Kia EV9 GT review

Kia's performance sub-brand reaches the EV9 electric SUV

Chapter 1: Introduction
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The Kia EV9 GT is an unusual kind of car, a ‘grand tourer’ with 501bhp and 546lb ft and interior highlights appropriate for a hot derivative; but also a plus-sized 2.7-tonne family SUV with six or seven seats. It’s Kia’s most expensive car at over £82,000, an electric 4x4 that can tow 2500kg, but which has a limited-slip rear differential, fake gearshifts and can do 0-62mph in 4.6sec.

This feels an odd combination of facets to me, but why? European and American car makers have been producing large performance SUVs for decades. Why should it feel weird because it’s a Kia?

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DESIGN & STYLING

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As a base car, the EV9 is one we like very much. It’s a four star road test car and since its launch Kia has made it less infuriating by allowing more driving assistance features to be more easily switched off and remain that way. Thus the car is a not-too-annoying 5.02m long, 1.98m wide electric SUV with a 99.8kWh battery running at 800v.

It’s based on the same platform as the existing EV6 GT, which means it has four-wheel drive with two motors, one front, one rear, of 186bhp and 315bhp respectively, for a natural rear bias. The front motor can disconnect at a cruise to increase the range. There’s an electronically-controlled limited slip differential at the rear, and the car can torque vector via braking, slowing an inside wheel on turn-in, to improve agility on corner entry and traction on corner exit. 

INTERIOR

kia ev9 gt 05

Interior modifications over the base EV9 are noticeable but don’t change the comfort levels. There are suede patches on seats that feature green stitching and highlights, with a green stripe atop the steering wheel, suedette/Alcantara-like pillar and roof linings, and aluminium pedals and foot rest. It’s all out of the same book that turns a hatch interior into a hot hatch one. Material quality feel is high, almost befitting of a car with this price tag, and the standard equipment list is very long. That leaves the options list very short.

Commendably, Kia retains a decent number of hard switches; just a few too few. Its infotainment touchscreen is still a little busy and overburdened for my tastes but my bigger beef is that the bar beneath the screen, where you might like to rest your hand while swiping through touchscreen menus, is where an array of haptic-hard buttons sit, robbing you of that valuable resting space. As a result one ends up resting a finger on the top of the screen instead.

It's spacious, though. Marginally more people are ordering the six- than seven-seater, with a third row in either case that’s good enough for growing kids or smaller adults. There’s a 333-828 litre boot and a 52-litre froot that’s big enough for charge cables.

ENGINES & PERFORMANCE

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I get the vibe that Kia’s GT-branded cars are meant to feel more relaxed than, say, Hyundai’s N or something an M BMW. And for all the hardware like an e-diff and torque vectoring via braking, I think that’s certainly true of this EV9 GT. If you weren’t told it was a performance derivative, and set off in Eco mode with its very laid-back throttle response, you might well not know it was.

The drive modes sharpens the throttle response considerably, and opens up some performance measuring options: you can log your 0-62mph time and standing start distances. Although it’s an EV, so it’s not like they’ll vary much or that you’ll burn out a clutch trying it.

If you do want to feel a bit clutchy, though, in Hyundai Ioniq-N style there is a fake gearbox option, which pipes engine-adjacent noises into the cabin and allows the steering wheel paddles, which adjust regen-levels normally, to turn into faux shift paddles. The ‘engine’ redlines at 6800rpm, has more throttle-off braking at high than low revs, and more power at higher revs of course. It’ll bang the limiter, won’t downshift into over-revds, and so on. It’s as plausible as in an Ioniq, though more muted, and feels rather more surplus to requirements given the nature of the car.

Throttle response is most urgent when you reach GT mode, which brings vivid instruments too. And in that mode it does feel very responsive. Not fastest-Tesla or Porsche kind of fast, but I can’t imagine wanting to go quicker in a car of this size.

RIDE & HANDLING

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Suspension is by coil springs – there’s a bit of a thing in the US for lowering EV9s and they look rather good – and electronically-controlled dampers, which go firmer as you spool through drive modes that range from Eco at their most easy going, through to GT at their angriest; that one selectable via its own, vivid green, steering-wheel button.

It steers smoothly and slickly, medium weighted, just under three turns between locks, and although this is a big car it has flat sides and a slabby bonnet that’s easy to look over. All round cameras help place it easily, too, so it’s not too daunting to thread on a narrow town road; although it does fill a parking space.

As standard an EV9’s ride can get a bit busy and excitable over harsher surfaces and, while I’d want a back-to-back test to say how much difference there is, I wonder if the GT isn’t vastly less comfortable. It has a generally agreeable moochability to it, with a ride that occasionally fidgets, and with a bit of pitch at motorway speeds.  I could barely tell if the ride became harsher in the keener drive modes, and I suppose any extra body control tightness could be easily cancelled out by the unsettling abilities of additional throttle urgency.

But even in its max-attack mode, the EV9 GT falls short of being what you’d call a driver’s car. There is body lean, some float over crests, but still good steering and enough going on, with subtle TVVB on corner entry to ease the car into a bend and with a more powerful rear than front motor easing the car’s line on corner exit, especially noticeable in tight corners on wet roads. 

MPG & RUNNING COSTS

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The big battery gives the EV9 a usefully long range, and which can be charged, according to our tests, at up to 210kW, easily averaging 170kW.

The WLTP range is 316 miles, based on a combined efficiency of 2.8mpkWh, which I had little trouble bettering in a couple of hours of mixed driving – even with a couple of minutes of fast autobahn. 

VERDICT

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The EV9 GT is a fast SUV that retains a relatively relaxed demeanour, and is probably the better for it. I don’t think it was meant to have been given AMG or Porsche levels of harshness and interaction, or be some kind of value Aston DBX.

Arguably it exposes the contradiction of those super sporty SUVs made by others: if you wanted to make a sports car, why would you start with a 2.7-tonne, 1755mm tall six- or seven-seater?

Here the EV9 GT is more of a trim level than a performance sub-brand, an appealing big electric 4x4 with a sometimes welcome turn of pace. And I don’t think there’s too much wrong with that.

Matt Prior

Matt Prior
Title: Editor-at-large

Matt is Autocar’s lead features writer and presenter, is the main face of Autocar’s YouTube channel, presents the My Week In Cars podcast and has written his weekly column, Tester’s Notes, since 2013.

Matt is an automotive engineer who has been writing and talking about cars since 1997. He joined Autocar in 2005 as deputy road test editor, prior to which he was road test editor and world rally editor for Channel 4’s automotive website, 4Car. 

Into all things engineering and automotive from any era, Matt is as comfortable regularly contributing to sibling titles Move Electric and Classic & Sports Car as he is writing for Autocar. He has a racing licence, and some malfunctioning classic cars and motorbikes.