
Above that, again, volume tuning knobs.
That's a row of seven or so buttons, which can have standards across its range for short
cut buttons to choose inputs and navigation.
Of course, there's a cup.
There's at least one configurable button with a star on it there that you can choose what
you want it to do.
To the left of that, over towards the passenger side, there is a USB-A socket, USB-C power
socket, and a 12-volt power socket as well.
In the two and the cross, there's also mood lighting.
It was blue in the one I had in the O2 I had.
I don't know if it's color configurable.
I didn't go off and play with it on my train.
Okay.
That is something they have done higher up the range, so maybe.
I don't mind it.
It's fine.
I think it's quite nice.
It's nice and dark.
It's making the space inhabitable when you're not driving, Andrew.
You've just said that that's something.
Doesn't necessarily mean you're driving around in a disco.
Okay.
Great for the gram.
It's not a Mercedes.
Special mention should go to the air vents in the center console that are above the
climb control section.
They look like they've been stolen from a 1980s BMW, sort of E30, E32, E34.
I'm glad you said that because I was thinking it.
I kind of barrel the slots.
Absolute dead ringers.
I'm sure if I put beside each other, I could spot the differences, but they are very much
in the style of a 1980s BMW air vent.
I approve of that.
The two in the middle are split by the hazard switch, though not by the volume of air control,
which you get in a BMW.
Above all of that at the top of the stack, and it's really the space I've just been
describing is a little more than a foot in height.
It is all really well controlled and kept nice and neat together.
It's packaged really neatly.
Everything that I'm describing is very close to each other, but it's very clear what the
different zones are.
Yes.
And that's all topped off by a 10 and a quarter inch touchscreen for all your entertainment
and nav delights.
Front of the driver is a small screen that shows primarily speed and range, but you
can get all the usual kind of trip computer stuff in between those two numbers.
Speed and range are rendered really nicely in perspective.
Inside these little cubes that sort of occasionally twiddle around the outside.
It's not distracting, but I think that some people would buy it and never notice, but
there's these little cubes around them and they've got little sparkly bits that move
up them.
Now, I hadn't really thought about it at the time, but I got back to the PR team afterwards
and said, you know the little flashing bits and the little sparkles on the cubes?
Do they show anything in particular?
Does it flash faster when we're using more energy or going quicker or what?
I didn't notice any change.
Was there something I should have noticed and they said, no, no, no.
Actually, it's just because it looks nice.
It doesn't change.
It doesn't mean anything.
It just looks nice.
Okay.
That was good enough explanation for me.
I thought it was really nice.
I thought it rendered really nicely.
I thought it was clear to read.
I understood exactly what was going on and it wasn't over fussy.
I think some of the premium manufacturers have got a little bit carried away with how
many hexagons they can fit in and how much they can make it look like something out of
Wipeout or some hyperfuturistic video game.
They really haven't done that in this case.
The important numbers are there.
They're front and center.
They're very clear to read.
You can then choose what you have in between them.
I did my usual.
I like to have the trip meter of how far I've gone since I, depending on what's available
to me, started or recharged or refilled, how much further I can go, and then any kind of
consumption number in between.
That's exactly what the Insta gave me.
Cool.
On the driver's side, there is, of course, a steering wheel.
Tends to be relatively fundamental these days.
This is good to hear.
It's a little three spoke one, very much the standard small Hyundai steering wheel in
its layout.
On the left is for all the driver assistance stuff.
The right is for all the entertainment nav system stuff.
There is a drive mode button for changing drive modes down to the bottom left, a little
separate one.
A little like you get in one of the N models, but without being an N.
Actually, an Insta N would be hilarious.
That would be cracking.
You can scroll through those.
The usual choice of eco makes everything green, normal keeps everything blue, and sport makes
everything red.
There we go.
That's what the drive modes do.
There's some remapping of the throttle, and it's hard to overtake in eco, and it's hard
to drive smoothly in sport.
I just left it to normal.
Which is what most normal people will normally do.
The obligatory poking of the button and going, oh, well, actually, I prefer the normal mode.
