► Six- or seven-seater set to shake up the market
► Drop-dead styling, premium interior, refined drive
► Up to 350 miles range, 0-62mph in 5.3 seconds
It’s an indicator of how far Kia has come that no one is batting an eyelid at £65k+ list price of its latest and possibly greatest electric vehicle (EV). The champion of changing perceptions rolls out its full-sized family SUV and hopes a combination of striking styling, long range and gargantuan interior will be enough to tempt status-conscious buyers out of their Land Rovers, Audis and BMWs. We already know it’s big and it’s clever, but is it good enough to join the ranks of the best electric SUVs on sale?
Yes, you heard this right – the new EV9 is landing in UK dealerships now, and is gunning for the Land Rover Discovery and Defender, and is doing so without a piston engine in sight. It’s a design statement for sure, and beyond that eye-catching price, you get a lot of tech and quality for your money – and right now, that’s more than enough to strike at the soft underbelly of its upscale British rivals. Not to mention take it right to the top of the best electric seven-seaters around.
The styling is one of the EV9’s major USPs, especially in our car’s matte Pacific Blue paint (incidentally, one of few options on the car, at £725). Kias have been looking less and less amorphous ever since Peter Schreyer joined the design department in 2006, but the latest move the game on further. While Schreyer tightened things and gave a hint of a personality, the newer cars under Karim Habib have really upped the ante and none more so than the EV9.
What versions of the EV9 are available?
Is this the car to really get the chattering classes excited about Kia? The hardware would make you think so. The EV9 is a multi-seat SUV that the Koreans insist can take on the likes of the aforementioned Land Rover Discovery and BMW X5, those long-standing stalwarts of the parked-three-deep school run.
The EV9 is available across multiple grades with a couple of seat options: most get seven as standard, with the base Air at £64,995 and the GT-Line (£73,245) and GT-Line S (£75,995) as the possible grades. But the top-spec ‘S’ also has a six-seat option (£76,995).
The latter is the EV9’s party trick, with three rows of two seats with the possibility of rotating the middle row to create a sort of car living room. Only without the TV. Or a wet dog curled up in front of the fire. I’m not sure how often the seats will get rotated in the day-to-day grind of family ferrying. It feels like it might be one more way for the children’s left-over crisps to get ground into dust.
Standard kit is impressive. Even the Air gets three-zone climate control, artificial leather, electric front seats, heated and vented front and middle row seats, heated steering wheel, full infotainment suite. As ever, the mid GT-Line is where the sensible money lies, giving you the sweet spot of kit vs cost.
All variants come with a 99.8 kWh battery located skateboard-style under the floor, much like the EV6 that shares the E-GMP platform with the larger EV9. Crucially, that gives it 800V architecture and 350kW charging speeds, enabling it to add up to 136 miles on the four-wheel drive version in just 15 minutes.
What’s it like inside?
Quality is impressive throughout, with a genuinely premium look and feel. The materials mix and general perceived quality seem spot on, but unlike its tech-laden rivals, the EV9’s interior is agreeably subtle in the way it looks – it’s not dominated by its tech, and neither is it over-styled. Mercedes-Benz, especially, could do with taking lessons here.
The vast digital dash (a 12.3-inch cluster in front of the driver, a 12.3-inch infotainment screen and a 5.3-inch climate control screen in between) is easy to use and there are plenty of actual buttons on the steering wheel so you don’t have to stretch-and-stab all the way over to the infotainment ‘screen.
Thanks to the flat floor, in-cabin storage is good and on the GT-Line and up, the two front seats get a nifty recline function complete with footrest. For when you want to act all BA-business class while you’re charging your car.
In the back, there is a huge amount of leg and head room, with the middle row splitting 40:60 and sliding fore and aft. For access to the rear, the middle set also flip and slide forward using just a single lever. Adults would manage it back there for a short journey and if carrying stuff is required, both rear rows fold flat. Each row gets its own climate control and vents in the ceiling. USB C sockets are aplenty.
