KIA EV9: Why Their "AWARD WINNING" Electric Car is The Only One You SHOULDN'T BUY

well there we have it, we finally did it, the world now has a 5m long, 2 and 3/4 ton, 400 horsepower, 75,000 all

electric

Kia and the company itself calls it a generation defining car, You know what worries me the most, I think. They may be right. My name is James, this is the Kia ev9 and we have a lot to talk about. The first is the first. The cards on the table. I really like both the cars and the company with which I have now had an excellent working relationship. The last 7 years they were one of the first big manufacturers to support me when it was a small channel and now after all this time I still really enjoy not

only

talking to them but also driving the vehicles because they are really brilliant at almost everything from from the Stinger to the Picanto there's something about it that I think appeals not just to the average person but also to the petrolhead in the interest of being fair and balanced on the occasions I've been to one of my two local Kia dealerships that I haven't had It was a moment very good, but from a journalistic point of view, I generally have nothing but good things to say about Kia and its products, and in that time it has also been surprising to see how the company has evolved, how the model range has changed, but I would say that for many people the AIA is still something they see as an alternative to

their

Fords,

their

Vox SS, maybe even a Toyota, and in truth, some of the best cars I've driven with them were more budget-oriented, in fact, the now discontinued Kia Picanto GT line S, with a 1L 3-cylinder turbo engine, is one of my favorite cars and it is for that reason that I think the pure concept of this is foreign to many people, after All in all, this is a vehicle that Not

only

in dimensions but also in price, is comparable to a Range Rover Sport, since it is something so new that it is very likely that you have not seen one of these in person yet, but with little more 5 m is marginal. longer than said R Rover, just under 2m, it's only slightly narrower and at £65,000 for the entry-level ev9 air, it's already the most expensive car Kia has ever sold in the UK;

This top GTline variant costs almost £80,000 more. Most of the time when I review a Kia I say that it is something like a Range Rover but it costs half as much with this one anymore. What seems most curious to me is that the last car I had from Kia was the ev6 and both the 6 and the 9 are soon to be joined by the entry-level EV3, but if you look at the Six and N parked together, there doesn't seem to be much family resemblance now that the EV3 has clearly taken many of its styling cues. It's very flat and a bit chopped at every opportunity, a bit stylized but so are all cars these days, however there's actually almost no family resemblance between the six and the nine, it's quite a sporty looking car crouched and determined. even at its entry level guys, and I really like it, it's one of those cars that looks like it's a little bit bigger than it actually is, in a lot of ways it's really the opposite and it feels just from a visual perspective that this and The sixes are the product of a completely different company and this is something I will return to many times, fortunately for me, as is Kia tradition, the model line-up is relatively simple with only the three trim levels being offered. has.

Entry-level Air that's available as single-motor rear-wheel drive with 200 horsepower or dual-motor all-wheel drive with 380 above, then you have the GT line and then there's the GT S line and both come exclusively as always. They all have a 99.8 KW battery, which I think might be the largest in any EV I've tested and which gives the basic rear-wheel drive car a combined range of just over 350 Mi and all -The The all-wheel drive variant has a combined range of just over 310, but keep in mind that if you're not familiar with

electric

vehicles, they work differently to combustion engine cars, so if you're going on a long trip, you can count on that number actually being a bit optimistic, my real world experience with temperatures of about 7-10° has been that with a full charge you will get between 240 and 260 Mi in highway scenarios comfortably, as well as It's the Kia tradition.

The ev9 comes very well equipped, even the Base Air model has many things as standard that other manufacturers would consider an option, including but not limited to parking sensors, front and rear 360° cameras, which are honestly very, very useful , more advertising systems that You can move a stick to include a blind spot monitor for blind spot collision avoidance rear cross traffic alert navigation-based smart cruise control forward collision avoidance multi-collision braking highway driving assist speed limit assist everything, there's even a little setting here that keeps an eye on it and knows if you're not looking at the road, which honestly has been a little frustrating because, as with a lot of modern cars, it likes to beep a lot and tell you things and then, when you look down you try to figure out what's beeping for now, then it proceeds to scold you for not looking at the road and beeps at you for that too.

