Thoughts on the KIA EV6, one year in.
Model/trim: 2022 AWD Wind EV6 w/Tech package
[updated 1/15/24 with review of snow driving, below]
Overall: One year and more than 12,000 miles in, I really love this car. It does everything I want it to, it’s really fun to drive, and I have had much less range anxiety than I expected (and I’ve never run out of charge). It has required me thinking a little more about my regular driving patterns, and has encouraged me to slow down a little on the freeway in the interest of range and efficiency, but almost everything about this experience has been delightful and fun.
Range: I wish the range varied a little less; the efficiency can be anything from 2.4 (winter, 60+ mph, etc.) to 4.0 (80+ degrees, 15-25 mpg), and it’s distinctly worse in the winter. In the summer I average between 270 and 310 on a charge, and the winter it’s more like 180 to 210 miles. This is *just* long enough to get me to my mom’s house on a single charge, but during the winter I always end up stopping in Troutdale to get a quick charge while I use the restroom and get Denali a pup-cup at the Starbucks across the road.
That said, the range is plenty for me for 99% of my trips, and I travel farther than the range so rarely that I’m willing to deal with the hassle of figuring out charging steps.
Driving: It’s fun to drive. So. Damned. Fun. To. Drive. Instant torque has definitely spoiled me and driving an ICE can won’t ever feel quite the same. This sucker can GO. I basically never use the Sport mode (in part because I don’t feel like getting more speeding tickets, in part because it tanks the battery efficiency), but even in the normal driving mode I never feel like I’m short on power or acceleration. The handling is pretty good, even though the turning radius leaves a little to be desired compared to my Audi Q5 or even the Chrysler 300 land tank I used to drive. The car definitely feels heavy in corners, settling down into curves, but the ridiculous horsepower and instantaneous response to pedal presses makes it easy to forget just how heavy the car is most of the time.
Features: The Wind package includes some pretty great upgrades, including self-parking mode and a pretty good surround sound system.
Speakers: They’re really good. You get a couple of options for surround decoding, and I tend to leave it set on the Natural setting (multi-speaker decoding in stereo) rather than surround, but that’s mostly a function of my strongly held opinions about listening to music the way it was mixed rather than adding channels via software. The car is missing some of the sub-bass that you get from a car with a dedicated subwoofer, but the trebles, mid-range, and upper bass registers are clean and crisp. Bluetooth audio playback, per usual, sucks, but the Airplay implementation when connected via Lightning cable is really nice. Fair warning: Airplay only works when a lightning-to-USB-A cable is plugged into the USB-A port in the middle of the front floor; none of the USB-C ports or the other USB-A ports appear to connect to the Airplay system. And, like most cars, there’s no wireless Airplay (which honestly I’m fine with; Bluetooth sucks for most audio purposes).
I would love to figure out how to stop the audio from attenuating when the car is giving me an alert (like telling me that there’s a car next to me when I’m turning that direction), but overall it’s pretty great.
Screens/controls: They’re great, and pretty responsive even when wearing thin gloves. It took me embarrassingly long to figure out that in Airplay I could have the map showing on the left half of the screen and the right showing the music currently playing. The audio system and climate control are mostly controlled by a shared, thin touchscreen below the main screens and it’s a little annoying to have to flip back and forth between the two, but the controls on the right half of the steering wheel can do almost anything you need to do with audio so I default to using the touchscreen only for climate.
Remote parking: Have you ever pulled into a parking spot just to realize that you can’t get out because the cars next to you are too close? This shouldn’t be a problem with the Technology Package! In theory, you can get out of the EV6 and drive it forward or back a few feet remotely without having to be in the car. It *mostly* works. It allows me to park in my (1927) driveway to charge, but the last time I did so, the collision sensors decided that there was something in the way of pulling back out and I had to climb in through the window to manually drive it out of the driveway. Super fun times.
Interior: It’s a funky, futuristic interior that I’m generally really fond of. The two-level console (one level on the ground, one level 18” or so off the ground) is great, in that I can store stuff that I don’t need access to either inside the console or in the lower level, and I can put drinks/phones/etc. on the upper level. The Qi-type wireless charging pad on the upper level is also great, and I often drop my phone or my AirPods Pro 2 on it when I get in the car.
I do wish it had a built in sunglasses space in the overhead area, and I occasionally find using the same mini LCD touchscreen to control both the climate and the audio system annoying, but overtime I’ve gotten used to using the controls on the steering wheel for audio and leaving the mini LCD on climate.
Ventilated seats: OMGWTFBBQ how did I live before ventilated seats?!?!?! Seriously, keeping my legs and back cool during the summer is super great.
Kia app: It’s dumb that Kia charges for the app after the first year, but frankly I’m going to keep paying for it because it’s really nice to be able to remotely check to see if my doors are locked (yay, OCD!), turn on the climate, etc. It also gives really interesting data about trips, including a breakdown of how much battery is being used by different things in the car (driving, climate, stereo, etc.).
