2023 Kia EV6 | First Impressions & Review

Kia continues to impress with it's fleet of new vehicles and they've knocked it out the park yet again with the brand new Kia EV6. In this video, I discuss the pros and cons of owning the Kia EV6 and why this could be the right EV for you.

[robertharris]

My wife and I did our own research on our decision to purchase the EV6. We knew that the purchase would not give us the tax rebates, but most won't get one on other brands either. I see a lot of EV's in my work and get to drive them, work on them and push all of the buttons as a specialist in diagnostics, repair and calibration of ADAS and other safety systems in all types of new or newer vehicles. In driving the EV6 I found it to be nimble, fairly fast with one of the best lane assist, cruise control systems available from a mainstream retailer. The acceleration is impressive even though ours is not a GT and the range of 300 plus miles with high-speed recharging possible at newer recharge stations of 80% charge in under 20 minutes with a full charge in about an hour. Our 50-amp service wall charger from Autel gives the car a full charge from 20 or 30% in about 10 hours. One of many apps available for your phone will list the newer recharge stations that work to charge super fast as well as the older ones all mapped out to help you get home if you are a poor power planner. We did purchase a 110 volt charging cable in case we get someplace (like a motel) we cant get a rapid fill (13 or more hours to charge it up but that's plenty if you're not in a hurry).

The regenerative braking can be assisted with the paddles on the steering wheel. An unusual but within a short time welcome feature is the blind spot cameras for merging into traffic are shown on the instrument panel in full color and are not the same as what the mirrors show but the actual blind spot view. I don't advocate not turning your head to look but this is a nice feature.

As this is the car my wife drives every day, I can say she has taken to this car more than any other vehicle we have purchased in 40 years. In the process of hunting down her first EV that didn't have an emblem embodying a wealthy lifestyle left a few brands out of our test drives. We test drove the Hyundai equivalent (interior was clunky and seemed cheap) The Subaru (test and order) Toyota (we will have gas and electric on lot soon), Mazda (why electric?) and more. The Ford (my wife refused to drive an electric called a Mustang Mach e as she used to have a Mustang GT)is a purchase I would have found acceptable. Others we passed on were GM's Volt, Tesla and others as they don't seem to ever change the styling.

This past week a round trip from Lodi to San Mateo (105 miles one way) plus a few errands over there(24 miles) equaled 234 miles and the charge meter said we had 103 miles of charge left in system. After charging overnight with our home charger the phone app said we had 314 miles of potential mileage available.

[rdh]

Auto-Minute — I appreciate your balanced review. The EV6 is a great car, although, for a 6 ft person, the thigh support in the front seats is just barely adequate.

[trond]

What is the orange under the head and backlight?

[justanotherguy]

I don’t understand no 360 camera is that because your car didn’t have the tech package? My 2022 has tech and 360 camera, maybe you could review vehicle with what is available if you want it seems like you left out important information that the first time consumer into the EV world would like to know when comparing EVs in the market today. Also are there any differences between model years 2022 and 2023?