DFT. You also have more useful things like the driving mode, select the terrain mode here, select the off-road mode you want. We're never going to do the usual stuff like traction control, ABS tire pressure monitoring, an active hood system, which I think means some sort of Nissan GTR Jaguar style airbags for the front self-leveling suspensions and rear, although note that I don't think this is sit-on-air, certainly not everywhere nor does it mention anywhere here fully adaptive or adjustable suspension, nothing like what the ev6 GT had. So if you opt for the GT line, you'll get the dual motor with all-wheel drive now as standard. get 21 inch alloys you have with 285 mil wide 285 mil 245 tires, they are huge.

You'll get the gtline exterior styling of the roof rails here, which I know a lot of people will find. Convenient adjustable power seat with memory for the driver and premium power seat for the front passenger. relaxation seats for the driver and front passenger, so you have a massage function, you have heating, cooling and there is even a useful button that if you press it will tilt you back, which I suppose is very useful if you are waiting to pick someone up at an airport or something, you even get alloy pedals and that lineup also gives you the terrain mode selector and the GT S line.

This then adds the 14-speaker Meridian premium sound system, which Alright. It's not great. Meridian things are never as shiny as people say. You have a front screen which is very useful. Then you also have a front sunroof that tilts and slides and a second sunroof with just a sliding cover behind it which I think is actually quite useful. You can even have the car as a seven-seater or for the GTL S as a six-seater with a couple of captain's chairs in the middle that will then rotate, which is cool. I like it, I mean. There really is a lot going on in this car and it's full of nice little details, like when you want to clean the rear window.

I mean, the wiper itself is hidden so well, you wouldn't know it's there, right? But that's the way it is and when you try to clean this, if you have it spraying, it's clever first of all, it feels like it's blooming a pressure washer, it's a real stream coming out of it, but as the blade gets closer to where He sprays it. stops, there are a lot of nice ideas in this car, it's packed with nice little details, so there should be enough space for them, it's not there and on that topic let's talk about the interior space, because there is a good possibility.

If you've decided you need a car this big it's because you think you need interior space, so how good is it? This is the section of the review where I wish I could summon my friend Ben from Dad's Cars, but sadly I can't, so you. First I'll have to put up with him making mistakes. I quite like the materials, the leather here is quite nice and I must confess that when I first got into the ev9 I felt like it was just a step down in quality. the ev6, ​​but having lived with it for a while, no, the materials are good, it's just the design and style, somehow I don't like it that much and the gray, for some reason the gray always go a little cheaper and nastier.

Of what you need, the car is certainly not lacking things. I mean, you even have blinds in the back here which are very practical and nice and in terms of configuration I think it's pretty good, so in the middle row in a three seater. the setup will slide fore and aft it also has a good amount of recline and if you want to access the back row it's easy to do and a little scary CU press this button and that will happen or it gets off press this no button or Press this button, no, wait, here we go, put that down and then press, you can do it if you want to load the luggage.

Let's get this back. I told you I wasn't very good at this kind of thing. Talk to each other anyway. Return it. It took me a while to practice this and I'm still not very good at it, so let's pretend you're loading someone on the back button, this is really good, yeah, I don't know how well you can see me there. but raise the headrest and put this in place and you'll possibly regret it oh yeah, oh, okay, so I'd like to move this forward. I play hi, hi, um, but not really, this is good, I'm 510 and I have a long torso.

