Hyundai Creta Electric First Drive Review: Familiarity Breeds Content
They say, familiarity breeds content. That’s exactly what anyone familiar with the facelifted Hyundai Creta Electric would feel when they get into the latest, and possibly the greatest Creta ever built– the Creta Electric. That’s a lot of Cretas in one sentence.
We hit the East Coast Road (ECR) from Kovalam, a beach town off Chennai, and drove the Creta Electric for about 160 kilometers, on a pleasantly wintry morning. Here is our first drive review of Hyundai’s first mass market EV (electric vehicle).
What is it?
It’s the all-electric variant of India’s most popular mid-sized SUV – the Creta. Without reinventing the wheel, Hyundai has played conservatively by electrifying the internal combustion engined (ICE) Creta. Ordinarily, such a move would mean compromises but we found very little to complain about the Creta Electric, for its almost the perfect EV. It’s – that – well-engineered.
Since Hyundai has gone with the tried-and-tested Creta platform, what you get is a very well finished cabin. The use of materials, colours and the placement of controls are all pitch perfect – and it’s very easy to find a comfortable driving position. Everything falls into hand – the ergonomics are spot on.
Same-same but different
Folks already familiar with the ICE Creta would notice a few changes. For instance, there’s a floating center console now, in place of where the gear shifter would have been in the ICE Creta. The gear selector, called the drive selector in EVs, has moved to the steering column – a-la-Mercedes Benz EV.
This change has been made possible through ‘shift-by-wire’ technology, where a sensor informs the electric motor about what the driver wants to do instead of a physical lever performing that function.
To drive, you twist the drive selector forward, to reverse you twist it backwards, and to park you simply press a button on the open-end of the drive selector. Very intuitive, and also very tactile.
And it helps that the modes are displayed prominently on the instrument cluster – a TFT (thin film transistor) screen that now makes for the multi-information driver display. So, getting a hang of this is going to be easy, and within no time, it’ll feel quite natural to use, just like it did for us.
The parking brake though, may take some more time to get used to, or rather trust, for it’s an electric parking brake. It sits on the floating center console; pulling it up with your index finger engages it, and you press it down to release.
Again, it helps that shifting to drive mode through the drive selector disengages the electric parking brake, and the Creta Electric glides forward smoothly, silently and seamlessly. The Creta Electric is go!
Effortlessly quick
On the move, there’s a linear surge of torque, and the Creta Electric builds speeds effortlessly. While there are no gears for you to play around – it’s an EV remember – what you do get is three flavours, of the same car. Enter the drive modes.
The drive mode selector sits on the floating center console. It’s a gorgeous knob with a knurled metal finish. You simply turn it around to flip through the various modes – Eco, Normal and Sport. Again, it feels very tactile, and we found ourselves just turning it around to enjoy the sense of quality it exuded.
In normal mode, the Creta Electric feels the easiest to drive. The steering is light with just the right amount of feel. There’s plenty of torque available and the throttle feels light too. Until you press it further. As your left foot sinks in, the Creta Electric gains momentum rapidly, and before you know, is doing triple digit speeds. Even in normal mode, acceleration is quite rapid.
Shifting to Eco mode dulls the throttle, makes the steering lighter, and the Creta Electric almost tells you that ‘it’s Sunday, let’s just roll the window down, and feel the breeze’. It’s the easy driver mode – the mode that will take you farthest per charge, and also feels quite relaxed while at it. Even in Eco mode, there’s more than adequate acceleration to keep up with, or probably stay ahead of most city traffic.
And when you feel like really a getting a move on, and unleashing the ‘beast mode’ of the Creta, rotate that lovely knob to Sport. In this mode, the Creta Electric unleashes about 170 horses, but even here, it’s the 255 Nm of peak torque that brings you a smooth surge of relentless acceleration. Keeping it pinned for about 20 seconds will see you hit 160 Kmph. Hyundai claims 7.9 seconds for the 0-100 Kph run. We did it in about 8 seconds, on a road going uphill. This Creta can move, and how!
