Kia EV6 Review & Prices

The Kia EV6 is, put simply, one of the best electric cars you can buy right now. It’s mechanically very similar to the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and the Genesis GV60, so think of the three cars as Tony Stark wearing different versions of the Iron Man suit - they’re stylish, glamorous, and extremely clever, and though you may prefer one of the three over the other, they’re all very good.

But what makes the EV6 worth choosing over the Ioniq 5 or the GV60 - or indeed, over other large electric SUVs such as the Nissan Ariya, Volkswagen ID5 or Tesla Model Y?

The styling might be a good place to start. The EV6 always looked interesting, but in a 2024 facelift Kia gave it a more angular front end with distinctive LED daytime running lights and a full-width lightbar on some models. Other changes introduced during this mid-life update were minimal, but include slightly revised bumpers, new wheels, and a whole host of improvements under the skin.

Inside, the EV6 has a really thoughtfully-designed interior. It’s roomy - extremely roomy, in fact, with legroom that makes quite a few luxury cars seem cramped. Headroom isn’t quite as generous as the floor is quite high due to the battery pack underneath it, but there’s so much room to slouch that you won’t mind.

Storage spaces in the front are very smart - including a large spot perfect for keeping a handbag, big door bins and an easily accessible place for your phone. The boot isn’t quite as big as some alternatives, but at 490 litres it’s still pretty spacious - just a little behind the 520 litres of the Ioniq 5 or 549 litres of the VW ID5.

Kia EV6: Electric range, battery and charging data

Range: 324-361 miles
Efficiency: 3.9-4.3 miles per kWh
Battery size: 84kWh
Max charge speed: 258kW
Charge time AC: 12hrs 0-100% at 7kW
Charge time DC: 18 mins, 10-80% at 258kW
Charge port location: Right rear
Power outputs: 225hp / 320hp

Despite its high-tech facade the interior’s pretty easy to use too. The dashboard features two 12.3-inch displays plus top-spec cars get a high-definition head-up display, too. Kia’s updated its networking capacity to allow it to receive over-the-air software updates and more sophisticated live routing for the navigation - but the most important feature for many will be the addition of wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, so you can plumb your phone in without any irritating wires.

The battery pack’s received an upgrade, too. It’s a little lighter than before, but more energy-dense - so maximum capacity has risen from 77kWh to 84kWh. That means a maximum range of 361 miles, not the longest in the class but impressively usable nonetheless.

Plus, the EV6 can charge up at a barely-believable 258W. Find a suitably powerful public charger and that means you can top up from 10-80% in just 18 minutes. With an 80% charge offering a real-world 250 miles of range, that makes the EV6 one of the easiest electric cars to cover long distances in, provided you plan your charging stops effectively.

And covering that sort of distance will be a pleasure, too. The EV6 is among the best electric cars to drive, with great performance regardless of which version you select and a suspension setup that’s tuned very well for lumpy British tarmac. There are two models - a 225hp rear-wheel drive model and a 320hp all-wheel drive version, but the former is more than powerful enough.

It’s even quite good fun to fling down a twisting back road, as long as you make allowances for its size and weight.

If all this sounds like the EV6 is the electric car for you, check out our best Kia EV6 deals. You can get a great deal on other Kia models here, or find a used Kia for sale here. And remember that Carwow’s the destination for all parts of your car-changing journey, as we can even help you sell your old car through our network of trusted dealers.

Prices start at just over £45,000 for an EV6 in ‘Air’ trim. Calling this a ‘base’ spec car would be a little disingenuous - it still comes with pretty much all the equipment you could need, including that twin-screen infotainment setup, wireless smartphone connectivity, heated seats and steering wheel, LED headlights and adaptive cruise control.

It’s a little less stylish than the GT-Line spec, with a plainer bumper design and no lightbar at the front - but it still gets 19-inch alloy wheels.

Step up to the GT-Line trim and you get fancier headlights, artificial leather seats with electric adjustment, a wireless phone charging pad and blind-spot monitors. You can also have the GT-Line with the AWD setup.

GT-Line S is the range-topper and gets artificial suede upholstery, a Meridian premium sound system, a sunroof, head-up display, ventilated seats, 20-inch alloy wheels and the useful vehicle-to-load capability allowing you to power household items from the EV6’s battery pack. This version also gets the option of a heat pump, which will improve range in cold weather.

The Kia EV6 is fast and fun to drive down a country road, but its suspension is quite firm

Electric cars like the EV6 work brilliantly around town. There’s the obvious environmental benefit of zero tailpipe emissions (and zero noise), but they’re also very good at nipping away from the lights and making the most of any gap in traffic.