I like to mention it at every possible opportunity and actually this is the rear seat to recline too if you need it somehow, and all of this by the way can also be done from the buttons in the trunk if you want to lower them, press One button and the rear parts will lower and raise electrically as well. Then when you want to escape, press that and you're out. For those with families, for those who need space here, this is a proper 7 Seer with a generous amount of space you could definitely take the family there, but it's from up there that I want to talk to you a little bit more about because for me that's a little less successful, I mean, look, it's not like it's a bad place to spend. your time and there are many things I really like about these seats, good materials and like the backrest they are very comfortable, here you have a great wireless charging pad for your phone, Android auto, Apple carplay, more cup holders than you would expect You can wave a stick to include the stylish little ones here that I really like and would easily keep a kid or a 34-year-old YouTuber busy for hours.

It has a lot of systems features and I think the right amount of buttons it has temperature and fan controls here for the volume control on your hbac and also a lot of actual physical controls on the steering wheel. I also love the gear lever down here, it's sleek, simple and really nice, push the big EV button to start the car and then flip it forward to drive. turn it back to reverse or gently to neutral or push the side to park much more intuitive than the silly little power toggle down here that you can't actually even see.

I even appreciate the fact when you put the car on. in reverse, it gives you a little vibration, a little bit of haptic feedback, to tell you what you've done, tons of storage, not just in the cupholders, but you also have a big opening down here thanks to the flat floor that The car has controls here so you can operate the passenger seats if the drivers need it, there are even USBC sockets on the side, although I can see that going very very wrong, it's a mysterious thing down here that looks like a fingerprint reader but honestly, I don't know what that's for, a little cubby here and everything is very decent, the front screen is great, nice and clear.

I'm not in love with this, although everything tries to seem very serious, very modern. and I actually had a moment where I felt a little stupid because I just wanted to turn on the radio. I had Android auto doing its thing but I wanted the radio and it was going fine for a while, what do I press? actually it was the media button down here that would eventually take you out and give you some options and I actually love these buttons down here, they're cleverly integrated and they're touch sensitive which is actually quite a piece of design pleasant.

I have liked this over time. which I've had but but but when you're sitting in this thing, you're constantly reminded of how big it is, I mean, all the time, comfortably from this seat you have a pretty big view of that hood, but all that really does is tell you. how big the car is that you're actually driving and I guess that's been my biggest problem because one of the things I love about KS and one of the things I love about Min, a Range Rover, even though they're cars Large, they also drive very well and many of the smaller Kears are great to drive, including the EV6. had greatHopes for the ev9, but it didn't go as well as it could have. probably saying I have mixed feelings about this car, at no point this week have I decided if I want to call Kia and ask them to take it away right away or if I could actually keep it for the rest of the summer.

The truth is that a lot of this has to do with the size of the car, there's no way around it, but this really is at the upper limit, if not a little beyond what you can get away with in the vast majority of cases. situations here in Britain. I'm driving down what you would describe as a typical average country road. In fact, I know this is quite generous compared to others in Kent, Cornwall, Devon and the like, and I know I'm doing my best every day. I drove out in this car. I've been somewhat grateful for the fact that I'm pretty sure no one else has an ev9 yet.

Turns out I've seen a ton of EV 6s and they seem to have done pretty well and rightly so, so it's a really cool car, but this one Oh, it's such a big bus. I took it to London because you know why not. I went shopping with my mom and thought, "Okay, this is a good test." Let's take it to a parking lot in Stratford Westfield in case you were wondering, and oh, there it is. There were times when you were just going I don't know I don't know I don't know I was really sure and you know it's not there yet I haven't returned it yet I thought there was no way I was going to be able to return this car to Kia without any kind of damage.

I thought look, it's a fact that it's going to happen, I mean, it likes to be like that, but you all the time and that's one of the areas where I really don't get along with ev9, the ad systems are Ridiculously intrusive. Firstly you have your lane keep system, now that's not so bad because although it turns itself on every time there is a button on the steering wheel for you to turn it off. and it's necessary because when you're already taking up the entire road there's no room left and if you leave it like that, it feels like the car is constantly fighting with you for control of the steering wheel and that's just not the case.

