Kia EV9 review

Prices for the EV9 commence at £65,025 for the ‘Air’ entry-level model, with a single rear motor outputting 197bhp. As standard it’s served with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, wireless phone charging, heated and cooled front seats, heated outermost middle seats and dual-zone climate control. There’s also standard tinted glass, built-in window blinds, a heated steering wheel, electric tailgate (with two speed settings, for no apparent reason) many cameras, even more driver assists, LED lights and nine airbags.

Which makes you wonder why on earth you’d need more. But if you move up to the £73,275 GT-line, along with your 379bhp dual-motor drivetrain, you’re treated to 21-inch wheels (up from 20s), electrically-adjustable front seats and steering column, seat massage (Bentley-good, but for the driver alone) and Kia’s uncanny remote parking aid which lets you control the car at very low speed from the key. While it’s locked. With no-one inside.

So if you accidentally buy the enormous EV9 without checking it’ll fit on your driveway, you can disembark the whole family then send it into your parking space without wondering how you’ll get the doors open. It’s a creaky process, but an impressive one.

Top of the line is GT-line S, which upgrades the hi-fi to a 14-speaker Meridian system, and gets you a great big sunroof that the children will like but mummy and daddy will groan at for forcing the air-con to work harder, eating into the range. Once you’ve selected GT-line S for £77,025, you have the £1,025 option of deleting the middle bench for those two individual captain’s chairs. Just the thing if you’re filming an episode of The Apprentice inside.

And if I’m going down the finance route?

The numbers don’t look too scary, which means forecast residuals should be OK. Provided EVs don’t fall any further in the court of public opinion. For instance, Kia has an offer on the full house GT Line S EV9, with a £10,000 down payment and 10,000-mile annual limit, for just under £1,100 a month. That falls to £860 a month if you can ‘make do’ with an Air. That’s on a PCP.

That looks to make the Kia a good old-fashioned Korean bargain. But the Mercedes EQB is also electric and many-seated and it costs about £60,000. Then again, it has a maximum claimed range of barely 250 miles and it's far more cramped than the Kia, with less extensive levels of standard kit.

Of course, there’s also the left-field likes of the Citroen e-Berlingo: about as versatile as a car comes… only with half the real-world range you’d want to make best use of it. So the EV9 really does seem to have carved out its own niche, and there’s no sign of an ‘e-Galaxy’ or e-Zafira’ from the old suspects of big value family haulers to challenge it.