The EV6 is easy to drive through busy city streets. With just one forward gear, the Kia makes smooth progress in stop-start traffic. Regenerative braking (which reclaims energy that would otherwise be lost) slows the car down before you’ve even touched the brake pedal, and you can adjust the regen braking’s strength using paddles behind the steering wheel. Set it to maximum strength and you can drive without touching the brake unless you need to make an emergency stop.

Compared with the Hyundai Ioniq 5, the Kia’s suspension is firmer. You feel sharp potholes more than you would in the Hyundai or the Skoda Enyaq iV. It’s certainly not a harsh ride, though, and you’ll feel the benefit of the Kia’s firmness when you get out of town onto quicker roads.

Light steering and smooth controls are another plus around town, and forward visibility is good. On the other hand, the view over your shoulder isn’t. Thick pillars and the small rear window create big blind spots. This is less of a pain than it might be, as every EV6 has rear parking sensors and a reversing camera. The top-spec GT-Line S has a brilliant 360-degree camera system that shows you all around the car.

On the motorway

Whether you are driving the 225hp or 320hp model, the EV6 will be up to 70mph before you know it.

You’ll be cruising along in quiet and comfort, with only some road noise from the big wheels and tyres to disturb you and your passengers.

The Kia’s firm-ish ride comes into its own on the motorway, with a much less floaty feel than the Hyundai Ioniq 5. Anyone who suffers from car sickness will appreciate the Kia’s stable and secure feel.

Long periods of sustained high-speed running aren’t ideal for the range of any electric car, but the EV6 is compatible with charging speeds up to 258kW. So if you can find such a powerful charger, by the time you’ve bought a muffin and a cup of coffee, the EV6 should be ready to continue your journey.

On a twisty road

This is where the EV6 really scores over the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and the Skoda Enyaq iV. It really is fun to drive down a favourite B-road. The EV6 is a car to keep keen drivers happy, and that’s not something you really see much of when it comes to large electric vehicles.

All models handle neatly and keep body roll in check, but it’s the more powerful AWD model that really launches between corners at warp-factor speeds. In the RWD version, the electric motors are clearly tuned for a more leisurely response to your inputs, but once you're moving it really doesn't hang about.

That’s not to say that the EV6 couldn’t be even better to drive. The light steering is a big plus around town, but a bit more feedback about what the front tyres are up to would make the Kia more involving.

Palatial legroom and great storage spaces, but alternatives have bigger boots and more headroom

The driver and front seat passenger have plenty of space to stretch out in a cabin that’s packed with clever tech and practical features.

Once you’ve had a good play with the touchscreen and other buttons, you’ll start to notice some thoughtful touches in the rest of the cabin. The door bins are a good size, and there’s a big bin beneath the central armrest. There’s more open storage between the two front seats - ideal for slinging a handbag - twin cupholders, and USB-C charging ports. There’s also a wireless charging pad, which keeps your phone easily to hand but out of your immediate eyeline so you won’t be distracted by it.

The driver and front seat passenger sit relatively high, even with the seats on their lowest setting. There’s plenty of scope to lift the seats higher, and a wide range of adjustment to the wheel. Whatever your size and proportions, we’d be surprised if you can’t get comfy behind the EV6’s wheel.

Manual seat adjustment is standard on the entry-level Air model, but with powered adjustment of the lumbar support. Step up to GT Line or GT Line S for electrical adjustment for the driver and front passenger’s seats, including two-way lumbar support.

If we’re being picky, the front-seat head restraints are quite far forward, almost pushing your head forwards slightly. It’s something that will annoy some drivers, but others will barely notice.

Space in the back seats

The EV6 was designed from the start to be an electric car, which is usually good news for anyone hitching a ride in the back. Why? Well, with no need for a transmission tunnel or exhaust pipes, Kia has been able to make the floor completely flat, so there’s room for everyone’s feet, even when seating three.

Legroom is very good, so adults should have no problem getting comfortable. However, you do sit quite low to the floor with your knees pushed up a bit. What’s more, if you are really tall, the sloping roofline will bring the ceiling quite close to your head. This isn’t a huge problem, though - there’s enough legroom that you can just comfortably slouch.

The rear seats recline if anyone wants a quick nap, and the fold-down armrest in the central seat back includes a couple of cupholders.

Boot space

Most buyers will be happy with the Kia’s boot. There’s 490 litres of space with the rear seats upright, although that drops to 480 litres in high-spec cars with a speaker under the floor. It's a large, useful space that can carry a weekly shop and a bulky pram with room to spare.

Pop the bonnet open, and there’s another small luggage area where you’d find an engine in a conventional car. Go for a rear-wheel-drive EV6 and there’s a useful 52 litres of space. There’s just 20 oddly shaped litres in the AWD car, because of the additional motor driving the front wheels. Nonetheless, it’s a useful place to store stuff like charging cables, or screenwash and ice scrapers that you don’t want clogging up the boot.