There are also little flappy paddles on the back for a amount of regen.
You increase the regen with the right one, you lessen it with the left one.
You can treat that like flappy paddle gear changes, or you can do what I do and just
hold the right one until it goes auto.
If you're outside of town, I'll talk about it a bit more later, but it automatically
uses a regen based on terrain, roads, how you're driving.
Whereas in town, you probably want to ramp up the regen and have closer to single pedal
driving, and that means that you're also charging lots more when you're in town.
Park mode, direction of travel are selected from a silver-coloured controller on the right
hand side of the steering column.
So you sort of turn it forward to go forward, you turn it backwards to go back, you press
the button on the end to put it into park.
Simple.
One last thing about the interior.
Now, I don't know if this is a standard on the 01 or if it's part of the ambient lighting,
which Andrew loves so much, and that the middle of the steering wheel, there's no Hyundai logo
on it.
There's no Insta or Casper or anything on it.
There is just four little squares which are illuminated blue.
I don't know why they're illuminated blue, but they are illuminated.
I had to actually, because it was really bugging me, because I thought, are those just white
or is it as sure as a blue tinge to it?
It was a beautiful sunny day for the watch.
It was perfect conditions for them really.
And I ended up having to cut my hands over the centre of the steering wheel at one point
when I knew it was tunnel.
To just see if they were actually glowing, and yes, they were.
So there's four little lights in the middle of the steering wheel.
Man complains of big yellow shiny thing in sky.
Absolutely not.
And the car didn't complain too much about it either.
OK, I think you have really covered the interior there.
It does sound very interesting.
It sounds like there's a lot of neat touches and it sounds like it's been thought through
a lot.
What's the driving like then?
Surprisingly grown up and surprisingly adult.
And what do you mean by that?
Well, it's a curious one.
When you're driving it, it doesn't feel like a small car.
OK, I think part of that is the smoothness and quietness and lack of vibration, all
that kind of thing from a drivetrain, obviously.
That to me is one of the great things about EVs.
Yes, is the lack of vibration.
And you get into almost any other internal combustion engine car.
It's like, whoa, this chugs.
There are two power outputs.
As I said earlier on, there's 97 metric horses and the 115 metric horses.
The only one available to drive was the 115 metric horses.
OK, that's a fairly chunky output.
I know the Insta weighs more than maybe an AB segment car would if it wasn't an EV.
But that's a decent power output.
It never felt slow or underpowered.
It didn't rattle over bumps.
It didn't do any sort of it didn't have any real body roll or any of these things.
It drove like a grown up car.
One of the things that lots of people said when they got back was
what did they do to the suspension in that?
Because I just thought it was me and I thought it was because, you know,
I bet I would practice at this.
But no, everybody else commented the same or when they got back,
we're standing in the bar with a drink after all driving.
And everyone was like, what did you think of the handling of that?
It was one of those things we all agreed that it was not what we were expecting at all.
It was fun. It really was.
And I think one of the parts to it, curious thing, is that
we're used to the idea of EVs having little skinny tires.
The Insta does not have little skinny tires.
OK. It's like the opposite of a BMW i3.
It's like pram wheels. Yes, it's not like that at all.
It has chunky grown up tires and that makes a big difference.
It makes it corner much better.
It means you don't fall into every ripple in the road.
It's not trying to track along track along grooves or anything like that.
It is driving like a grown up car.
And you can potter nicely around town, nipping in and out of spaces.
As I say, almost single pedal driving if you ramp up the regen.
And then out of town, it will cruise along quite happily.
If you put the regen in auto, then it'll let it coast.
If you lift off, so you're using very little throttle all the time.
And because it handles well, so despite being quite tall, it is quite broad.
It's quite a square car.
Then you don't have body roll in the corners.
You don't have anything scary going on.
So you can you can play the old conservation momentum game.
Just kind of how I drive anyway.
Again, you can make decent progress without having to try.
OK, you're not consciously trying.
I was able to sit and drive this.
I was able to sit and drive it like I would drive my own cars quite happily.
