Kia EV9 review

It’s Kia’s final boss: the EV9. An all-electric, three-row SUV which starts from £66,645. That’s for the entry-level rear-drive 200bhp Air. Everything else is four-wheel drive, with more equipment and a bigger asking price... all the way up to £83,845. This is not your nan’s Kia Rio. Nor is it Sorento money; you can get into Kia’s ICE seven-seater for less than £45k.

What on earth makes Kia think it can take on the Land Rover Discovery and Mercedes EQE SUV?

You’ve not been paying attention. Kia and its sister brand Hyundai are behind some of the very best electric cars around today: the EV3, the EV6, the Ioniq 5, Ioniq 6 and Ioniq 9… the Korean electric revolution is no fluke. It’s putting the wind up the big European ‘premium’ players, and now it’s beaten them to the punch with one of the first fully-electric, full-size seven-seaters to market.

Is this an SUV that can go off-road?

Not really, although the twin-motor version is of course four-wheel drive and there’s a button on the steering wheel for choosing Mud, Snow and Sand modes. Think of this more as a seven-seater minivan, masquerading as a square-jawed, muscle-bound, go-anywhere land-conqueror. At over five metres long, and riding on 21-inch rims, it’s certainly got some presence.

What are the battery options and how far’s the range?

Don’t hold out for an entry-level ‘small battery’ version: all UK-bound EV9s get a whopper of a 99.8kWh battery rooted into the floor. The twin-motor GT-line S, which develops a heady 380bhp and sprints from 0-62mph in a worryingly rapid 5.3 seconds, delivers a claimed range of 318 miles.

If you’re happy to tack four seconds onto your 0-62mph time (and your many passengers may well thank you for it) and drop down to 20-inch rims, then the rear-drive version will stretch range closer to 350 miles. Healthy numbers for something that appears at first to have the aerodynamic properties of a medium-sized leisure centre, and a similar ballpark of weight. Welcome to a 2.6-tonne Kia, folks.

Presume it has all the latest driver aids and tech?

The EV9 is inundated with gadgets: self-parking, a driverless ‘crawl’ mode so it can be summoned in and out of tight spaces without opening the doors, and autonomous lane-changing on the motorway. It’s also festooned with bonging driver aids which may grind your teeth into dust before the first finance payment is due. Be warned.

There’s also a dizzying standard equipment list. The idea is you only have to choose the colour – don’t worry about ticking options boxes.

Okay, any surprises along the way?

Kia’s very keen this enormous 4x4 has an eco-conscience beyond zero local emissions. So the interior is made largely of recycled or sustainably sourced materials. There’s no leather, the plastics are either recycled or fashioned from crops, and even the paint on the trim has been concocted using fewer nasty chemicals.

That said, it’s still pretty grey in here and although tech-laden, doesn’t have much of a luxury vibe.

Gotcha. At least they've not done anything really daft, like a GT version.

Erm... hate to break it to you but that's exactly what Kia has done. Following in the tyre tracks of the EV6 GT, the South Korean brand has really pushed the envelope of what it stands for with an EV9 GT with 501bhp that's capable of 0-62mph in 4.6 seconds. Wut?

And it's had more done to it than a fancy uplift to look like a Christmas tree in the dealership: we're talking advanced suspension, sticky Continental tyres, an electronic limited slip diff, bigger brakes and fake gear shifts, a la Hyundai's Ioniq 5 N.

Click this well-timed hyperlink for a full review of that... 'car' isn't the right word. 'Colossus'. That's better. If you're only interested in sensible life choices, keep reading.

What are the rivals to this?

A mansion? A warehouse on wheels? We're only half-joking, because there are still relatively few seven-seat electric cars out there, and things like the Mercedes VLE, VW ID. Buzz and Kia's own PV5 are MPVs.

Tesla does a seven-seat version of the Model Y, but that comes with an ownership-derived image problem these days; the heavily related Ioniq 9 has the same basic ingredients as this; Mercedes' latest GLB will fit seven adults in comfort, and the Skoda Peaq promises more range.

That makes the Volvo EX90 this car's arch nemesis. And as luck would have it, we've tested both of them head-to-head.

The EV9 is a very rounded bit of kit. “No it ain’t – looks pretty square to me actually”, etc etc. Ho ho. The point is that Kia’s flagship product feels like a worthy range-topper not simply because it offers a lot of metal, chair and equipment for the money.

It’s actually a properly well-thought out product – one that feels tough enough for everyday family life, feature-stuffed enough to be futureproof, and packing enough range and performance to justify a price that would’ve seemed laughable for a Kia – or any Korean car – a decade ago.

We’ll keep egging on Kia – and all manufacturers – to find less intrusive ways of integrating the safety and assistance tech that the law requires into their cars. So the very gadgets designed to keep us less distracted and safer don’t have the opposite effect...

But for now, the handsome and commodious EV9 looks like it’s earned a big slice of the market. It leaves you asking yourself the seventy-five grand (ish) question: while you might like a car with a posher badge, when this offering is so fit for purpose, do you genuinely need one?