Very cool that Hyundai is nailing it for playing in the dirt. A decent competitor to the Mache Ralley edition. Hyundai IONIQ 5 XRT Named Best U.S.-Built Sports Vehicle of the Year by American Cars And Racing - Hyundai Newsroom

I think it has more to do with the vendor and their software improvements. Tesla used to have huge variance between what they estimated miles of a battery pack was and what you actually got and as they improved the software and had more real-world driving data, they tweaked the software to be far more accurate. Kia has had their quarterly updates since we got the EV9 and it was pretty consistent on the old numbers. Just had a major quarterly update and this time it clearly stated that the software that manages the battery pack and predicts the range on a charge was getting more accurate due to miles driven by owners. As such, I think one of two things has happened, either A) they improved the estimation of range based on driving style or B) like Tesla and others, they are allowing less reserve battery pack and more actual driving from the battery pack based on efficiency of the whole EV in regard to how one uses the heat pump, electrics, etc. I think like anything, the first few years will not see any degradation and afterwards there will be some based on charging style DC versus slower home AC charging, driving style and feature/functions that are used.

This is less about politics and more for a laugh. You know how when you deplane at the end of the flight, the captain may be there at the front of the cabin along with a few flight attendants?  A lot of these guys look like clones of each other.  So, I often wonder which way they vote, at least in the U.S.  I wonder if there's a token one or two who vote(s) for 'the road less traveled' in the privacy of the voting booth.

Okay, this is coming from a very unbiased source. I'm sure there's MORE battery life a year later than from the factory... 

Nope not seeing that, in fact I have seen higher mileage based on the software monitoring of the system. So degradation is not happening.