My current test car is top class. Dead silent, because electric. Excellent stereo. Excellent range of over 400 kilometers. Don’t film what’s on it. Automatic tailgate. Bose Premium Audio. Remote Smart Parking Assist. Privacy Glass. Electrically adjustable, heated and ventilated seats. Heated steering wheel. A 360 degree camera. A battery of assistance systems. A fantastic advanced multimedia system. Wireless phone charger. Everything works. And perfectly finished.
So, top of the market, you think as a true twentieth-century person from the time when you still had to pay extra for air conditioning and remote door locking for an S-class.
Not. It is a simple Hyundai Kona Electric, best seller of a volume brand. Ok, the fully loaded top model exceeds half a ton, but you have a Kona with the same sound comfort and the same generous 64.5 kWh battery for 44 grand ready to drive, and then €2,950 government subsidy is deducted. For those who find that pricey: the cheapest Golf, once the ultimate middle class car for the masses, now costs 36 grand ready to drive. Then it is a three-cylinder one-liter with 110 hp. Great block, that’s not it.
Huge sums, especially for the inveterate euro-to-guilder calculators (“So that’s eighty thousand guilders for a Golf, right?”), but for the 2023 market this is middle class. This Kona will soon be driven on a half-lease basis in the Netherlands. And you then enjoy all the privileges that you used to have to buy S-classes and 7-series for. The Kona drives in a class higher than you think. Pleasant chassis, excellent seats, plenty of space. In short, the old boss-above-boss model is outdated. You no longer have to invest eighty grand in your passport to car heaven. Let me put it this way: A one-ton Mercedes is no longer automatically twice as good. The old class hierarchy has been turned upside down.
Of course there will always be differences. The regal opulence and ghostly silence of a BMW iX or a Mercedes EQS still cost a lot of money and the seats of those top models are Stressless, wonderful. They drive like a dream, that too.
But look what is happening now at the bottom of the market, including on the Chinese side. The design may be taste-sensitive, but it is sometimes really shocking how good it is. In all BYD Dolphins, including the €29,990 entry-level car (before deduction of 3 grand state subsidy), electrically adjustable seats, keyless entry, climate control, driver assistance systems, adaptive cruise control, metallic clack and Apple Carplay/Android Auto are standard. Ok, then you don’t have a three-phase charger. For that you have to go to the Boost version, which with multi-link suspension and a lot more power still costs ‘only’ 30 grand after deduction of subsidies. The compact, but quite spacious Dolfijn also makes an extremely solid impression. It was coming, and now we really see it happening: A new underclass is gnawing at the right to exist of the old upper class.
It is the new reality of the plug era. Everyone can get an S-class for half the old money, but with Korean or Chinese logos, or from a European manufacturer that belonged to the good middle class before the plug era. Nowadays you also feel like a king in a Peugeot e-2008 or VW ID.3. A twin-motor Tesla Model 3 or Model Y kicks half the premium elite into the gutter during a traffic light sprint for the money of a Kona. An absurd contradiction is manifesting itself in the car market these days. Average prices are rising, but luxury and performance are becoming cheaper. Or better said: Take up less and less space at increasingly lower costs. I first attributed the large inventories of large EVs at dealers to the high prices, but perhaps the explanation is that you get the same thing for much less from both new and old players. This way we will drive slightly smaller but much cheaper without serious concessions to your dreams. You get over the little loss of space in such a Kona when you see what you get back.
That must have consequences. These smaller volume luxury horses will become increasingly popular. You can laugh about it now, but the next battle in automotive history will be the battle for space, where every centimeter counts. Sooner than you think, a time will come when cars will be judged based on their exterior dimensions. Because space is becoming the most valuable asset on earth, especially in densely populated countries such as the Netherlands.
If you see the new Kona Electric on the street, anonymously drenched under an autumn foliage, you can easily pass it by. But it is a royal car, an affordable paradise on wheels. Would you have liked more appearance? Good luck. No one cares about the new S-class anymore, because it has become just as normal. The old pecking order has collapsed.
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl