Intro
Kia's Electric EV6
Described as a modern and sporty crossover. With an eye-catching, muscular design, every detail, big and small, is designed to create a distinctive and sporty look. Couple that with superfast charging times, driving range of 320 plus miles, and just all round class.
Kerb Appeal
The Kia EV6 with its sleek and stylish appearance certainly offers plenty of kerb appeal, with smooth angular lines. The smooth lines are balanced with large 19inch wheels and a upswept body strap giving the EV6 a distinctive refined and stylish eye catching look.`
Interior
The EV6's interior is excellent, with plenty of gloss-black and rubberised surfaces, everything feels well built. The 'leather' is vegan rather than the real thing,
The driver's seat is comfortable and wraps round you, holding you securely around the middle, so no sliding around through corners. Depending on the model these come with front seats that give the driver powered adjustable lumbar support. (You’ll have to upgrade to the GT-Line trim if you want to adjust other parts of the seat electrically, as well giving your passenger lumbar adjustment).
Rear Seat/Boot
Passengers have plenty of leg room and head room the rear seats fold the 60/40 forward, you can either use the levers on each side of the boot or the levers on the side of the seats, then to bring the seats back use the seat levers. There is a useful through-put for your skis or fishing rods. Under the boot floor is another useful compartment, plus a small load compartment under the bonnet.
Adjusting the interior temperature is easy with actual dials on the dashboard, while just below is a touch-sensitive panel for air-conditioning settings.
Sat nav and infotainment
The EV6 comes with two curved 12.3in touchscreens set high on the middle of the dashboard. It’s easy to see and features an intuitive operating system that allows you to personalise the myriad settings that are on board so is not too distracting to use while driving.
The satnav is comprehensive, including, for EV drivers, all-important information about charge-points
All models feature Apple Carplay and Android Auto smartphone mirroring, with wireless phone-charging. The standard six-speaker stereo can also be upgraded to Kia’s 14-speaker Meridian system.
The EV6 is easy to drive, basically you press the start button, put in D for drive, push the accelerator and you silently glide away, and at a pretty quick rate. But the EV6 is much more, once you get behind the wheel it soon becomes obvious the level of sophistication the car has.
It is a joy to drive, the car’s performance, during acceleration with allows the automatic to keep up with the vehicle in front. And, in one-pedal mode, there’s far less need to use the brakes, simply as you press the pedal it accelerates and on releasing it, the car brakes making easy to control in ‘stop start’ traffic’. The paddles behind the steering wheel allow a choice of regeneration modes.
Visibility is excellent , the EV6 profile with its sharp angled windscreen pillars and relatively high diving position affords the driver a near perfect view at junctions as well as straight down the road. gives you a good view.
The rear pillars and rising window line can restrict visibility when reversing but the rear view camera and rear sensors negate any blind spots making it easy to reverse park in the tightest of spots. The rear view can be further enhanced by upgrading to a 360 degree, birds eye camera.
Safety: The car sports a long list of safety features including lane departure warning as standard.
Conclusion
In general, the EV6 proved to be not only easy but also very relaxing to drive over our week of testing.
A heavy car with lots of power was always going to be fun, the 77 kWh motor speeds the car to 62 mph in just 7.3 seconds; the torque provided by the electric motor is instantly available. The stopping power is equally impressive; so, too, the steering and handling.
Given the most powerful chargers (and conditions, such as warm rather than cold batteries) the EV6 can be charged from 10-80% in just 18 minutes. The last charge, at 47 kW, took 58 minutes from 25-80% and taking the range from 60 miles to 207 miles. The EV6 77kWh motor has a maximum range of almost 250 miles. If your journeys are all quite short and at a gentle pace, the range can reach almost three hundred miles.
The test car was the Kia EV6 ‘Air’ version, rear-wheel-drive only, and one of the cheapest in the range priced at £40,955, but you get a lot of the latest in motoring sophistication both inside and out…and all provided with Kia’s 7-year/100,000-mile warranty.
As our readers know we take our cars on a number of long journeys from the North West to Humberside, Nottingham and back and one of the main practical considerations we take into account is arriving at our destination fresh and ready for work or play and on this score, the KIA EV6 delivered regardless of road or weather conditions.
KIA have produced a good family car then packed it full of the latest innovative tech and what they have come up with is a car that’s both innovative and practical with a quality that will suite many people.
The phrase I often use which sums things up is the EV6 knows how to look after its passengers and finally we all agree KIA have once again delivered.
To find out more go to - kIA Motors
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