Kia EV4 GT review

Let’s start with the good stuff, because this is fundamentally a good car. This is the least powerful Kia GT to date, but you can use all 288bhp and that’s refreshing given how often today’s dual-motor EVs outsprint yesterday’s supercars. Plant the accelerator and you’ll surge forwards with real purpose, but always the right side of scary. Even under partial throttle acceleration is keen and the pedal responsive.

The steering is direct and hairpins are tackled with racing driver-style arm-over-arm technique, although it’s not as talkative as you’d expect a hot hatch to be. Grip is outstanding and gives you the confidence to attack corners, which the EV4 GT will dispatch virtually flat, pushing your weight into the bolsters.

It’s also very comfortable: we spent most of our test drive with the suspension in its firmest setting (you can have Normal, Sport or Sport+), and even that was beautifully damped: Kia has employed hydraulic suspension bushings and a preview system – which adjusts the suspension according to the road surface – to great effect here. Whether that holds true in the UK remains to be seen.

But dig a little deeper and the GT’s limitations become clear. The brakes – upgraded over the standard EV4 to 325mm discs front and rear, with the former ventilated for better cooling and the latter thickened for greater fade resistance – still lack ultimate stopping power. Deep travel gives you fine adjustment, but in really committed stops it’s easy to underestimate how much road you need to slow down.

Meanwhile the forward bias of the power (the front permanent magnet synchronous motor is good for 194bhp; the rear induction motor just 94bhp) means a tendency to wash out into understeer through tight bends, even though the car’s equipped with electronic torque vectoring that will limit power and even brake the inside wheels to aid cornering. Hmm. Overall it’s pleasant, but lacks incision.

Is the virtual gear shift just a gimmick?

Not entirely. In GT, MyDrive, Sport and Normal modes, you can engage a six-speed ‘gearbox’ that simulates its ratios and even a limiter, all tied to the active sound design for maximum involvement. You can have it in auto mode but manual is best for engagement, giving you full control over when to change up or down using the regen paddles behind the wheel.

It works, but only to a point. Yes it gives you more to think about on a twisty road, but because it's the rev counter that takes centre stage on the driver display, you constantly have to check which gear you’re in unless you count your way through them. Hitting the limiter sends a harsh jolt through the car, but for changing down we’d actually like more aggressive regen to simulate proper engine braking. This is meant to be a hot hatch after all.

The active sound design is also an acquired taste. It’s really buzzy and quickly gets tiresome, at which point you’ll either turn the volume down or switch it off altogether.

What about range?

From the 81.4kWh battery WLTP range amounts to 313 miles – roughly 75 less than the standard car owing to the extra power, weight and bigger tyres. On our test run – full of committed driving on a warm day in the mountains – we achieved 3.0 mi/kWh, which works out at about 245 miles total. So expect more on easygoing roads, less when the temperature drops.

DC charging is capped at 128kW, which means a 10-80 per cent fill up will take just over half an hour. AC charging peaks at 11kW, but your supply at home is probably less so a full charge will be an overnight job.