As with most EVs, Kia is at pains to stress the eco credentials of all the materials with things like faux-leather seats and steering wheel (it feels good to the touch), bio plastics on the dash and console, and recycled fishing nets for the carpets. Downsides? There are some odd quirks, like a steering wheel that doesn’t adjust for enough reach or the air con controls being hidden behind the steering wheel. It feels weird to have obvious misses like that when so much thought has been thrown at the rest of it.
What’s it like to drive?
For our UK drive, we managed a tour of the Scottish Highlands, a suitably magnificent backdrop. But we’re here to review a car, not marvel at the scenery. Good news is that the mix of roads is perfect for evaluating the EV9. It feels most at home once out of the city, and loping along easy roads.
Stable footprint, plenty of power – it’s an easy thing to soak up the miles with a quiet cabin and well-damped ride. The comfort levels are good in the EV9. You notice it almost immediately – a softness to the controls and suspension that copes easily with broken tarmac and rolls across lumps without getting caught out. Crucially, given its family remit, it’s smooth around towns.
You can still feel the heft of the car in certain situations – high speed bumps or staggered cross-axle expansion joins don’t melt into the background as much as I’d like – but for the most part it’s an accomplished thing to waft along in, with an unerring ability to mask its bulk and (as the cliché goes) shrinks around you.
Climbing gently across rolling hills, the EV9 never feels stretched. Easy pace is the over-riding theme, not neck-snapping brutality. It’s effortlessly quick, and out of Eco mode pacey enough to amuse you, once you’ve dropped off the kids. But it’s no Tesla Model Y, and neither is it aspiring to be one.
There are two power levels available, either 200bhp or our car’s 379bhp and 513lb ft from the twin e-motors, and with 2.5 tonnes to shift around, it’ll do 0-62mph in 5.3 seconds (it’s 9.4 seconds for the rear-wheel drive version). We’ve yet to drive the lower-powered one, so can’t comment on that. However, the way our more powerful EV9 sweeps down the road, it’s likely the rear-wheel drive version could feel quite underpowered.
Likewise, the EV9 is neat and tidy in bends, which is the best you’d expect from a car that occupies most of its side of the road. The suspension does a reasonable job of keeping the body roll in check, but it’s set up for more leisurely driving – it pitches gently into a bend, rolls across the apex and then gathers itself up for the next straight. Looking for excitement? Go elsewhere.
Likewise the steering. It’s precise but lacks feel so it’s a safe and predictable machine, but with minimal reward or excitement. Having said that, it’s dynamically superior to the Tesla Model Y, not because it’s any more engaging but at least it doesn’t get the Tesla’s appalling ride or weird steering speed. Things are much more relaxed in the EV9 – a very successful dynamic mix for its intended purpose.
Kia EV9 range and charging
All EV9s come with an unusually large (for the money) 99.8kWh battery pack with Kia’s latest battery technology. The rear-wheel drive EV9 is capable of up to a claimed 349 miles (WLTP combined), while the more powerful four-wheel drive GT-Line and GT-Line S can travel up to 313 miles on a single charge.
On the road, and in the near-zero temperatures of the Scottish Highlands, that reduced to around 250 miles, still more than enough for most drivers. The range indicator proved reliable in our hands, with each mile dropped equating to a mile on the road (a surprising amount of EVs don’t manage this). But it’s quick to charge at the right station thanks to its 800-volt architecture, so you can top it up from 10-80% in 24 minutes.
Verdict: Kia EV9
As a solution to families wanting to electrify their multi-seater, the EV9 does an briliant job. As you’d expect from Kia, it does everything to make a stressed parent’s life easier with the sort of functionality and ease of use that doesn’t write headlines but does make surviving screaming children that little bit less stressful.
But those wanting excitement will need to look elsewhere. The EV9 is fast and extremely capable of absorbing many miles very comfortably (we’ve now done more than 1000 miles in three days, with no complaints), but it won’t give you that frisson of excitement that you’ll get from a BMW X5 – if that’s your thing. But as an ease-of-use machine, few are better.