Adaptive cruise control: I hate it and want it to die in a fire. Particularly, I find it loathsome that the car slows down below the speed limit on I-84 when it decides that a particular curve is too sharp to handle at speed. As someone who’s been driving the Gorge for 25 years and could do a pretty good chunk of it with my eyes closed, none of the turns are that sharp, even in the rain. This is not unique to the Kia system, btw. I hate it in my mom's Subaru too, and I'm pretty sure it's part of why we have so many left lane lumps on I-5 all of the time.
Also the collision alarms are a little … alarmist.
Cameras: This is genuinely one of the strangest and coolest things about the EV. Using a bunch of cameras and a pretty sophisticated algorithm, the screens show you a full overhead view of the EV6 and everything around it while in parking mode. You also get a little screen pop up on the dash when you turn on a blinker, showing you a video feed of your blind spot on that side of the car. It’s super slick and something that I’m maybe overly reliant on now.
Charging: This is the single worst part of owning an EV in the US in 2023: the charging infrastructure *SUCKS*. Badly. At first glance, it looks pretty good and there are a lot of chargers pretty much anywhere I go regularly. Unfortunately, chargers are broken a improbable amount of the time.
That said, the EV6 is a high-voltage battery which means it can take advantage of truly phenomenal DC charging rates where they’re available and functional; on a good day, I can get close to a 50% charge (150+ miles of range in the summer) in less than 20 minutes. 20 minutes is a little longer than it takes to fill a car with gas, but it’s about the right amount of time to walk and entertain the Floof, or get a cup of coffee, or do my days’ worth of Duolingo lessons.
The only reason I would ever consider a Tesla in 2023 is the surplus of fast chargers that are always empty. Seriously, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a Tesla charging station that was fully occupied, and they’re scattered all around the PNW in useful locations (hell, there’s a charging station at the Safeway in Hood River). Proprietary charging stations suck, and a pox on Rivian’s house for following Tesla’s lead.
Reliability: I had a sensor break in the first few months that caused the car to think that there was perpetually something about a foot off of the front left bumper, which triggered a collision alert chime every time I slowed down below 5 mph and required hitting the silence button each time. It was SUPER annoying, but my local Kia dealer replaced it for free with no real pushback. A note: it took waaaaay longer than it should have, because 1) none of their techs had worked on an EV6 before, 2) they didn’t have the part and had to order it from LA, and 3) getting to that sensor required entirely removing the bumper assembly. The joys of early adoption!
Irritations: There are definitely some really dumb things about the EV6. Here are the top contenders for me:
1) Adaptive cruise control. Seriously, fuck it.
2) Airplay is limited to one of the many USB ports.
3) The battery indicator right next to the charging port; it’s so bright that unless you’re outside or in a VERY brightly lit area, it’s really hard to get the charger lined up with the port due to glare.
4) The door handles: having to press on the front to make the back pop out so you can open them is dumb, and challenging for people with limited finger/arm strength. I cannot believe that the streamlining created by flat door handles makes any meaningful difference in range or aerodynamics, and Kia should either install regular door handles or make the Tesla-style auto-extending handles that they offer on the GT line standard on all EV6s.
5) Similarly, the way you unlock the doors without using the key is cool in theory, dumb in practice (pressing on the back end of the door handle once to unlock the driver’s door, twice to unlock the rest).
Top 6 tips for people considering an EV:
1) Figure out if you can install a home charging system, and if you can splurge for the NEMA 14-50 (RV) outlet in your charging area instead of the NEMA 10-30 (dryer) outlet. It will charge SO MUCH FASTER.
2) Understand your driving pattern/use case. In the three years before I bought my EV6, I figured out that I’d taken one road trip that was longer than the EV6’s range. It was part of why I pulled the trigger.
3) Map out your charging options near your house and your place of work, for those days where you forget to charge or need a quick top-off. Figure out where you can go and what you can do while charging on those days. Find the nearest super charger (for me it’s the Olympia Target). The built-in charger finder is actually really good, too, and lets you sort by charger type/speed.
4) Buy a spare trickle charger with a standard wall plug for emergencies.
5) Download the ElectrifyAmerica and Chargepoint apps, and expect that you’ll end up with a few more on your phone.
6) Write your Congressional representatives and state anti-trust agency to ask them to force Tesla and Rivian to open their networks to all EVs.
Update 1/15/23:
Snow driving: Hood River currently has about six inches of snow and is hovering in the single-digits, temperature-wise, so I've had an opportunity to play wtih it in cold weather and snowy road conditions. I still have the stock all-weather Kumho tires that the car shipped with, and I'm up to a little more than 20k miles on them.
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