The best part about the Creta Electric is its composure. This Creta masks speed like no other Creta has ever managed to. If not for the beeps that warn you of illegal speeds, you won’t even realize that 120 has come and gone, and you’re hurtling towards 140. It’s that composed, and quiet.
Even wind and tyre noise have been very well controlled, and the Creta Electric’s cabin quietness feels like it’s from a few segments above. Well done, Hyundai. This got us curious and after enjoying the thrilling acceleration, we did poke under the hood, and even peeked under the car to figure how Hyundai has managed to achieve such a quiet cabin.
There were many thoughtful touches. For instance, there’s insulation under the bonnet. The 17 inch alloy wheels have a new, aerodynamic design that makes them cut through the air, quietly. There are flaps ahead of each wheel, again to make the Creta Electric slip through the air, quietly.
Finally, the edges of the front doors have plastic inserts, again to make the cabin as quiet as possible, by cutting wind out. These efforts clearly work, and make the Creta Electric feel effortless, even at highway speeds, thanks to the way this car masks speeds. This also makes the Creta Electric a relaxed mile muncher. Lesser the cabin noise from the wind and tyres, lesser the fatigue. Another win there.
The battery of the Creta Electric, sits in the floor. This lowers the center of gravity. A low center of gravity is great for handling. The Creta Electric feels like a Ford. No kidding. It almost feels like the first generation Figo when it comes to changing direction.
Yes, there’s body roll since this is a much taller car but the manner in which the Creta EV loves changing direction is something that no other Creta does. The Sport mode does its bit here, by making the steering heavier, and more direct. The combination of the heavier steering in sport mode and the battery low down makes the Creta EV very engaging to drive.
The ride’s another revelation!
The Creta has always been known for a plush ride but the EV takes it to the next level. Somehow, Hyundai has managed to achieve the fine balance between ride and handling in the Creta EV through suspension tuning. And this is why we brought in the Ford reference.
The Creta Electric is probably the closest that a mass market Hyundai comes to a driver-focused Ford car. Body roll is very well controlled. The car is eager to change direction. And you feel in control while driving it hard. A wonderful recipe that will endear the Creta EV to driving enthusiasts.
Braking is strong…
What with Hyundai equipping the Creta Electric with disc brakes on all four wheels. There are paddles behind the steering when that control brake energy regeneration (regen). You can toggle between four levels of regen, and the highest level is called ‘One Pedal Mode’.
In one pedal mode, simply lifting the foot of the throttle gets regen to kick in very strongly, and the Creta Electric slows down quickly. Driving around in traffic in one pedal mode is something a lot of people are going to enjoy as the regen is strong enough to bring the Creta to a halt quickly.
One pedal mode is essentially the automatic, of automatics. You can literally drive the Creta EV around on just one pedal, as long as you don’t need to stop abruptly. When you do need to stop abruptly, the brakes are always there to bring you to a safe halt.
What we didn’t like though was toggling between the multiple regen modes. It felt vague, and we found ourselves constantly looking at the driver display (multi information display) to figure which regen mode we were in while toggling. Somehow, toggling didn’t feel seamless. A little more tactility would have really helped here.
Kitna deti hai?
Now, for the big question. How far does the Creta Electric stretch its 51.4 kWh battery? Well, about 180 kilometers of driving saw us use up around 53 % of charge. The drive included relaxed driving, triple digit speeds, rapid bursts of acceleration just for thrills, quick overtakes, some stop-go traffic and some highway cruising.
Air conditioning (AC) was on all the time, and we were also idling the car with the AC on for quite a while during shoots. So, about 320 to 350 kilometers of real world range is what you can safely expect from the Creta Electric depending on how you drive. Hyundai claims an ARAI certified 473 Kms (under standard test conditions), and getting about 70 % of this range is pretty much the de-facto standard.
