NEW Kia EV4: The Perfect Car For… Everyone?!
[Music] 1 2 3 4. [Music] Well, I’m just adjusting to the heat cuz we’re in Spain, very near Malaga, and it’s quite hot and it’s a beautiful day and we’ve been driving this fantastic car and we’ve been sitting inside and it’s really cool. So, it’s a bit of a shock to get out and find out it’s quite warm here. This is the rather impressive Kia EV4. This is the hatchback version. Uh, and I’ve just driven it here maybe 60 70 km up really windy mountain roads and it’s just a joy to drive. So, that is the Kia EV4 available later this year. And this is everything electric cars. Our three free YouTube channels on EVs and clean tech are funded by our fun-packed test drivetastic events in Farra, London, the Southwest, the North, Melbourne, and Sydney, and next up, Everythingele Electric Farm. And new for UK viewers, you can now buy a battery EV and much more at everythingleelectric.store. Now, back to the episode. So, we’re inland from Marbaya on the southern end of Spain. It’s a pretty hot day, but well, the current temperature is 31° centigrade, which is very nice coming from rainy UK. Now, that beep there just slightly annoying. I will say that. So, if you go 1 kilometer an hour over the speed limit, it will beep at you, which is fine, but I bet you can adjust it and turn it off. So, I’m still getting used to driving this car. But this is the Kia EV4. It’s brand new. It’s Kia’s big boost into the C segment car, what I’d call a hatchback. Uh, it’s it’s low. It’s a car. It’s not an SUV, but it’s really well built. It’s really nice car to drive. It’s thankfully very cool in here at the moment. Um, uh, and it’s it’s on it’s on the same platform as the Kia EV3, which is hugely popular, which I see loads of them in the UK. They’re very popular cars. I do think the two amazing companies from South Korea, Hyundai and Kia, have kind of cracked the electric car. They just do them so well. I mean, right from quite a long time ago now, I had a a Hyundai Kona. It just went way further than I would have expected a car of that size with a battery of that size. You know, it just was a really popular car. We both, my wife and I both loved driving it. Was we drove it all over the place. We really put the miles on that car without any trouble. Uh, very easy to charge it. All those things are really good. Well, this is kind of the next generation, the next step up. And it’s just beautiful. I mean, it is very hard to be critical of it. That little bib then that’s my fault. I went too near the little white line at the edge of the road. So, it’s got very gentle, polite uh lane lane assist. It’s got really good cruise control, adaptive cruise control. It’s got all those things. a huge number of sensors, not just cameras, but it’s also got a huge number of cameras. So, it’s incredibly well equipped really considering the price. I mean, it’s not a cheap cheap car, but it’s not, you know, the this the technology you get in electric cars these days is mindboggling, frankly, for an old person that’s used to stuff you had to wind up. So, I was the first thing I noticed when I saw this car was this sloping bonnet, which I and and Jack had mentioned to me he didn’t like the look of the sloping bonnet. But as soon as I saw it, I went, I don’t agree. I think it’s really good. I’m rather sick of all the big lumpy SUV styled massive fronts like American SUVs, you know, the huge high bonnet, just so ugly, so un unerodynamic, so stupid. And I kind of like this slightly sleeker thing. And I can tell you from the point of view of driving it, you can really see where the front is. You’re not you’re not seeing this great lump in front of you. I like that uh that uh tapered off front there. Um and I quite like the the color scheme on this. Very simple, but you know, it’s this one has a sunroof, but the black and gray. This is I think this is called shark gray or something or whale gray. I don’t know. It’s got they’ve got lots of clever colors that they call it. But this is Kia’s first C segment hatchback. what I would think of as the as a Golf, a VW Golf, the sort of classic hatchback. And that is the the market that they’re aiming at, which is the single most popular market of any car design and shape. And what is really nice about it, I think, is it’s low. It’s not a great big high SUV. It’s got quite the seating is nice and low. How they’ve done the battery packaging and everything like that to to allow that to happen is is proper Kia cleverness. So, it comes in two flavors. There’s a standard range which has a 58.3 kWh battery pack and the long range version which is what we’ve been driving today which has an 81.4 kWh battery pack and that thanks to the streamlined shape and the aerodynamics of this vehicle. The Kia are claiming uh 391 so just short of 400 miles not kilometers miles on this car and so far I it’s so hard to judge when you drive it for an hour what it would really do. We’ve climbed up an enormously high mountain. So that uses much more energy. But as we’re coming back down now, the mileage indicator is just staying the same for mile after mile after mile. So they really do have their battery management system, their drivetrain management, the software that runs the car. It’s peachy. It really it is setting a new a new bar for other manufacturers. Uh the I can’t think its main competitor to be fair is the Tesla Model Y because that’s a hatchback version. This is a big hatchback. Uh you know, and it’s slightly cheaper and it definitely goes further. I think that is fair to say, which is really good standard