The New Kia EV6 GT Changed My Opinion on Electric Cars!
This is the new Kia EV6 GT. It’s a fantastic electric car, and I’d probably go as far as saying this might be one of the best electric cars I’ve ever driven due to a few reasons. However, there is one thing which lets it down ever so slightly. [Music] The EV6 GT is an impressive vehicle. It’s spacious inside, comfortable, it’s got a great driving position, and it’s also ridiculously fast. 650 horsepower fast. That’s thanks to it using the same motors found in the Hyundai Ionic 5N. And this might be an electric car to impress us enthusiasts thanks to it having virtual gears. And today I’m going to go in depth on the EV6 GT. I’m going to launch it from naugh to 60, take it on a road test, tell you what’s bad. Oh, don’t like it. Tell you what’s good. [Music] This is what it’s all about. And hopefully this will tempt you to buy one. I’m Max Haftavani. Welcome to Driven Plus. [Music] Kia has given the EV6 GT a facelift and it aligns with Kia’s newer styling. And in comes is this brand new daytime running light. And you got this triangular shaped headlights which is a bit sporty, isn’t it? And I like the look of this car. I really do. I think it pops really nicely, especially with this color, which I’ll tell you about in a minute. And the front bumper has been reworked. It’s sharper. It’s more aggressive. It’s kind of got that sporty look, but at the same time, it’s premium looking and elegant. Moving to the side of this car, and Kia hasn’t really changed much to this car’s silhouette, and why would they? Because it’s got a great shape about it. However, one thing I’m not so keen on is the shape of these wing mirrors here. I don’t really think they suit this car. But anyway, one thing which is new with the updated EV6 GT are these 21-in alloy wheels. I think these look really well, especially with the black and the silver accent. And behind them sit neon green brake calipers, exclusive only to the GT model. And in case you’re wondering about this car’s color, it’s called yacht matte blue. And it’s the most expensive paint color you can get. It’s going to cost you £1,500. It’s expensive, but in my opinion, as you can see, it’s worth it. Moving to the rear, and I feel as if this car is just crying out for some quad exhaust pipes. Then it just would have finished this design off. But anyway, it’s a shame, isn’t it? But there are some subtle changes with the new EV6 GT, which is this full width light bar here. On the top here, you get a nice spoiler, and I like the use of the double reflectors. All of these just really complements the aggressive design of the EV6 GT. Kia has also given this car more power. 65 horsepower more than the older model coming in at 641 horsepower and 770 Newton meters of torque. Pretty impressive that. That’s all from an 84 kWh battery. It’s quite a heavy car though, weighs in at 2.2 tons. However, saying that, it’s got a top speed of 161 miles per hour. Kia says it’s good enough to do a naught to 60 time of 3.5 seconds, which is impressive. So, let’s see if it’ll do it. And because this car is electric, you might be thinking it doesn’t have launch control. Haha. Think again. Yes, it does. So, to engage it, you have to put the car in GT mode. And then go on settings, then vehicle, drive mode, scroll down, and click launch control. There we go. On your screen now are the stats and figures on this car. also pause your screen if you’d like to look into them. Right, let’s go for it. Listen to this. Let’s go. Oo, that’s quick. It’s all over the place. 3.54 seconds. Now, I think we can get a better time than that because it it really struggled for traction then. So, let’s go for one more ball launch. I really do think we can beat that 3 and 1 half second time. Okay, let’s try it again. Activate launch control. Oh, launch control is available when the following conditions are met. GT mode, which we are, ESC mode, sport or off, which we are. Ah, it says after use, this feature will be unavailable for 2 minutes. Right. So, let’s launch it without launch control and see if it makes any difference. [Music] It’s so much power. Not really. It’s near enough the same. 3 and 1 half seconds yet again. 0.03 seconds off. So, let’s do a third run. activate launch control again. See if we can improve that time and then call it third and final time. Let’s go. Okay, let’s see if it’ll let us activate it now. Yes, it will. Here we go. That noise. It bogged. It’s all over the place, but it’s quick. 3.53. Well, there’s our quickest time yet. But it’s very consistent, isn’t it? So, Kia, you are being very honest with us consumers. So, thank you very much. Well, that’s a quick time. That’s what it stacks up against. And let’s go back to the review. Okay, in this next segment, I’m going to tell you things which I’m not so sure about on the new EV6 GT. And at the start of the review, I said it’s a fantastic car, which it really is. But there’s one thing which majorly lets it down in my opinion, and that for me is its range. Now, Kia says a single charge, 100%, it should deliver around 279 mi. So, I plugged this car in before, and I charged it all the way up to 100%. And it said on the system that I had 227 milesi of range. Now I understand that figure can change considering how you drive it, where you drive it, conditions, weather. It’s not cold today. It’s not raining. It’s fine. And I just feel as if you’re paying £60,000 for this car with 650 horsepower. I feel as if it could be more versatile if it had