New Kia EV6 2022 (UK) - could the new Kia EV6 be one the best electric cars on sale?
24Kia’s first bespoke EV is another triumph for the brand, and a car that wears its £40k-plus list price with ease. It’s not quite as practical overall as its sibling, the Hyundai Ioniq 5, but it counters this with tighter body control for a slightly more sporty drive. Factor in great in-car tech and stellar battery management that’ll take you comfortably north of 300 miles on a single charge and you have one of the best EVs on sale today, at any price.
Kia is on a roll with some of its more conventional models - such as the Sorento SUV, which has a healthy order bank and a waiting list that stretches well into 2022. But the firm is pushing ahead with electrification too. The likes of the e-Niro and Soul EV remain strong propositions, and now the Korean brand is about to introduce a new pure-electric flagship to its line-up: the EV6.
We were impressed by a late prototype version of the car that we tried earlier this year, but now we’ve had a chance to sample more of the range, in full ready-to-buy form and on UK roads.
To recap, the EV6 is a sportily styled crossover that sits on a new bespoke electric-car architecture, called E-GMP - the same platform that underpins our reigning Car of the Year, the Hyundai Ioniq 5. It’s available with two configurations to start with - 321bhp four-wheel-drive form, and the more affordable single-motor, 226bhp rear-drive version that we’re trying here. The usable battery capacity is 77.4kWh regardless of which motor set-up you choose - and for now at least, Kia UK has no plans to offer the smaller-battery version that’s available in other countries.
A single motor means, of course, that the more modest version of the EV6 is actually the version that promises the greatest range - 328 miles, in this case, compared with the 314 miles offered by the four-wheel-drive edition. And all EV6s get an 800V electrical backbone that can deliver up to 350kW DC charging - enough to take the battery from 10 to 80 per cent of its capacity in just 18 minutes. You’ll need to allow around seven and a half hours to perform the same function on a home wallbox.
The top speeds are identical between the rear-drive and four-wheel-drive cars, at 114mph, but having that extra motor will trim a couple of seconds from the 0-62mph time. Even so, the rear-drive car’s figure of 7.3 seconds could hardly be called slow.
There’s still 350Nm of torque on tap here, in fact, and that’s enough to take the two tonnes of EV6 (it follows the Ioniq 5 by being a larger vehicle in the metal than it looks in images) up to the UK’s speed limits without any real drama. There’s lots of instant EV punch, even if you’re in the efficiency-focused Eco mode, and more than enough real-world performance for rapid cross-country driving and overtakes in the car’s Normal setting.