to set yourself. So, I’m impressed with that. So, the EV4 is built on a 400vt architecture, which means it can charge very fast. Uh if you plug it into a 350 kW charger, of which there’s more and more available, you’re talking like 20 to 25 minutes. It’s so pointless these statistics because there’s very often the case where I’ve stopped, got a coffee, used the facilities, got back in the car, and I’ve added 150 km. Well, that’s enough. That’ll get you past the next charger when you’re doing a long drive. So, it’s all really relative. That whole charging time stuff is nonsense. If you drive it down so you’re at exactly 10%. Which is quite complicated to do. Depends where the charger is, and you charge it to exactly 80% that takes about 30 minutes. So, charge port is here, which I’m getting used to. Charge door. I think I’m very obsessed with how good a charge door and the latch is. This is really, really good. You close it, gentle press. But what is interesting is this car is built with vehicle to load, which is more and more common. So, you can run, you know, small household items or you can run charge up a your battery, electric scooter or your bike or whatever from it. But also, it can do vehicle to home and also it is built to to deal with vehicle to grid. So, it’s the communication technology and everything is built into the car. So, if you’ve got a vehicle to load or a vehicle to home uh charge box, you can plug this in and you can run your house off it. This is really the next step with electric cars and thankfully Kia are ahead of the game on that cuz not all car companies are doing that. The trunk slash boot doing that for everyone. Very nice, very spacious considering how big the back seats are. There’s a lot of room in there. It is about 431 L I think like that. But it’s got a nice um extra bit of under under there. I mean something actually useful. So all the charging cables are in there but they’re shoved up the end. You could actually get another load of shopping in there or whatever you wanted to put in there. Very nice. Just the I guess the build quality is just so so good. So the prices of this car the the 58.3 kWh one that’s the basic model is uh £34695. uh the uh and then this particular model would be 39395 and then the very top of the range with all the everything that is 43,000. So it’s within that range. It’s not cheap. I’m not saying it’s a cheap car, but considering what you get for it. If this car had existed when I had smaller children, I would have jumped at the chance to get one. I would release one because it’s so it’s got so much room. The back seats are amazing. It’s really comfortable, really easy to drive. You know, it’s a no-brainer. Why would anyone buy a plug-in hybrid or a diesel or a petrol car when something like this is available for either the same amount of money or in many cases less? Those days are over. Welcome to the electric future. So, the interior I would call it unchallenging. It’s just really nice materials that don’t like jump out at you. they don’t shout at you. The seats, I’m going to rave about the seats again. So, they have got um heating and cooling. Well, normally I kind of leave that stuff. I’m not interested. But today, it’s been very nice to have a bit of bit of cooling. And those buttons are up here for cooling. Um and they a lot of seat adjustment buttons are there, which confused me at first. I didn’t see them to start to start with. Most of the controls again are on the on the screens. There’s the um I have to say I think Jack’s mentioned this, but the screen that controls the temperature, the the air conditioning and everything. I can’t see that when I’m driving. It’s completely invisible. It’s behind the steering wheel. Everything else super clear. Really good heads-up display. Really good screens in front of you there giving you guidance and speed and all that sort of thing. But that one, I don’t even know what that does. I haven’t looked at it at all once you get used to it. Only once I put the wipers on when I meant to go into drive. So that’s down here. the the drive button, park button, on button. Uh all the other controls are on the on the steering wheel which very easy to use, very intuitive, very simple. I haven’t used any of these buttons yet. That’s a that’s a camera button. Yes. Oh, I do like that. I do like that. Um to display the camera view. So that one is uh there. Oh, why do I do these things on camera? It’s not fair. turning that off. Uh, okay. Oh, I see there. So, the parking assist thing on the screen is just genius. So, you’re like you’re like looking at a model effectively, like a model car from a 3/4 view. I just love that. So, when you’re parking, you’ve really got a very clear indication of where other cars are. Obviously, there’s the overhead view, which a lot of cars have now. That I’ve not seen that before. I think that’s genius. I love that. The the there’s phone charger there. There’s buckets of space. I mean, there really is a lot of storage space. The door pockets really big. Everything is kind of roomy and spacious and easy. Really good sound system. Very simple to use controls. I adjusted both mirrors when I first got in. They weren’t quite right. Now they’re spot on. So, you know, that is kind of, you know, there’s nothing to complain about. I can’t find anything to complain about. I haven’t tried opening the sunroof. I don’t even know if it does open. It does. Ah, but we got a camera mounted on it. Let’s have a look in the back. I’ve not get in the back before. Oh, that’s good. Okay, so for one thing, old gentleman gruntfree access. 10 points. Um, visually, oh, this is good. Okay, so I haven’t even noticed what the headrests are made of because they feel amazing, but but they’re also see-through. They’re net basically. So I can it’s the I think I’ve sat in the back of quite a few cars recently and one of the things that’s always a problem is with big new modern seats with big headrest you basically can’t see anything when you sit in the back. In this car you can really clear vision. I’ I’ve can see far more than I thought. I mean the sunroof only goes back halfway. So you’ve not got the sunroof above you. So I’m not really getting any advantage from that which is a bit of a downer. There’s another plus if you’re in somewhere cold which we’re not at the moment is this has seat heaters in the back. So you can get the old up the old. So that is very nice as well. Uh adjustable headrests. Yes. Nice. So you would This is a really comfy car. If you were going on a long drive, you would not be complain as an adult. You would not be complaining. And look at the look at the knee room I’ve got. Even Jack would be able to get in here. You could get about 10 images in here. But you could definitely get a jack. So that’s that’s got big door pockets for drinks. It’s got pockets here. I’m not seeing any charges. Yes, they’re in the seat there and there. Nice little door pocket. A little seat pocket there. Really good. Love the back. [Music] Hey, Kia, set the temperature to 22°. [Music] Setting the temperature to 22°. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be impressed, but that is amazing cuz I thought I’d got it wrong and it didn’t bing and it didn’t hear me. Heard me perfectly. Wow. Okay, that’s quite annoying. Hey, Kia, open the driver’s window. Hey, Kia, close the driver’s window. I would use that. I’ve always sworn that I would never talk to a computer and never ask any machine to do anything or have any kind of relationship with any sort of machine intelligence. I’ve just had some interaction with the machine and it was really good. So, what this has is three levels of just regular regen, but then if you hold both of levers in at once, it goes ping and it goes to I pedal, which is basically one pedal driving, which is what I’ve got it on now. And now I’m coming up to a 60 mph thing. I don’t have to touch the brakes and it just slows down. Very nice. But now it’s 90 again. This has got no I mean you can criticize me all you like as I try and drive legally in Spain, but honestly there was a 60 km an hour limit there which was all of 5 m long and then it went back to 90. I don’t quite know how to deal with that. So, one of the things that brings a bit of joy when I get to the chance to drive a car like this is that companies like Kia and Hyundai in particular really really advancing the technology and the capabilities of electric cars. I mean, this this car can easily do well over 300 miles no matter what. Yeah, that’s such a and that’s and it’s just normal for it to be able to do that. It’s not exceptional anymore. But that and other companies BMW, Volkswagen, both released some really impressive electric cars recently. Of course, all the Chinese ones. It just start they’ve just started to become cars rather than electric cars. And that’s what I’m trying to push. I want to c talk about petrol cars, diesel cars, and cars because the petrol cars and diesel cars are special because they burn fuel. And this one doesn’t. And this one can run on sunlight and wind and water, you know, and yes, okay, it can run on gas and coal and nuclear as well. Yes. But the fact is that this car is what we should be using. We should be using it to drive around and also to run our homes and also if we can get to that state to help back up the grid. And those things are really what we’re we’re seeing arrive soon. So, it’s been a real joy driving this car. Uh they’ll be out in coming out later this year. They’ll be on the market. Uh really worth having a look at if you’re interested in one. Uh check out the lease prices. They’re they’re they’re obviously available for leasing. If you’re not going to buy one for the full price, which is, you know, doesn’t matter what the car is, it’s always expensive. But I think this is pitching itself in that sort of mid-range hatchbacky Tesla Model Y, that sort of area. It’s in that kind of area. And it stands up beautifully to to all those other cars. very competitive cars they are as well. Um, please do tell your friends about this show. Please do subscribe if you haven’t done so already. And, uh, as I cruise down back towards Marba and the beautiful beaches, uh, where we might have a light lunch, uh, I would just like to say if you have been, thank you for watching. Now visit electric vehicles.expert expert where you can follow everything electric and keep current with clean technica, the driven electric and many more.
In this week’s episode Robert heads to Malaga to test drive the brand new Kia EV4! Can Kia’s first electric hatchback compete with the likes of the Tesla Model Y and VW Golf?
00:00 – Introduction & First Impressions
01:21 – Design
02:33 – Kia’s Electric Car Story
04:12 – Battery and Range
05:41 – Fast Charging Capabilities
06:50 – Vehicle-to-Load & Vehicle-to-Home Features
07:30 – Boot Space
08:01 – Pricing
09:01 – Interior Design
10:00 – Advanced Camera & Parking Systems
11:32 – Rear Passenger Space
13:07 – Voice Control System Test
14:02 – Regenerative Braking & One Pedal Driving
14:44 – The Future of Electric vs Petrol Cars
16:02 – Final Thoughts
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