2023 Kia EV6 First Impressions

Ever since Kia debuted their very first electric vehicle in the Philippines, people had questions upon questions upon questions and it's completely understandable why. They wanted to know how much the vehicle is, what is the range of the vehicle, what kind of power do you push out and more importantly, when is it going to be available. The answer to those questions today, well except maybe for one, the launch date I'm really not sure but I can tell you that it is sometime very very soon. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the Kia EV6. This color, I made mention of this at the Motor Show and it is not a wrap. This is the actual color of the automobile. So if you are a latero watching this video, this is probably going to be the hardest thing to copy and I gotta tell you it looks great. The sun isn't out just yet but when the clouds kind of move and the sun comes down on it, it looks absolutely stunning. Enough about the paint, let's get on with the automobile. On the front clip, first you'll notice that the grille is all sealed. You got a camera there, obviously it's an electric vehicle. This is all sealed but up top, you've got LED headlamps, sequential turn signals and these headlamps are actually quite intelligent in a way that when you're coming head on to an automobile and you've got your brights on, these things will not dim all the lights. It will actually pick because of the cameras inside this car, they will pick the certain areas that it will bring the lights down so that you can have maximum visibility without blinding the person that's coming at you. Even though that they have their brights on, I know there are still some people out there but this is an intelligent car in that way that it doesn't blind those on the other side of the road which is actually pretty cool. The cuts are very nice, clamshell hood, very wide automobile. No fog lamps to be found down below because obviously the lights are that intelligent. Moving on down the side, you got a lot of lines there. You're looking at 20-inch wheels. These are going to be standard, these 20-inch wheels with discs brake front and rear. The tires are, I haven't actually checked them out, yep they're 45 series tires. The wheels though, okay I've made mention of this in the past that EV cars have pretty good looking wheels. I wish that they would look better. I mean you and I have seen, I hate to say another brand but let's say for example a 5 Series. The wheels on a 5 Series M look absolutely gorgeous or the AMGs of Mercedes, those look great. Mazda wheels look good too. Now these wheels are designed this way to maximize aerodynamic efficiency, right? So that you have the least amount of rolling resistance. So I'm just kind of hoping that the wheels in time will become better. Come on you engineers out there, design something that looks much much better. They're not bad looking now but I'm sure they will get better. Let's move on down. You've got turn signals or rather repeaters on your side mirror. Cameras on your side mirror as well. One of four that are found all around the automobile. Oh the sun's out. Look at the color. Look at that. Oh my gosh. Just look at the color of this car. Amazing. Anyway, let's continue. So we've done the side mirror, I told you about that. Blacked out this entire area where the windows are, the sill above and below. And what that does is it allows the body color up on top on the roof to sort of like the slope, give it a floating roof line because it's all blacked out here. As we move down below, the ground clearance, I don't have the exact figures but my foot is a size 8 and it's kind of angled so I figure like a size 6 will fit in there properly. It's not really very scientific, it's more of a tantameter. It's all I got right now. I'll have more details for you on our website. Moving on to the line on the bottom. This is one of my favorite parts of the automobile, how the lines meet up. You have a line that starts here and then comes down as you move to the rear. Here on the bottom, you have a line here that spans the entire length of the car and then it cuts up here to the rear. It's sort of like it meets and it gives it this very beautiful illusion of a lift back, right? And this light itself sort of acts like a tail spoiler. Look at that. It's just very different. Now, it is defined as a crossover although it does look more like a hatchback sedan but it is most definitely a crossover. Then, you've got your spoiler up here as you move on to the back and even at the back when you look at it, it's just so wide and imposing but yet so clean and gorgeous looking. I mean, in most automobiles, this is riddled with either lines or a handle or whatnot but here, it's the fact that it's just so clean and wide just really does a very good accent to the automobile and it cuts the lines of the lights so well. Speaking of the lights back here, these are your park lights and this is your park light as well that spans the entire width of