Kia Soul EV review

You sit high in the Soul EV - almost SUV-like, some might say. The seats in the 64kWh car are electrically adjustable, heated and leather trimmed, while in the 39kWh car you have to make do with fabric-covered manually adjustable numbers and a cold back.

These differences highlight the Upstairs, Downstairs nature of the two Soul options: the more expensive car is plushly decked out, well equipped and thoroughly pleasant to be in, while the entry car with the smaller battery has cheap, scratchy plastics and feels like a different car entirely. 

Is the Soul EV practical?

The passenger space in the Soul is decent enough, and there are some useful (but small) storage areas around the front of the cabin, but the luggage space is not particularly good. We like the split level boot floor, which gives you somewhere to hide your charge cables, but at just 315 litres with all the seats up, the shallow load bay just isn’t big enough. You get 1,339 litres with the seats down.

To contrast, you get 380/1,190 litres out of a Skoda Fabia supermini, or more pertinently Kia’s Niro EV nets you 475/1,392 litres of bootspace. 

What about the infotainment? 

The Soul’s dashboard is at least more interesting than the Niro’s. Easy to use, too, with a 10.25in touchscreen infotainment system (it’s a mere 8.0in effort in the 39kWh car, though) that looks good, does much and responds quickly to your inputs.

Happily Kia has resisted the temptation to integrate everything into said touchscreen, so there are still physical climate controls and lots of buttons giving direct access to most functions.

The fancy 10.25in infotainment grants access to Kia’s UVO Connect telematics system. The car’s built-in eSim means it’s always online, so it can do normal stuff like live traffic and weather updates, but also tell you where public chargers are, whether they’re compatible with your car and whether they’re being used. If you’ve got the 39kWh car you’ll just have to pull over and look them up on your phone.