Actually, quite like I would drive the grip most of the time
if I'm not going nuts, you know, you can just sit at around the speed limit
overtake when necessary, hold speed and so zip around some of the corners.
It was incredibly surprising.
And even when the whenever the road conditions got worse,
it still held its own.
It was still comfortable.
Sure, you got a little bit moving around because it's a car and it was moving.
But it really was it really was very grown up feeling.
OK, which is kind of surprising because normally, you know,
little cars with cheeky looks, then often where they fall over is is not literally.
Is then whenever you drive them, they're either a bit too soft.
They roll a bit, you know, all these kind of things.
You you sit in a way that means that you feel tippy or you're being pushed out
of the sea, you know, despite the fact it's a front bench seat.
No, it kind of holds you in place quite well, really.
Given how flat it is, that the support is excellent.
And that has a knock on effect on how how you drive it.
I really enjoy driving it.
I like the fact I could just drive it like a normal car.
I drove on the driveway route about 110 miles of mixed roads.
So there was everything there.
There wasn't any motorway, but there was a fast your carriageway,
lots of single carriageway, lots of country lanes as well.
And then single track and everything going right down to the bottom of Portland
Bill, because we went all the way out across Dorset.
And it was a warm sunny day.
And the AC inside was set at 22, 23 degrees.
It was on auto, the car was in normal mode, mostly had the Regen in auto.
I have a mental calculation when I'm driving.
Doesn't matter what I'm driving, what I like to be able to do is work out
how many miles I've driven since I last filled it up and what range I have left.
Adding those two numbers together gives me an idea of how I'm driving,
what my economy is like, that kind of thing.
The target number in the Lexus is 400.
The target number in the GRMN is 25, 300.
There's an awful lot of downhill, which you very rarely get in that.
This was holding happily at 200.
No matter what I did with all of that stuff with the air con running
because it loads of solar heat coming into the car.
It was breezy when you went out, but the actual amount of sun
and the general heat in the car, we heat up very, very quickly
when you parked it with the windows closed and it barely dipped below 200 miles.
I got my average consumption was around 4.2 miles per kilowatt hour
and I was not driving and I wasn't driving for economy.
I was even trying to drive for economy.
I like that.
And that's from really quite a small battery as well.
It's from a relatively small fuel tank.
You're getting a good mileage there, there's good efficiency.
Sounds like you've remade the Ionic original.
Yeah, well, with twice the range.
Yeah, because to get that kind of number in the original Ionic,
which of course, far slippier looking shape, lower and wider, whatever,
we were spending our time with the air con off.
We were in eco mode.
We were driving with a foot so light it was, you know, it hurt.
It hurt.
Well, basically, yeah.
And yeah, I'm getting almost that not even trying
and hooning a little bit around around country roads and doors
it on a hot sunny day.
That's good.
That's good.
There's another thing I really liked about the dashboard, by the way,
I talked before about the cubes.
The right hand cube showed you a range.
It also showed you what it reckons your theoretical maximum and minimum were as well.
OK.
If I'd turned off the AC, turned the fan down,
you know, was quite prepared to cook and be a sweaty mess by the time I got back.
Then I would be able to get the upper range.
For example, there's one photo I took where it shows 140 miles of range left
after having covered 63.6 miles.
So that's over 200 miles, predicting that.
That's the mid number.
It was showing a max of 178 miles and a minimum of 93 miles.
Do you need to flick through a menu to show those different ones
or just to keep there at the top and bottom corners of the queue?
Oh, OK, right on the right.
It just shows that as you're going.
Cool. Well, I like that minimum one a lot
because in case you sit there going, actually, I really need to push on here.
You've now got an indication of, right, worst case, it's this.
To give you an idea of what that was, then with 140 miles of range showing
in the middle, then it was showing me a maximum of 178 miles, a minimum of 93.
I could easily have knocked off 47 miles, 50 miles off my range.
If I really, really wanted to press on, if I really wanted to ramp everything
to the max, that whole thing was just really smart, really impressive.
I just liked that.
And it was just there.
You didn't have to do anything.
You didn't have to be clever.
You just had to understand what the thing was telling you.