Feature-rich!
We’re talking about a Hyundai here, and it goes without saying that a boatload of features is to be expected. The Creta Electric doesn’t disappoint, and in fact goes a step ahead of the ICE variants in terms of features on offer.
The 8 way power adjustable driver’s seat now gets a memory function. The driver’s seat slides back to make ingress and egress easier. Nice touch there. The climate control now has dual zones – allowing the driver and front passenger to choose different temperatures should they wish to.
And if you’re devious enough to want your front passenger to sweat while you enjoy the chiller of an AC, you can do that too, with the ‘driver-only’ mode that cuts off air conditioning from the co-passenger’s vents.
Then there’s the panoramic sunroof that makes the whole cabin feel quite airy. There’s wireless charging, a USB type-C port a cooled glove box and also a cooled compartment under the driver armrest. We’d have liked a locking mechanism for the driver armrest though.
The floating armrest allows for a couple of cup holders, and also extra storage under it. The Creta Electric borrows a cool bit from the Alcazar Facelift, in that it gets ‘boss mode’. Boss mode refers to a switch on the front passenger seat that can be operated by the driver and the rear passenger alike, to move the front seat back and forth, and change the front seat-back angle. This is meant to make the rear passenger enjoy more leg room while being chauffeured around.
How’s the back seat?
Moving to the rear, the seat’s wide enough to seat three adults who’re not too spread out, horizontally. Leg room, knee room and headroom are more than adequate, and even taller people won’t complain. But what they will complain about though is the under thigh support, or rather the lack of it. Since Hyundai’s has packaged the battery under the floor, and also has had to maintain 200 mm of ground clearance, the floor has risen slightly. This has led to under thigh support reducing, which will particularly be felt by taller people. An adjustable bolster under the thigh – the kind of which Citroen offers in the Basalt – could have helped.
What the back seaters will love though are the lunch trays that double up as device holders – a classic case of having your lunch and eating it too? Jokes apart, you can place your mobile phone, or tablet in these recessed holders on the lunch tray, and get your entertainment on the go.
There are two USB type-C ports that will take care of charging needs at the rear as well, which gets the now-regulation AC vents too. There’s internal V2L as well, which means that you can charge devices such as laptops without having to lug around car inverters. There’s external V2L as well, which can power larger appliances and even charge other electric cars.
Ample space for luggage!
Talking boot space, there’s 433 liters on offer, which is exactly what the ICE Creta offers. The rear seats get a 60:40 split, which means that there’s some flexibility should you want to accommodate more/weirdly shaped things. There’s a frunk too under the hood, which offers about 22 liters of storage.
The loading lip is level with the rear bumper, which means that placing and removing luggage in the boot is quite easy. All in all, the Creta Electric is a very comfortable and feature-rich car for day-to-day use – a testament to good engineering.
To sum things up, the Hyundai Creta Electric comes across as a thoughtfully engineered car that will fit most like a glove. If you’re someone who wants a car that can do about 350 Kms on a single charge, has some really brisk performance, handles well, rides really well and is very practical for family use, the Creta EV ticks all the right boxes. Then there’s Hyundai’s excellent after sales, which make considering the Creta a very safe bet.
Hyundai launched the Creta Electric at the 2025 Bharat Mobility Expo, with introductory prices starting from Rs. 17.99 lakh, going all the way up to Rs. 23.49 lakh for the top-end trim (the one what we experienced). We were a little underwhelmed by the prices, which seem to be on the higher side. But it is what it is.
Even at these elevated prices, there will be enough Hyundai faithful who buy the Creta Electric, at least in the initial months. However, had Hyundai priced each of the variants a couple of lakhs lower, we’d have had a situation where 2,000 units of the Creta Electric would have been a consistent sales number, month after month. It’ll be interesting to see how the market responds to these prices. Time will tell!