2022 Kia Soul EV Premium Is THIS the SHORT range EV with the MOST Value?

This is the 2022 Kia Soul EV. I'm here with the premium package and this car is really kind of Kia's short range electric vehicle. It's going to give you a range of about 248 kilometers and it's going to come with an MSRP of about $42,995. Even though it is electric it still is a Kia Soul but you might be wondering how that eco EV technology works. This one is going to come with a 327 volt motor, 134 horsepower and 291 pounds feet of torque. It's a single speed reduction gear, comes with a lithium ion battery and a 70.2 kilowatt charger. So a fun little car to drive. Let's do a quick walk around around the front end here. It's going to come with our LED headlights and LED fog lights. When we come around and take a look at the rims, a little different rim on these electric souls here. You can see it's got a 17 inch aluminum alloy rim and they really filled the space in there as well. Coming around to the back, I like this kind of blue soul badging as well right on the back. LED taillights, backup camera is going to come right above our license plate bracket there. Let's jump in the back and see how it feels back here. Like I said the benefit of this thing is you have so much headroom and you have so much cargo space back here. Hardback seat on the driver's seat and then you have this one with the mat pocket there. It's a little small cup holder and then we got one USB in the back to charge our phone. Let's check out the center armrest. So you have two other cup holders as well. So this is what the souls are known for. A lot of space in the back seat, a lot of cargo area. Let's pop the trunk. Popping the trunk you can see you have a nice big wide opening and a little high entry level. So pretty easy to get in. Underneath is there's no spare, it's just our charging cord there as well and then you can fold the seats down. You know if you do the Ikea thing you got a couple dead bodies you can throw them in there and you can probably fit maybe six or seven. I've always had mixed feelings about these Kia souls. I mean either kind of love them or you hate them. It's one of those cars where some people take one look at it say they hate it, some people take one look at it say they love it. The advantage of this kind of boxier style, you get a lot of headroom here. You can see how much headroom I have. I'm 5'9". A lot of space in the back seat but let's talk about what you guys want to know and that's the electric kind of the charging thing. So this one is the short range EV. Like I said you can get up to 248 kilometers on one charge. If you need more range than that then you can go up to the limited which you should get about over 300 kilometers per charge. I was actually surprised by the charging times. The charging times are surprisingly fast. So about 36 hours from a regular plug-in outlet. That's from your AC1 traditional unit so that's kind of like your extension cords and things like that. If you go to what most people are going to be doing which is like your dryer vent in your garage then your six hours that's like an AC2 outlet and then the AC3s are the charging stations like the DAS chargers and it's a level 3 charging station 53 minutes from full. So that's a very very fast charging time from those little outlets there. So definitely recommend charging out of the charging station but pretty impressive how this thing drives. Sorry about the rain today guys. It's a little slick out but it accelerates well. My only complaint is kind of this little the pedal the regenerative pedal when you kind of ease up on it it really slows down fast. It all depends on how fast you're going but really slows down fast. There's a lot of technology in this car not only in the engine and the components but just in the features that you're getting here. You get a 10.2 inch infotainment screen right on the screen. You have your Apple CarPlay. You have your Android Auto. You have your wireless charger. You also have the UVO intelligent connected services through Kia. You hear that beeping that's our lane departure here so it just was telling me that I was deviating from the lane. We also get the blind spot assistant, the forward collision avoidance system all through Kia and then we have the advanced cruise control so I can keep myself a safe distance from the vehicle in front of me. Once I set the cruise control it will automatically do that for me so all the technology that you would see in the regular Kia Souls comes in this EV edition as well. You also have the heated seats. You have the heated steering wheel that's going to really help especially on a day like today like it is cold outside today here in Canada. Now one thing to mention is this car right now is only offered in Canada so all my American viewers hopefully you guys still want to tune into this video but hopefully they bring this car to the American market soon but right now only available in Canada. These EVs are certainly taking off right now and this car like look when you step on it it gives you enough power that you need. I'd like maybe a little more power but you're not buying this thing to race like you're just buying this to get you from point A to point B. Maybe you have a short commute to work 10-15 you can even probably commute 100k to work as well that might be a little risky depending on traffic but you're gonna get this vehicle if you just have a short commute you live in the city you don't do too much too many road trips things like that or you have a second car to do the road trips this could be your daily driver and with the 240 kilometer range you shouldn't have a problem getting to and from work every single day. The ideal situation if you're looking to buy an EV I say this to all my customers who are looking to buy an electric vehicle your ideal situation is if your work has a charging station then you should really never have to charge it at home you're going to get in your car every morning you're going to drive your car to work you're going to plug your car in at work and charge it while you're working and then you're going to get in the car and drive it home so no matter what you're just making two trips to and from work and then you might have a little juice left over if you need to run some errands or go to any activities at the nighttime but that would be your ideal situation if you have the charging station at your work. If you don't have the charging station at your work your ideal situation would be that you're going to drive to work you're going to drive home and you're going to charge it in your garage overnight connected to that AC2 charging station that I mentioned before and it will charge in about six hours. The benefit of connecting the vehicle to your phone is you can use that UVO intelligent connected services and you can actually track your charging and it will let you know when your car is full and it will also stop charging it's not going to keep charging once your car charges up to full so pretty big benefits. Overall I certainly like the the drive and the handling of the vehicle I don't know like what do you guys think if you guys have driven this before let me know in the comments. It does drive nice nice smooth little drive but for me if I don't have a long commute to work so it would get me to it would do the job for me what I need to do. Price tags a little high I'm hoping that the Ontario government releases some more incentives to buy these EVs in the future. I know there's some in the works that have been talked about and they're going to up the incentive to purchase so that will help offset the large $40,000 price tag but now gas prices here in Ontario are approaching like $140,000 $150,000 so this might be a good choice for you guys to consider so let me know if you guys are considering this EV subscribe to Cars Unlocked if you guys are new here we're going to try to do some more comparisons for you guys some more videos for you guys and as always check out my Instagram follow us on TikTok at Cars Unlocked and we'll see you in the next video. Have a great day.