The automatic headlight dimming is a neat trick. And reliable so far! It uses the forward facing camera rather than just a light sensor, so it knows if lights are in the lane ahead of, or adjacent to you and not only doesn’t blind oncoming traffic, but also avoids high-beaming the mirrors of the guy in front of you while sucessfully ignoring signage and building lighting. Nice. Easily defeated, as its just a fourth position on the light switch.
The blind-spot monitor and rear-cross traffic warning are usefull and seem well tuned, but I can’t help thinking they wouldnt be as essential if the rear visibility were better. :p defeatable with a single button-press, but like the hill hold in the FieSTa, I don’t really know why youd ever turn it off.
The lane keep assist is annoying as hell, unless you set it to “active” mode. On your average interstate highway active mode is nearly as capable as Tesla’s autopilot. There’s no radar cruise control, only front collision emergency braking, but you can fairly practically just rest your hand on the wheel (it knows if you take your hands off the wheel), set the cruise and not pay attention. I’m not saying thats what you should do by any means, but you could. The system seems quite robust. But dont try to use it on winding secondary roads, the beeping will drive you mad. Thankfully it only takes one button press to disable.
Also, in a neat trick, since the Kona has LED lighting, some of the reverse lights are Infrared LEDs, and the reverse camera has fricken’ night vision. It’s actually pretty badass, the amount you can see with it vs the visible reverse lamps is quite startling.