Seven-seat electric SUV takes the South Korean brand into new territory, in terms of both size and price On sale Now Price from £65,025
Lawrence Cheung lawrence.cheung@haymarket.com
KIA’S NEW SEVEN-SEAT electric SUV is here to be noticed. For one thing, it’s very big; the EV9 is substantially taller, longer and wider than Kia’s former flagship SUV, the excellent combustion-engined Sorento. Secondly, the EV9 looks like nothing else on the road; its ‘Robocop’s family transport’ looks mean it stands out like, well, a cyborg at a police picnic.
It’s not just all about presence, though. The EV9 is designed to be a practical, usable electric SUV. To that end, its bulky exterior translates to a very accommodating interior, particularly if you go for a seven-seat model. Six-footers can occupy even the rearmost seats with space to spare – as long as those in the middle row refrain from sliding their seats all the way back. Top GT-Line S trim brings the £1000 option of replacing the three-seat middle row with two individual chairs, which can be swivelled to face the rear seats, or simply to make access easier when installing child seats.
There’s even a reasonable amount of boot space even when all three seating rows are in use – slightly more than you get in a Toyota Yaris. Of, course, you can fold the second and third rows down for a truly vast load bay if you need to carry more packages than people.
You can lug them quite a long way, too. Every EV9 has a big battery with a 95kWh usable capacity, and the rear-wheel-drive (RWD) version officially manages an impressive 349 miles on a full charge. The heavier four-wheel-drive (AWD) model tested here tops out at 313 miles; that puts it a little behind the much pricier seven-seat Mercedes-Benz EQS SUV’s 364-mile official figure, but it’s farther than the more closely priced five-seat Audi Q8 e-tron and BMW iX will go and it beats the seven-seat Mercedes-Benz EQB.
The EV9 also stands up well come charging time. It can accept rates of up to 210kW, so – if you can find a powerful enough public charging point – a 10-80% top-up can be taken care of in just 24 minutes. That’s quicker than the same charge would take for any of those rivals.
As for performance, the single-motor RWD version goes from 0-62mph in a respectable 9.4sec, but the AWD model adds a second motor on the front axle for lots more power and shortens that sprint to just 5.3sec.
That’s quick by most standards, but a relatively soft suspension se