And it was very easy to show because one number was above the other and the actual
and the most likely predicted number was right in the middle.
All day, the predicted number barely changed.
The total of driven plus that rarely changed.
It was around there.
In fact, I eat it up a bit.
I wasn't driving for WLTP, but those figures were very, very close to the WLTP figures.
Way closer than we'd normally say.
If when somebody says they're quoting this mileage and we go,
yeah, it's probably closer to X amount, which is going to be lower.
Very impressed with how close the predicted range has been to what it should be doing.
Good.
Last week bit.
Yeah, technology then.
Well, I don't want to say there isn't any because there is, but it's always a hard bit
because there's nothing outstandingly amazing.
There's nothing outstandingly technologically amazing about this other than the fact
that everything's been packaged really well together and seems to work well together.
I mean, obviously, it has as well as it's got a refined but conventional electric
vehicle drivetrain.
It's got a refined but conventional electric vehicle battery.
It's got a refined but conventional navigation and entertainment system,
which is pretty much the same as any other Hyundai you're going to drive these days.
Did it have CarPlay and also Android OS?
I presume it did.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The whole thing was being run off Google Maps, actually Google Maps.
On the launch, there was an iPhone in the car which was plugged in and it had the root
in Google Maps and running over CarPlay.
It just worked.
It has drive assistance, all the things that are legally required didn't impinge me.
It's worth mentioning that the launch crew on these were very good at any time you went back
to the car it was already turned on, which meant that the AC was running.
My mileage could probably have been better than I got.
It meant the AC was running generally with the windows down just to keep the thing cool,
so it wasn't having to work as hard.
And they quite often turned off some of the driver assist stuff.
We know what some journalists can be like about that kind of thing.
I cycled it myself, turned it off and on a couple of times and I was taking photos and I
start just because I want to know what it does by default.
Don't necessarily want them all turned off.
All the systems came on.
You know what?
They work just fine.
I think you'd have to be being a usual kind of thing.
You'd have to be a bit of a prat to throw them up.
My driving style, remember, does seem to throw up fewer false positives than others.
It also, but there was nothing to throw.
Humble brag.
No, you and I, look, if I get lots of false positives,
because of where we, it's not just driving style, it's also where I lived and where I
tend to drive, throws up different sets of challenges compared to you because you get
the collision avoidance one more often than I do, just because of cars parked up narrow streets.
That's really what I'm saying without trying to say that.
I didn't get any of those kinds of warnings.
So one I did get though, is that it has a concentration detection system.
Which makes sure you're kind of looking vaguely in the direction of the road.
It had a grumble at me because Mark 1 Yaris with central speedo and bad habits,
I am quite bad for driving with especially small cars, less so big cars, but generally
small cars just add a habit, hands at the top of the steering wheel, like a Tesla driving person.
And because the sensor was down on the steering column, it didn't like that because it couldn't
see my face. So I got that a couple of times. It did also ping once or twice when I should
have been paying more attention to the road and less attention to how the sun visors worked.
And is it illuminated with the mirror? It was from memory.
And all of these kinds of things when I should have been paying more attention to the road,
even though we're in very, very short traffic. So when it pinged, it pinged when it was meant
to ping. And it pinged to stop me exhibiting my bad habits. I guess that's probably a win.
Other than that, it just kind of worked and did its thing.
Okay, cool. Right then. I think we're at the verdict stage because you've done a fantastic
job of explaining it all. I've gone into far too much detail, which I swore I wasn't going to do,
but then you just do so much things I want to tell people.
No, no, no, no. But this is a brand new car. This is important to know these things because if
somebody's particularly at the price point, because if somebody's going to go for it,
it is more of an investment than say what on paper looks like the competition. However,
what you get as a result is significantly different as well.
I haven't done any research into what the residuals are going to be like
and stuff, but I would imagine residuals of, can I say, pretty decent relative to other brands.
So I'd imagine the residuals of this are going to be pretty good. That also brings
down your monthly cost, of course. So whilst the headlight figure might be a little bit higher,
then when you translate that into your monthly payments,
then that's the difference is going to be slight to negligence.