It's a nice feeling that, although it's not a problem, what are all the other things that the car likes to tell you, including mainly for me the speed limit warning, which tells you what the speed limit is, which is very useful, pleasant and in general it has been like that. pretty accurate but if you go over it even a fraction it will beep quite a bit and then the warnings can change and occasionally it will pass by a sign that really

shouldn

't be there or it's for something else and I'll read it and then it will scold you and even in an even car when it has the 5 mph sign on it will beep at you because you're doing 6M hours and it's just annoying but again I wouldn't care if you turned it off and it stayed off but it doesn't stay off and worse yet you have to going into three different menus and submenus to finally get to what you want and then telling it that you don't want any of it. nonsense, thank you very much and that's frustrating, really very frustrating, it feels unnecessary and I know I've complained many times before that I don't understand the whole obsession with security just by them putting things on a menu on a menu on a menu in a menu knowing that you will be distracted while driving trying to turn off that damn thing that's just annoying in terms of pace okay it's fast enough you put your foot down it goes away of course it's not as energetic as the ev6 GT, but here with about 400 horsepower, 700 newton meters of torque, that is 516 pound-feet and exactly half if you have the single engine configured, it is worth for a 2 and 3/4 ton bus, which will be 3 tons for when you have the family there it's fine it does the job the steering although it's a disappointment because this is another area where Kia is generally pretty good and the ev6 is actually really good but that's how good it just has there's no connection to the road at all and maybe that's because it's a huge almost 3 ton all wheel drive car with 285 mil wide tires all around so it has to have a lot of assistance and with that assistance it just goes.

The time I drove this, the weather has been like this, so varied, I mean literally, when I was setting up the cameras, it started to rain and you go around a curve going W. I'm going be fine. Do I have enough grip? No, we've had a lot of flooding and stuff recently, so there's still a ton of water on the road and everything, and I keep worrying that maybe it's a little closer to the limit than I thought, but the car just does it. I don't communicate at all, it doesn't tell me anything, nothing at all and that is a frustration, the suspension is also a bit mixed, so when it has no problems it is very pleasant and on the highway it costs reasonably, it is very pleasant, its visibility It's good and all and it's probably like being in one of those things that you know Range Rovers are everywhere except in the city, over bumps, potholes, imperfections in the road, it has a constant knock, it feels like it has a bit of stiffness needed just to maintain that bodywork. mass under control oh, it doesn't have a very good turning circle either.

I mean, I almost managed to do this because I knew what I was doing, but if ever a car needs rear-wheel steering, this is it. It doesn't have it, range hasn't really proven to be a big deal once a car is worth around 250M and it usually does pretty much everything you could need in one go and bigger trips will be like 500 mile trips and I'll want stopping anyway, hasn't been a problem. I have not used any public charging points. Apparently very fast charging will be needed, but the problem is any charging station that is fast enough to give this car what it can take is also ridiculously expensive, it's not a equipment specific problem, it's general problems of electric vehicles and I know if you buy this at K I think you'll get a charging card to get discounts at certain stations honey I think but don't quote.

As for that at home, it's generally been fine, although I didn't want to talk to my charger for a moment, but I think it was just a basic issue with the plug not being at the right angle. Something was going on with DFT but for the most part it's been fine, the economics aren't great on this little run I just did, we've been averaging 1.6m per kilowatt hour which is the worst I've ever gotten of any electric vehicle tested so far. a slightly fairer metric is for a longer distance and in that sense it's a little better - it's been running between 2 and 2.3 mil per kilowatt hour, but that puts it only on par with the Porsche Tyan in the dead of winter when It wasn't degrees and I've complained enough about that car already, so it's only fair that I complain a little about the Kia.