minimum 320 mi. So, if you’re looking to buy one, do you really need the power or should you buy a normal Kia EV6 and prioritize range? Well, I haven’t driven the normal EV6. So, I like the power, but I prefer more range. Now, one thing you might be disappointed about with the EV6 is boot space. Makes this really annoying bleeping noise when you do open the boot. And there we go. Now, considering the EV6 is quite a big car, I feel as if it hasn’t got a big boot to go with it. Now, length and width isn’t a problem here. I just feel as if how deep it goes is there’s not much there. But it comes in at 490 L, which isn’t bad, I suppose. But one thing which I think you’re going to be limited by is the way the roof kind of slopes down towards the back end of the car. That’s definitely going to limit what you can fit in. And say you’ve got two young kids which are going to fit the pram in, I think you’ll find the boot space actually isn’t that good. Another little issue I’ve encountered with the EV6 GT is how far away the infotainment screen is from the driving position. And I’ve got this set up for my driving position. It’s quite nice, but when I go to use the touchcreen, my arm is at full length. And I’ve got to concentrate on the road and this at the same time. So, it would be nicer if this was either closer or it had a little controller down here. And the last thing is to do with when you put the car in reverse. And it’s to do with the R being illuminated. So, if you can see, the top left corner of the R is cut off and therefore the full R isn’t illuminated. And you might be thinking, what the hell am I playing at by saying that? But it’s just really affecting my OCD. But there’s a lot more good than bad. And in this next segment, I’m going to tell you what I like about the new EV6 GT. And the first thing is the headsup display. It’s very clear and precise. The next thing are these seats. They’re very hugging, comfortable, and they’re great to look at. And the next thing is the Meridian sound system. It’s got great surround system. Another thing I like about the EV6 is the fact that it has active sound design. So, if I turn it on and put the car in neutral, it will basically mimic an internal combustion engine. So, I’m just going to rev it now. Neutral. Listen. So, it’s very minute, but you kind of get the gist. So, the best thing is if we go back on the settings and go on vehicle and then go on drive mode, scroll down and you got VGS, virtual gear shift. Virtual gear shift recreates the feeling of driving a vehicle equipped with a combustion engine and transmission. So, oh yes, we’re going to turn that on. So, let’s get back on the road. Basically, listen to this now. Oh, just put it back in neutral. Listen. This is what it’s all about. So, if I put my foot down now, listen. It’ll go through the gears. Listen to that. See, this is an electric car which actually puts a smile on your face. It’s fun. This is what it’s supposed to be like. And the good thing is you can actually start using the paddles now and it’ll mimic a six-speed auto box. So at the minute I’m in second gear and I’m going to plant my right foot all the way to the red line and watch. It won’t let it won’t change up for me. It’s way weigh in. It’s weighing. Okay. Give it to me. Give it to me. Oh, and then you go again. Yes. It’s fun. It really is. So, this is an electric car which comes alive with a click of a few buttons and a shortcut for the virtual gear shifting is the star button on the steering wheel. So, we just turn that off and take it back out of drive mode and put it in normal. And then if we turn the active sign off, it’s back to a normal electric car. Quite like that. Another thing which has impressed me about the EV6 are the lights. They are fantastic. It gives you so much clear vision at night and the way the auto dip beam works, it’s perfect. Now, say you are driving through a builtup area in which I am here. Well, mind you, in this case, it doesn’t have to be a builtup area. Anywhere which you might be approaching a speed camera. Just wait for the noise a minute. I might be a bit premature in my speech here. There we go. So that noise is to tell the driver that he or she is approaching a speed camera. So this is a 20 m per hour zone. Well, it used to be a 20 m per hour zone. The car still thinks it is. So therefore, it thinks the camera is reading at 20 mph. Here in Wales, it should been upped to 30 mph. So if I was to increase my speed from 20 to 25, it will bleep at me and it will constantly remind me that Max, you are doing over the speed limit. You really need to slow down. and then it would get that noise and it tell you right speed uh camera has finished. You can continue speeding. I’m joking. So anyway, that’s really useful if you’re a driving in a place which you don’t know or b you’re driving and you’re distracted then you forget and you oh yes there is a speed camera. Thank you Kia for reminding me. So that feature is really useful. Now although this EV6 GT has a bigger battery than its predecessor, it’s around 8 12% bigger. It can accommodate more charge. which show at peak performance it can take in 258 kW meaning it can go from 10 to 80% in just 18 minutes and although this has a bigger battery it actually weighs less than its predecessor that’s impressive only by 1 kilo moving to the interior of this car and one thing which is apparent is the build quality and use of materials it feels solid in here like the way the seats hug you into position starting