Kia EV6 review

It’s actually pretty good. It’s more composed than the Hyundai Ioniq 5 (which has its own, more relaxed, appeal), and the abundance of torque under your right toe means you can easily get a lick on whenever you need to. Even in the single-motor, rear-wheel drive variant, although that performance is probably best described as ‘nippy’.

The downside is that with such heavily assisted steering, there’s a distinct lack of connection between you, the car and the road. And you never escape the feeling that this is a machine that weighs in excess of two tonnes.

Ah. It’s not a sports car then?

Not by a long shot. Customers told Kia the old car was too firm, so it’s played around with the dampers to soften the ride a bit. Our initial impression is that it still feels stiff and can be pretty thumpy at slow speeds and on rougher sections of road. Hmm.

No one but no one is going to be hooning in one of these, though. It still resists pitch under braking pretty well, and at a cruise it’s very refined indeed. There are also steering-wheel mounted paddles for adjusting the regen which always adds a bit more engagement to an EV, and there’s more insulation now, so there’s less noise intrusion. Not that there was much in the first place. Ahh. 

Oh, and the dual-motor remains a force to be reckoned with: plonk your foot down and the EV6 surges forward with more muscle than a family car has any right to. Or perhaps ought to. You’ll never miss a gap in the traffic again. Drinks might go flying, mind.

Remind me of the powertrain options…

In the UK all EV6s get the same 84kWh battery and 800-volt charging ability (we’ll come to that shortly). The single-motor RWD option is capable of 225bhp and 258lb ft, amounting to 0-62mph in 7.7 seconds.

Then there’s the twin-motor AWD EV6, which is good for 320bhp and an unruly 446lb ft. End result? 0-62mph takes 5.3s. That really is rather fast for a non-hot, non-hatch… thing. We await news of an updated, full fat GT, which had a 3.5-second zero to 62mph up its sleeve and a top speed of 162mph.

Naturally the more sedate one is better for range; 361 miles plays 339 (or a little less, depending on trim) and it’s more than fast enough. Over 116 miles in the RWD car on UK roads we managed 3.3mi/kWh. Not great – that’d result in a max range of just 277 miles – but that was without paying any attention to our efficiency at all. You could easily do better.

And the charging?

We were just coming to that. For the facelift Kia has upped the peak rate to 258kW, which means a 10-80 per cent juice ‘n’ dash takes just 18 minutes. So, more than 200 miles added in the time it takes to park, pee, peruse and purchase. You’ll be on your way again before that extortionate coffee’s come down to a reasonable drinking temperature.