the vehicle but these on the side, these are your brake lights. Also, up here is your third brake light. Found down below this right here, these LED lights are your fog lamps and at the same time, your reverse lights. Pretty cool, huh? And then, you've got a few designs back here that sort of like make up a diffuser. When you open her up, gosh, I hope I open this up properly. I did it. I opened her up properly. You're looking at over 500 liters of space in the back. It can increase ever so slightly when you lift this portion up but really, that's about it. Now, it's 500 liters of space which is a lot but it's not necessarily a tall compartment at the rear because of how the glass comes down but it is very deep so I could probably fit Jack. Would you like to see Jack? No, it's not going to happen but so that's what it is and then it also obviously has a tonneau cover to help shield everything else. Now, I'm going to close that for you. Cool part, to charge the automobile, there are obviously no gasoline caps on this thing but the car is unlocked so this should work. I have my finger, press it. Yes! This is where you charge the vehicle. You've got a small little indicator here as to how full or how low the charge is. Charging options, you have your mobile wall charger which is really for emergencies. It takes about 10 hours for 10% charging. Then, you have your proper home chargers. A 7 kilowatt charger will do about 10% in 90 minutes. An 11 kilowatt charger will do about 10% in about 50 minutes but the DC chargers can do from 10% to 80% in as fast as 18 minutes and then the cool thing is when you want to close it, you don't close it like a normal person. No, you press a button because really, you couldn't be bothered to close it yourself. That's pretty cool. Normally, we'd jump inside the vehicle but I actually want to take you to the front of the vehicle. So, up front, you're not going to see much because this isn't actually the motor. The motor is quite underneath that but this is actually what they call a frunk or a front trunk which can carry up to 52 liters of God knows what. Here, you've got the mobile charging cord. Power for this car, horsepower is 255. Newton meters is 350. So, that is definitely more than enough to get you going and quick, fast and in a hurry. There are three types of EV6s that are available but Kia or rather, yes, Kia is only going to be bringing in the mid-variant which is the GT line which fortunately also has the longest range of them all. The total range capacity of this vehicle is over 500 kilometers per charge and to add to that, because this vehicle is also a V2L or vehicle to load, it essentially means that this car is the biggest power bank on the planet. How big exactly, I have yet to figure that out but it has enough power to charge or not to charge but to run a microwave oven, a refrigerator or a washing machine. Obviously, not all at the same time because the load would be too much but it has that much power capability or storage that it can run those household items. That's pretty nifty. Let's take you inside to the passenger side, the passenger seats and then move up front and talk about some of the tech. Check it out, this thing is so new it still has a sticker on the antenna. Okay, it's good grief. Is that really my driving position? Am I really that short? Wow! No way, I'm not that short. I'm just that considerate to everybody that sits in the back because I like to give them as much room as possible. That's crazy man, look at this. You know, the wheelbase of this automobile is 2,900 millimeters. The wheelbase of an S-Class is a smidge over 3,000 so maybe that explains why there is so much room. The length of the car obviously isn't going to be like the S-Class but the wheelbase is just 130 millimeters shy. Man, that is a lot of room. Not bad Kia, not bad at all. Okay, so let's get to what's back here. First, the plushness of it. You have air vents found on the B-pillars much like a Volvo which is actually pretty cool. Instead of it being here up front, each passenger on the side although there should be one in the center because there's so much room here but again, the air vents are on the side and then to keep you even cooler, this I've never seen before. There are actually butt coolers inside this car so not only is there air coming out for the front passenger seats but there's also air coming out for the rear passenger seats. That I like. The bottle holders on the door are not so great. It will probably fit maybe about a 325 milliliter plastic bottle but the bigger bottles will have a harder time squeezing themselves in there or you squeezing them in there. Now, in the back you've got a center armrest with two cup holders which you can actually convert into just a normal tray there and then the charging points of obviously this is an electric vehicle that's not found here but rather here on the chair. You have one here and one here and they are both type C. I gotta tell you the amount of space back here is ridiculous. