2024 Kia EV5 first look: Everything you need to know about this electric SUV!
Good day I’m Paul Kia is just about to launch what I think is a pretty exciting car here in Australia it is going to be a more affordable electric vehicle that they going Market to the masses it’s kind of Sportage in size as well so you
Can kind of think of this as an electric version of the Sportage it is called the Kia ev5 so it’s launching in Australia around June we don’t know pricing or specifications just yet all we do know is that we’re getting the entry level in a mid-spec they will go on sale in June
So today we’re going to have a closer look at this vehicle see how it Stacks up to some of the leaders in the segment like the Tesla Model Y which is bestselling electric car in Australia and then see whether they do have the goods here if it’s priced right to
Really make a dent this also made in China as well so it should mean a much bigger supply for the Australian Market So today we’re going to have a quick look at this and crawl around the interior I’ll show you the boot as well and run you through some of the
Highlighted specs too now if you do want to skip ahead to other parts of this little video you can use the time codes that are on the screen or if you’re on YouTube you can scroll down and use the chapters below let’s take a close look at the
Av5 okay so let’s talk about styling to start with pretty sharp looking vehicle uh the only change you’re going to see here this is a pre-production car uh the only change you’re going to see here between this and the car that we’re getting in Australia is this down the
Front here the fun police here in Australia say we can’t have this for pedestrian impact reasons makes no sense to me but anyway so that will just be a covered off section there but K logo up the front there big fan of this logo I’ve mentioned this in a few of our PR
Previous K reviews it’s like they’ve taken a bit of aluminum and just you know carved off the top and Laser etched K in there I think it looks pretty cool some people say it all looks like a knen as well but I don’t see that uh being an
EV you have a lot of this blocked off stuff here mainly because all of your cooling is down below so uh this actually gets a different battery to what we’ve seen in ev6 and ev9 they both use an nmc battery whereas this is an lfp battery and I’ll run you through
Some of the differences there once we get around to that charging port on the side LED daytime running lights full LED headlights as well terms of the design here in person it is an SUV but it doesn’t look enormous it does look in feel bigger than a Sportage but in terms
Of the dimensions we’re talking about just over 4.6 M long and to put that into context it’s about 140 M shorter than a Tesla Model y 1875 mm wide and that’s about 100 Mil narrower than a model y it also sits on a shorter wheelbase than ev6 as well so this is uh
2750 so it is shorter than what you find in ev6 and also ev9 so I’ll be curious to see what it’s like there in the second row in terms of space now let’s have a look at these wheels I actually quite like what Kia does with their
Electric vehicles when it comes to wheel design obviously this is this design for Arrow but I just think it looks really cool it has that sort of uh machined finish here piano black in the center there and it’s all sort of covered up and just looks nice and neat as well
Signifies to everyone that you’re driving an electric vehicle now let’s talk charge in and Battery as well so I mentioned before nmc versus lfp one of the big differences is with an nmc battery you’re only recommended to charge it up to 80% and then only do
100% charge when you go on an extended drive lfp on the other hand it’s recommended that you charge it all the way through to 100% so the battery isn’t as energy dense but to me it’s more usable and that’s what you’re going to find in vehicles like the entry level of
Uh uh byd’s range Tesla’s range as well though all use similar types of battery that allow you to have that better I guess drivability and charging capability as well so you’ve got three different types of battery set up you’ve got a 64 KW battery in the entrylevel
Variant you have an 88 KW battery in the long range variant and finally you have a 70 KW hour battery in the dual motor variant and they all provide different levels of driving range we only have the Chinese driving range estimates because this is a vehicle that’s made in China
Uh so those estimates are slightly more ambitious than wltp figures so when we do get those proper official figures we will update you but what you’re seeing there on the screen now is just the Chinese figures offers both AC and DC charging this will charge at a lower
Rate as well because it’s only 400 volt compared to 800 volts in av6 and av9 big difference there as well is the the platform it’s not the same egmp platform that you’re going to find in 6 and9 so it is slightly different in that regard you’ve got a different battery as well
Which means you have lower charging capacity we don’t know the exact figures yet but if it’s anything like what Tesla does it Peaks at about 150 KW then walks its way back to about 100 KW as an average charge for the rest of the cycle AC charging up to 11
KW on three phase as well now outside of charging piano black here on the side you’ve got a big glass roof here as well it opens two which is a little bit different typically with electric vehicles they just seem to have an enormous glass roof and you don’t have
Any control whether it’s open or closed whereas this one opens it has a cover as well which is good got roof rails there more of this brushed aluminium stuff on the side here which we’ve seen across other K models pop out door handles as well they retract when the car is locked
Come around to the back with me I’ll show you what this all looks like now the back is a really fascinating design because where I stand here look at where the the back is so it kind of comes to the back here and then slopes down so you’ve got this really interesting kind
Of speed tail effect on the rear there so uh I’ll be interested to see what that means in terms of visibility out the rear when we’re driving because obviously your high point is here you’re going to be missing out on all this section up the top here uh Kia badge
There you’ve got a reverse View Camera there as well LED lights that wrap around the side there piano black further down the bottom here ev5 now let’s have a look at the boot I don’t have official cargo capacity figures but I’ll show you a couple of the
Innovations they have here so you’ve got storage up the front it’s only a little bit of storage this is a front wheel drive uh predominant platforms so you can get front-wheel drive or all wheeel Drive uh but it means that you have limited storage under the front there
Compared to again something like a Tesla in the back here though the storage is much better you’ve got a storage slot up the front there so that gives you a deep little area and then have a look at this this section here instead of just folding up it actually lifts up like a
Table so you can put stuff on the top there if you need to gives you access to this lower section as well only downside though is that if you have anything in the boot you kind of can’t just get a c cable out or or anything that you’ve got
Here because and let you take all the stuff out of the boots if youve got a pram or something like that this is obviously not going to work all that well uh so it’s probably something they didn’t really think about all that well for a family vehicle hooks on the side
Here these are adjustable as well so you can slide those out move them to a new location v2l down here too so you got a power outlet there what are we 250 Vols AC 10 amps so pretty decent output there and you’ll also be able to run v2l out
Of the actual uh charging slot as well and that should be at 15 amps instead so pretty decent and usable space down the downside is this setup here it’ be good if they had a hinge on the back to let you get stuff out also would be good if
This could be a bit deeper you got to remember that if this is a front wheeel drive you in theory have nothing under there so they should have been able to actually go a little bit deeper here with the storage specifically for front-wheel drive cars let’s jump inside
The cabin I’ll show you what that all looks like so we’re inside the cabin of the ev5 this is what the key looks like so uh bit like the ev9 it’s a recycled key which is just so fascinating uh you know all green thing um and then this
Lights up as well when you press any of the buttons which is kind of cool so the design here is is really fascinating all of the vehicles are going to come with this padded section so this is technically your Center cover so uh I like the concept but I just don’t know
How practical this is so a great slot there for your phone but it kind of covers up potentially usable space under here and it means that you’ve only got this slot here and then under here to store things means that nothing is really out of sight uh from people who
Are just walking past the car so uh having an enclosed storage area has its benefits there is a trick to this though and I’ll show you when we jump into the second row um and this here is just an armrest so that doesn’t open up at all
So there’s no storage available in there you do have stuff like uh removable slots here for cup holders you’ve got wireless phone charging USBC connectivity uh you’ve got 12 Vols Outlet down the front there as well similar to the av9 as well you’ve got two 12.3in displays but this Center
Section is its own screen as well so this is where you control some of the climate features I am seeing immediately though being sort of here in the driver’s seat I actually can’t see half that screen and it’s the same problem I have in the ev9 so while it is novel
Idea it’s not exactly usable because if I need to actually change anything while I’m driving I’m going to peer my head around to look at any of the these sort of buttons over here but this is the latest generation of keys infotainment system which means it comes with connectivity now obviously this
Infotainment system uh this cars pre-production this is all China domestic Market stuff but you can see what you’re able to do here they’ve got fun audio mini program WeChat built into there uh you’ve got location sharing pretty cool setup so we’ll obviously have remote connectivity here and I
Think the functionality you have here within the car will be shared with stuff like uh the ev9 as well which has the latest generation of this system I like this as well so you’ve got physical buttons here for climate controls yes you do have this screen but you’ve also
Got physical buttons here to get to shortcuts you’ve also got these touch sensitive buttons up the top so if you do want to access the map for example you just push down on that and you’ve got a home button there as well so that’ll makes life a little bit easier
Little coat hook or or a sort of luggage luggage shopping something thing hook just here so you can pop your stuff on there if you want um seing is nice and cool you got uh sits nicely in the hand you got paddle shifters there to adjust regen modes drive mode down the bottom
There and then this is the gear shifter as well so slightly um different to what you’re sort of used to seeing in a car but this is now common on some electric cars LED lighting across the cabin there with 64 configurable colors this is a launch color for the car it’s like a
Bige and you can see as you work your way up the top of the cabin the materials change color there too something I love seeing right here a head-up display so many uh I mean Teslas just don’t have a head-up display and this is such a great feature to have in
A vehicle so um yeah look outside of that uh it’s it’s a I think it’s just a a nice vibe to this interior it looks very futuristic It’s Not Over the Top there’s no sort of silly things around here it is just a nicely presented interior that looks premium when we’re
Talking about pricing for this vehicle we don’t know exactly what it’s going to be but we’re we’re expecting it to be less than a model wise so under $70,000 if they realistically want to sell a lot of these they’re predicting they can get around a thousand of these a month here
In Australia you want to have really sharp pricing and I think if they do have sharp pricing we could actually see a realistic competitor to the Tesla Model y you got to remember that this has a 7-year warranty compared to a 4-year warranty with Tesla and uh Kia
Obviously also has a dealership Network around the country as well to make it easier to get the car maintained and looked at so um I kind of like what I’m seeing here I can’t wait to actually get this out on the road to see exactly what
It’s like to drive now I’m going to run you through just some of the powertrain options here I’m going to get my phone out for this uh so ev5 entry level is powered by front-wheel drive so this will be front-wheel drive or all-wheel drive 160 KW uh electric motor there and
That’s paired to that entry level battery which is 64 KW battery the long range has the bigger battery 88 kwh hours but the same electric motor so that’s probably going to mean that it is much slower than um the entry level but you are getting that extra range and if
You do go down the dual motor paath that goes to 70 KW m Ed rear motor and then uh that also adds the 160 KW mounted front motor combined output of 230 KW so and that’s paed to a 70 Kow battery so you got a few different options there
And I’ll be interested to see how it drives because the Australian team has had a huge involving in terms of ride and handling that should actually mean that this rides and handles like an EV should for the Australian market so hopefully they’ve been able to have enough access to it to fully achieve
That righto second row what is it like back here so so uh look I’ll draw this comparison cuz I’ve owned model y now for 2 years this is a smaller vehicle than the model y but surprisingly it actually has what feels like a similar amount of room I’ve got my chair or
Front seat pretty far back here and I’ve still got a decent amount of knee room and Tow room head room is fantastic as well uh in terms of your crature comfort so USBC charging here and uh on the side there as well the whole reason you don’t
Actually have storage up the front there is cuz they’ve offered your rear passengers this storage so it’s like a massive bin that folds out so I guess in theory if you did have stuff you wanted to hide you can just slot it into there so bit of a compromise so you’re sort of
Robbing your front space to service your rear space but actually think that’s not a bad idea at all you’ve got matap pockets back here and have a look at this so you have a table that folds out as well obviously this is a left-and drive pre-production car but for right
Hand drive this table will be on this side instead so I don’t know whether you find that useful or not but you’ve got a table there anyway now this is also interesting here in the second row is it folds flat but they’ve also thought about uh what happens when you get to
The middle section of a second row that folds flat and that is the space in between so they’ve got these magnetic covers that flip back over to make sure that you do have a flat floor you could potentially sleep in as well if you wanted to so that has been your first
Look at the Kia ev5 let me know what you reckon in the comments section below um I’ll tell you what I think if they price this sharply they have access to a lot of stock NOW the thing with Kia here in Australia is Europe robs the Kia of
Stock because in Europe they have all these tough regulations on emissions and basically all of European production is taken for Europe so they don’t have to pay credits to Brands like Tesla whereas here in Australia we we have that issue where we don’t really have a great deal
Of Regulation so we don’t get that stock China on the other hand it is a factory that is pumping out these vehicles for the Chinese market and now for the Australian Market as well so even though the volume we take from overall production isn’t huge means that we can
Have significantly more here in Australia around that 850 Mark per month so if it is sharply priced I reckon they’re going to sell a bucket load of these so let me know what you reckon in the comments if you did enjoy this video make sure you like it you share it with
Your mates going to have a proper Drive of this when it launches around June here in Australia and I’ll let you know what I think about it once I’ve spent a bit more time in it thank you again for watching and until next time take it easy
Kia is about to launch an affordable EV that won’t be restricted in supply. It’s the 2024 Kia EV5 and it’s set to take on things like the Tesla Model Y. It’ll be made in China and they expect supply to be plentiful.
Skip Ahead:
Intro: 00:00
Exterior: 01:02
Charging: 02:50
Interior: 07:09
Power Figures: 10:59
Verdict: 13:20
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