on the door cars you got this Alcantara kind of suede lining all the switch gear and all The aluminium finishes feels very premium. It really does. It feel as if you are getting value for money. It’s a £60,000 car. At the end of the day, you want to feel like you are sat in something premium. And are you? My opinion, yes. One thing which I’m not so sure about is this kind of open cockpit feel of the car. It kind of feels like a van. I prefer cars where you’re sat in snug and you got this nice center console. Because for me, one thing which takes center stage of a car is a center console. Now, I understand there’s no need for that anymore because electric cars take away all the drivetrain going through the middle of the car, but I think it’s quite a nice centerpiece of the car and therefore you’ve got this kind of floating armrest with all your necessities. So, you got your gear selector on the top here. You got heated and cooled seats, which is impressive. You also got a heated steering wheel, too. It’s full of optional extras this car. It’s full of everything you need. You got a wireless charging pad here. You look into the glove box and it’s absolutely huge. That’s very deep all the way down there. Steering wheel is nice. You’ve got this lovely neon green 12:00 stripe which is uh very nice. It’s flat bottomed and flat top too with the perforated leather. So, it’s quite nice to hold I have to admit. Um but I like all this neon green accent. It’s in the seats on the steering wheel. You got the stitching little bit on the air vents too. And like this all this dash here is like this fabric. It’s it’s very nice. You got a digital infotainment screen and digital driver’s display too. Let’s touch on the infotainment screen. You got Apple CarPlay. So that’s what most people are going to run anyway. But when you go on to your settings, you can change the layout. Um so you got style A, style B. Um you can change your screen saver too. So you can change your clock or not have a clock. Um and what else can you change? you can change the the the the view of the heads-up display. Um, which is a good idea. But in general, I think the responsiveness of this infotainment screen is impressive. Now, if you’re into your sports, this car is for you. If we press on football, we can go on different leagues and you can stay up to date with the Bundesliga, La Liga, League, Premier League. Let’s say our Manchester United are getting on. Where are we? We’re 10th in the table. Yeah, that might be the first time I’ve just admitted that I’m a Manchester United fan. Yeah, it’s not good. I’ve accepted failure. But moving on to the climate control cluster. Very easy to use. It’s very similar to that Hyundai Tuxen I reviewed a few weeks ago. But one thing which is a little bit annoying, say you’re resting your arm on the center consoles. Sometimes you can kind of touch either the heated seat for the passenger or yourself or the cool seat without you knowing. You forget and next minute you’ve got cold air coming up your seat. Um which is funny because your passenger won’t know. But say it’s a cold day, you don’t really want cold air coming up on your deer. Um, but anyway, that’s it. Let’s get out on the road. Now, the first thing you’ll want to know before driving this car is how to switch the speed limit warning off. So, go on the settings, click vehicle, then go on driver assistance, and then click speed limit, and then you want it off, which is a bit annoying, especially when you start driving, you go all these different sub menus. However, there’s a shortcut. So, all you have to do is press and hold the mute button on the steering wheel for around 3 seconds. And there we go. Speed limit warning sound is off. Oh, that’s a lovely little hack, isn’t it? Now, I always find it somewhat challenging to review an electric car because when we review petrol cars or diesel cars or hybrid cars, we’re talking about how the electric and engine motor combine and how they intertwine. When we’re in a petrol or diesel engine, we’re talking about the the engine, how it responds with the gearbox alone. But when we’re in an electric car, it’s quiet, isn’t it? There’s no engine to talk about. There’s no gearbox to talk about. All we’ve got to talk about is how it drives, the suspension, the wind noise. Yeah. But I think as we’ve progressed in this world of electrification, one thing which definitely has improved is the way the power is delivered. It’s definitely more linear. And 650 horsepower is a lot. The minute I put my foot down, it’s, you know, the car is all over the place to be honest because there’s so much power going through all the wheels. The car struggles to distribute all the power all at once and there’s a lot of torque going on as well. So to combat that and to put the power down more efficiently, all you have to do is press the start button on the steering wheel, engage virtual gear shifting, put your foot down, and now the car will kind of gimmick a gear change and it will drop down. Listen. And the power is now more efficiently distributed. And you can put the power down easily. It’s better. And if you really wanted to, you can start manually changing it yourself. Second gear, third gear. And now it’s telling me collision, collision, because this car is doing 20 mph in a 40 mph speed zone. Don’t drive a Suzuki Swift, everyone. But there’s been a few things which have stood out to me when driving the EV6. And number one is the driving position. I feel as if you sit perfectly on