Kia EV5 review

It feels perky. That’s the first thing you notice when you set off, because the accelerator pedal is very responsive. Zero to 62mph takes 8.4 seconds, but honestly you’d think it’s quicker. Certainly up to 30mph. Either way, it's good for its size.

Otherwise the controls are well calibrated. It steers nicely, not too light, not too firm. And the brakes are nicely progressive. It’s an easy car to get used to. Certainly nothing to scare off any EV newbies here. Once you’ve found the starter button and drive selector stalk behind the steering wheel, anyway.

It’s clearly set up to be soft, and soft it is. It generally rides quite well, though there’s a fair amount of suspension travel which means it’s quite bouncy on a British B-road. Keep some sick bags ready for any rear passengers we’d suggest.

Is it at all fun?

Not really. Do you need it to be? It’s a family SUV, not a hot hatch. That said, it does get a few drive modes. Plus a button on the steering wheel that allows you to quickly switch between them, similar to you get in Cupras. Where it kinda works, because y’know, they’re an intentionally sporty brand. But here? We're not so sure.

Anyway, said modes are Normal, Eco, Sport, MyDrive, and Snow, but you’ll ignore them because they don’t make any real difference to the way it drives. Eco mode at least tapers off the overly responsive accelerator pedal, but realistically you’ll likely just leave it in Normal, which it defaults to on start-up.

More useful are the paddles behind the steering wheel to adjust the braking regen. There are three levels (or completely off) available, and there is a noticeable difference between these. There’s also a one-pedal mode, activated by holding the left paddle, which means you can start and stop using just the accelerator.

How efficient is it?

That’s a much more pertinent question here. We saw 3.5 miles per kWh on mainly town and B-road routes – note there was very minimal motorway speeds – which makes for around 285 miles real world. A 10 to 80 per cent charge takes half an hour on a 150kW DC charger. It’s just under seven and a half hours on an AC home charger.

Oh, and one final thing: the ADAS systems are commendably unintrusive. Sure, there’s the odd beeping from the driver alert monitor if you take your eyes off the road, but otherwise they’re pretty quiet. You can also configure shortcut buttons on the wheel and centre console to allow you to quickly turn them all off.