What I liked about this is it's a small EV you can own. If you don't live in a town or city,
there's definitely good enough range. It handles well enough that if you have to do like 50,
60 mile round trips to bigger towns to get bigger things maybe, then you can easily do that without
having to charge and have charge to spare. So if you charge at home and you have to do longer
journeys, then that's great. If you don't have charging at home and you are reliant on charges
in some third spaces, so at work or wherever, then because you don't have to charge it that often
because it's got very good range and good economy without having to have to be a massive battery,
that brings down the cost of ownership and the cost of charging away from home.
So if you do need to that, it's a sensible EV there because you probably won't need to charge
as often. I would imagine in that situation, you're not going to be driving as much because
it's harder to fill up or you're not going to be the kind of person who needs to drive that much,
otherwise you'd be choosing an internal combustion engine or a plug-in hybrid or something,
a hybrid, really more so than a plug-in hybrid. But it actually means that if you even drive 100
miles a week, then you're probably only going to have to charge every 10 days or so,
and that's me being conservative on that. And if you're driving around town,
then you ramp up the regen and then you get even further range, even more economy.
It seems to cover both of those bases really quite well, while again, if you have to pay
higher rates for charging, then small battery means you pay less. On top of all of that,
it's got a good spec level and really good performance to justify the price. That it also
looks funky and looks cool. And I don't see why anyone would be ashamed of driving it or being
seen in it. It seems to be a cherry on the top. I didn't know what this was going to be like
going into it. I mean, I remember when the i10 launched and the i10 was fine, but it was slow.
And at times it felt like a small cheap car. And I just want to make it clear that this does not
feel like a small cheap car and it is not slow. It's very much a step over an i10. It is not an
equivalent to an i10. If this was an i10 with a battery in it, it would be pretty sucky. It's not.
That said, I love the i10 end line. It's 100 horsepower. It's a great alternative to maybe
small feet, for example. Well, excellent. Now, I presume you and I both have to fight to see who
can get one for a week after the long, long list of motoring journalists who have requested one
off the end line now. Yeah. Yeah, I actually think this is one that you should maybe have for a week
because I did lots of fun stuff with it there. Whereas I think that the opinions of some of
your family would be quite interesting. Anyhow, folks, don't forget between our next time you
give us any feedback, share your thoughts with the show at motoringpodcast.com on Blue Sky,
at Motoring Podcast, on Instagram, on Facebook, and on the contact page of motoringpodcast.com,
the hub of all our activities. Please don't forget to leave a rating on Apple Podcasts,
on iTunes, or however your podcast app lets you do such a thing. Andrew, what's the best way to
get in touch with you? The best way to get in touch with me is if you search for Crackwindscreen on
Blue Sky or I am on LinkedIn under my name, if that's your preferred platform. Alan, if people
would like to pick your brains about anything to do with the Insta that perhaps they don't feel you've
covered, which would be remarkable. That would be surprised, yeah. Yeah. What's the best way for
them to do that? The best way is via Blue Sky, where I'm at AJP Bradley, that's B-R-A-D-L-U-I,
dot B Sky, dot social. Anyway, we'll be back before long, but until then, I've been Alan Bradley.
I've been Andrew Clues at Safe Motoring.
About this episode
The Hyundai Insta is a new small electric SUV that sits between the i10 and i20, blending hatchback and crossover elements. Alan shares his experience from the UK launch, highlighting its value-oriented pricing and impressive features like keyless entry and heat pumps across all trim levels. The design is described as appealing and non-threatening, while the interior boasts surprising space and practical touches. Driving impressions reveal a mature feel, good handling, and efficient range, making it suitable for both urban and longer journeys. Overall, the Insta stands out as a well-rounded option in the budget EV market.
Original notes
Earlier in the year, Alan was invited down to the south coast to sample the then-new Hyundai Inster electric B-segment hatchback. Food was eaten, a hotel room was slept in, and an Inster was driven to the end of Portland Bill on a surprisingly long, comprehensive test route.
In this Special Edition, Alan shares his thoughts on the Inster.
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