The last EVS I've had from them have performed considerably better, at least 3m per Kow. hour and some of them, the Eero for example, which will happily produce 4 mil per kilowatt hour, which completely negates the real advantage of the larger battery in practice, what this will mean is that if you are charging from home and You are in a scenario where you regularly take longer trips, you need to be careful about exactly how much charge you have to put in the car, especially if you are on a tariff where you only want to charge for a set number of hours per day .

At night it might be that in other more efficient cars you could get a range of 50 to 60 miles, which should be enough for your daily commute, but in this one you might only get half of that, that's a problem, the batteries They are getting bigger. They're getting more efficient, they're getting better, which is great, but the rate at which we put electricity into these things at home is unlikely to change dramatically in the near future and here's the thing about this car, there's so many things about it. I'm only realizing after about 5 days that even the middle seats are heated and cooled, that's luxurious, you can even turn it on or off from the screen here and sometimes I have to stop and wonder.

And come on, now we're in a world where on a touchscreen I can turn off the cooling of the seats behind me, okay, yeah, okay, a lot of this, of course, will be part of Kia's march to make the brand larger. better and better looking, but I'm a little worried that this will ultimately come at the expense of some of the other cars, the mainstream products, the smaller ones, the entry level items that I really love, like many others, the problem with the ev9 for For me, I think this is a result of Kia's globalization, which is based on its global modular platform for electric vehicles and I think really what they really need is like an ev7 and a half and I'm sure that KIA The United Kingdom already knows this.

This is because if you live in Britain you may not know it, but for years there has been a car just as big, I think if not bigger, available in the US, here it's called the toride, although the larger Kia that we have had was the Serrento. The reason for this is that they knew that no one was going to buy anything bigger than the Sento, a car that is already somewhat big but not huge, this one is a little bigger and of course you need to have it in order to have the full range of three. six and nine, but I really think there's room for a car bigger than the six, smaller than this, this is great if you need all the space, if you need all the space, I'm kind of disappointed if you have the seven seats.

Messing with the boot is actually a bit disappointing, although if they aren't and they won't be for many people, most of the time you have a car with a huge boot and that's absolutely fine, but it just feels. unnecessary I know that, in general, I am not in the business of properly advising the consumer either, but when it comes to not only this car specifically, but certainly all similar cars, I have a very big concern and I believe not unjustified, which is the fact that we are talking about a car here that is part of a breed that is rapidly evolving, it is packed with lots and lots and lots of lovely technology but in 5 years it will be obsolete.

I mean, I'm surprised by the fact that you can get it. to walk back and forth with the key, I mean who needs a dog anymore? Tesla owners, I know you'll be looking at me now, saying, "Oh, that poor guy backwards doesn't know about these features that have been around for years, but here's the point." Things move very, very quickly, you have a big, huge, dirty car, they tend to depreciate like nobody's business, anyway, combine that with the fact that it's an electric vehicle, combine that with the fact that which is full of technology, combine that with the fact that it's a Kia, but it's really very expensive and if you were to invest £20 in what will be one of the most appreciated cars in Britain in the coming years, yes I just like driving it, it's quite nice, but I don't love driving it, it doesn't make me want to go out and drive it like the ev6 does and now I come here, the suspension is fine, the steering is not pleasant, it runs pretty good It breaks well and everything else but it's just something I'm not crazy about and most K's do this it just feels like someone else built it and Kia put a few things in it.

I know that's not the case at all if you want a more luxurious SUV, take a look. one of the Genesis products built on the same platform and part of the same family Kia Hundai Genesis is a good car, certainly not bad, but I would recommend anyone to buy it. Yeah, I guess if you don't really want a Range Rover. You need seven seats, you want toys and everything and you're very happy that in five years no one will want it because they won't buy the ev6, ​​even though it's a really fantastic car no matter what, but yeah, there we have it. my look at the Kia ev9 there's nothing else to say really other than thanks to Kia for lending it to me please let me have another car and as always thanks to you for looking don't forget to hit the like button comment below.

Subscribe if you haven't already and see you next time, bye.