Most of the time, you’ll probably rely on the boot at the back, which can be extended using levers either side of the tailgate to fold the rear seats down.

Although the Kia has decent luggage space, it’s worth remembering that both the Hyundai Ioniq 5 (520 litres) and Volkswagen ID5 (549 litres) have marginally more room for bags if that’s one of your priorities when choosing your next car. The Tesla Model Y is the pick of this class when it comes to boot space, with over 700 litres on offer.

Great quality and thoughtfully designed, with just a few cheap materials and annoying features

The EV6’s interior feels suitably futuristic, even though it’s been out for quite a few years. The swooping dashboard holds a pair of curved displays, both 12.3-inches across and set under one sheet of glass to give a seamless effect.

There’s a distinctively-styled steering wheel with plenty of physical switches on it, separate controls for the seat heating and cooling, and a touch-sensitive panel which can go from a row of shortcut keys to climate controls at the press of a button. It’s a neat solution to offer a minimalist cabin without the awkwardness of a fully touchscreen experience, like you get in a Tesla Model Y.

The two screens are bright and clear, and the driver display is easy to read. You can scroll through various different display setups using the steering wheel buttons, allowing you to view a map, or your detailed efficiency info. The same information is available on a huge, high-res head-up display on top-spec GT-Line S models, too.

The infotainment screen has loads of menus to scroll through, but everything you need day-to-day is quite easy to access. A pair of programmable shortcut keys allow you to easily get to functions you want, too - we set ours up so that one took us to Android Auto, and another took us to the driver assistance screen.

Wireless smartphone connectivity is available - this paired with the wireless charging pad you get on mid-spec cars and above means you probably won’t need to trouble the pair of USB-C ports set low down on the dash. If you have a top-spec car with vehicle-to-load capability, you also get a three-pin plug socket in front of the middle rear seat - a really useful feature if you want to top up something like a laptop.

Build quality is excellent. Even in the silence of the all-electric EV6’s cabin you don’t hear any creaks or rattles. Material quality for the most part is very good too, with only a few scratchier plastics set low down on the dashboard and doors where you probably won’t feel them. The only real annoyance is that, for us, there’s one too many layers of menu between you and some of the features you use most often. The driver assistance features particularly don’t have a one-touch shortcut to turn them off like you get in many alternatives.

It’s also a shame that, despite the centre console not being joined to the dashboard, there isn’t quite enough room to swing your legs through for step-through access, which makes getting out on either side of the car easier.

The EV6 has a big, 84kWh battery that provides excellent range. For the most basic ‘Air’ model, the official figure is 361 miles, but even the most powerful and heaviest version still returns an official 324 miles.

Better yet, Kia is a manufacturer that frequently comes close to its official range figures. We saw a real-world 280 miles of purely motorway driving, inching up past 300 miles when the routes were more mixed. The range gauge responded to all this accurately, and gave an accurate prediction of remaining range - which makes planning your stops much easier.

In terms of efficiency, this puts the EV6 at around 3.6-3.8 miles per kWh, which is a good figure for such a big, heavy car and about on par with what a Volkswagen ID5 can achieve in the real world.

Kia also has an ace up its sleeve when it comes to the EV6’s charging speed. Being able to top up at 258kW (from a suitably powerful public charger) means you can go from 10% to 80% battery in less than 20 minutes - or about as much time as it takes to have a wee at a motorway services. Of course, that big battery does mean longer charge times when topping up at home, but you’ll still get a full charge overnight.

Going electric is a no-brainer for company car drivers and the EV6 falls into the 2% bracket for benefit-in-kind tax. It also pays zero road tax until 2025, and is exempt from London’s congestion charge.

The EV6 has a five-star rating from the crash test experts at Euro NCAP. It scored strongly in all categories, with 90% for adult occupant protection, 86% for child occupants, 64% for protecting vulnerable road users, and 87% for its safety assistance systems. These include Forward Collision Avoidance Assist (FCA), which is Kia’s name for its autonomous emergency braking system. This will apply the brakes in an emergency if the driver fails to do so, and can detect cyclists and pedestrians as well as other cars and motor vehicles.

Kia also fits the now-legislated speed limit warning system. Annoyingly there’s no shortcut to turn this off, and you have to prod about in the infotainment system to do so, which is a shame.

The Kia EV6 didn’t feature in the 2024 Driver Power survey, but in 2023 it came an impressive seventh place. Kia as a brand came third in 2024’s manufacturer rankings, indicating customers are very satisfied with their cars.

Three recalls were issued for the pre-facelift EV6, relating to the auxiliary battery, driveshaft and parking brake - none of these were particularly major. Kia also offers seven years and 100,000 miles of warranty cover, which is among the longest in the business - though this covers the entire car, while most other manufacturers do offer separate eight-year warranties for their vehicles’ batteries.