Kia’s EV6: a giant stylistic statement about the future of the brand
Kia flicks the design switch with its electric EV6 - and there’s frenzied demand in Australia, despite the $67,990 price tag.
Car companies get very excited about “platform sharing”, which, for some reason, always makes me think of two people attempting to walk on one towering pair of heels.
Like most things in life, I always assumed this kind of corporate carping didn’t apply in my world, but then it struck me that, effectively, I share a platform with Nikki Gemmell, who writes amazing novels and whose talent makes me feel so inadequate that I make self-flagellating groans of envy whenever I read her columns.
Just as Nikki paints wondrous wordscapes while I compare cars to dinosaurs, you can sometimes get very different vehicles offered up from the same platform. For example, the collection of brands owned by the Volkswagen Group mean that the Volkswagen Touareg can be gussied up to become a Lamborghini Urus (or a Bentley Bentayga, a Porsche Cayenne or an Audi Q8), while an Audi A3 is, clearly, a Volkswagen Golf in a slightly nicer blouse.
Every now and then, however, an entirely new shared platform comes along and two related yet rival companies get the chance to use it to make a giant stylistic statement about the future of their brand’s entire design language.
Behold Kia’s new EV6, which, under all that shapely skin, is largely similar to its Korean cousin, Hyundai’s Ioniq 5. Both are electric and both have created the kind of frenzied demand that must be hugely frustrating, because they can’t get nearly as many of these eye-catching cars as they’d like. (Kia says it had 25,000 “expressions of interest” in the EV6, and that was before it advertised the car 1.2 million times during the tennis.)
In fact, Kia Australia will only have 500 EV6s to sell this year, which is about 300 fewer than the number of people who’ve personally told me they’d like to buy one. What’s sparking a lot of this interest is the design of the EV6, which is wildly different from Hyundai’s effort, with its dot-matrix lights, DeLorean nose and a side profile featuring more lines than an Aaron Sorkin screenplay.
The EV6 swaps stark for smooth and looks genuinely ravishing from the front, although it becomes, for me, a little confused about what it is as you examine its proportions – Kia says it’s a “medium SUV”, yet it looks like a car – and then finishes with a tail that resembles the head of a parasaurolophus, or duck-billed dinosaur.
I must admit, I loved the Kia at first, but the more I lived with it, the more I noticed strange little features, which must be a lot like living with me. While the EV6 trumps its Hyundai cousin in terms of exterior design, the Ioniq 5 looks and feels more special inside – lighter and roomier, with lots of Star Wars-spec white screens.
The EV6 did delight me daily with the little tune that it plays on start-up – if it’s not written by Daft Punk, the band should sue – but I was a little disappointed to find some sharpish edges and not quite perfect plastic joins around the centre console.
This wouldn’t matter so much if Kia wasn’t charging the kind of money that would have seemed beyond its brand ambitions not so long ago. The EV6 RWD Air I was in starts at $67,990, and that’s the cheap one, because it only has one electric motor, on the rear axle, good for 168kW and 350Nm, while the AWD variant gets twice as many motors for your $82,990, making 239kW, 605Nm and a lot of pace, with a 0 to 100km/h zip of 5.2 seconds versus my Air’s 7.3.
To be honest, though, I didn’t feel like I needed a lot more grunt than I had, because the single-speed transmission and terrific torque delivery of even the base EV6 makes it feel surgingly quick, and even a bit exciting in Sport mode. The ride is also quite lovely, and the steering involving; the various regenerative modes – which can be adjusted using paddles attached to the steering wheel – mean you can actually change the way the car behaves, specifically how much braking effect you get by lifting off the throttle, right up to the point of one-pedal driving, where you effectively don’t need to touch the brake at all.
Another bonus of buying the entry-level Air model is that you actually get more range than you would from the AWD version – an impressive 528km (from its very large 77.4kWh battery pack). All EV6s also offer the best possible charging tech available, an 800V system that will get your battery from 10 per cent to 80 per cent on an ultra-fast 350kW charger in just 18 minutes (or 73 minutes on a 50kW charger).
The clever Kia also features Vehicle-to-Load charging, which means there’s a normal, three-pin powerpoint in the back seat, so you’ll be very popular during blackouts or natural disasters.
What was most noticeable about the EV6 in our week together, however, was how excited other people were to see it. Almost, but not quite, as thrilled as I would be if I ever got to meet Ms Gemmell.
Kia EV6 RWD Air
ENGINE: Single electric motor (168kW/350Nm). Average 16.5 kWh per 100km TRANSMISSION: One-speed automatic, rear-wheel drive
PRICE: $67,990
STARS: 4 out of 5
This EV sports car hits 100km/h in just 2.4 seconds
This is quite possibly the fastest car I’ve ever driven – at least in a straight line – which makes it a useful tool for impressing and occasionally terrifying other people. But it does not make it my favourite vehicle ever.
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