the road. You’re not too high and you’re not too low. And the view you get out the windscreen as well. It’s perfect. Um, as you know, that noise is the speed limit warning, which is handy, but also quite annoying when you do know you are in an average speed zone. Um, but it just sits nicely on the road. The suspension is lovely and compliant. The steering wheel is very nice and light. It’s a great daily. It really is. And I feel as if the insulation is very good, too. There’s hardly any wind noise coming in. And I just feel as if the car is very aerodynamic. So, yeah, wind noise is kept to a minimum. So, we do have a lot of different driving modes to choose from. So, you’ve got GT mode, which disables the traction control and stability control, but most of the time, you don’t really want to drive it with its full 641 horsepower. You just want to drive it in a normal mode. So, all you have to do is press the drive mode, which is mounted on the steering wheel, and we go back into normal. And in normal mode, it’ll give you 601 horsepower, but you do have different driving modes, too. So, you’ve also got sport. Um, you’ve got snow and you’ve got eco. So, you’ve got some nice different driving modes to choose from. I think normal is perfect. 600 horsepower, lovely throttle response. It’s not kind of jerky because it’s got all that power to put down. Um what’s it like in um in eco mode? Yeah. So the throttle response reduces yet again. It’s less Yeah. Now it’s like a normal slow boring EV. No, let’s put it back in normal mode, which is a best of both worlds. It’s responsive, but you put your foot down and it has to know it’s got to deliver all that power. And when you’ve got it with these virtual gear shifting, it’s really good. It changes the way this virtual gear shifting really has changes my opinion on electric cars. Like there is a glimmer of hope that these cars can be exciting. And you see it’s good. It really is. And when you think of it, this car is going to cost you minimum £59,000. Let’s call it £60,000 when you add on a couple of extras. I think you’re getting pretty good value for money in my opinion because it’s comfortable. It’s got plenty of space. It’s got good rear uh space for your kids or adult passengers, too. I think it looks good. And at the end of the day, you’re getting 650 horsepower. You’re getting a lot of power for your money. Do I think it’s worth it? Well, the only other similar SUV which I’ve driven which is electric is the EX. And this is quite similar to the EX. I think the EX gives you more of a comfortable drive because that sits on air suspension, but this isn’t far off and the EX is more expensive. So, value for money. The EV6 GT, good bang for your buck. And just because this uses the same motors found in the Ionic 5N, everyone’s quick to compare this against that car. And I can understand why because it uses the same motors. But for me, these two cars go about each other in two different ways. Now, this car just bleeps you for no apparent reason. Now, I’ve just gone on the other side of the road. All right, calm down. See, that’s really annoying, isn’t it? It’s telling me to take a break and it’s really bleeping at me. It’s just That’s super annoying because I’ve just had to go on the other side of the road just to avoid a pothole. Right. So, Kia, if you’re watching, I’m trying to save your car from getting any damage and you’re bleeping at me. So, I think the consider taking a break software, yeah, is activated a bit too easily. Oh, there’s so much noises going on, isn’t there? Oh, don’t like it. So, anyway, what was I saying? Yeah, everyone is quick to compare this car against the Ionic 5N simply because it uses the same motors, which I think is unfair because these two cars go about their ways in two different ways. is I think the Ionic 5N has been designed for an enthusiast who still craves that petrol experience but from an electric car. Whereas this has got GT written in its name. It’s made to go on long journeys, be a great daily, and that’s what it is. So, it’s a GT car with good power, and I like that. So, is this the best electric car I’ve ever driven? Well, it’s definitely up there. I think the EX drives better for everyday use because it’s got air suspension. However, this has more character about it because of the virtual gear shifting and it can mimic a noise of an internal combustion engine, which is cool. So, if you’re thinking of buying one, as I’ve said, great bang for your buck. You’re going to enjoy it. So, I’d like to say a massive thanks to Kia for lending me this car, letting me get a review on it. I hope you enjoyed it. Please leave a like on the video, subscribe to our channel, and we’ll see you all very soon. Thanks guys. Bye-bye. [Music] [Music]
The 2025 Kia EV6 GT has completely changed my opinion on electric cars — and it’s all because of one thing: virtual gear shifting.
With 650 hp, dual-motor AWD, and 3.5 seconds to 60 mph, this is the fastest and most powerful Kia ever made. But what really shocked me wasn’t the speed — it was how this EV feels to drive. For the first time, an electric car actually gives you the sensation of changing gears, engine tone, and rhythm — bringing back the engagement we all miss from combustion cars.
In this review, I dive into how the new EV6 GT drives, what’s changed for 2025, and whether this new technology could finally make petrolheads fall in love with EVs.
Would you consider buying an electric car if it felt like this? Let me know in the comments 👇
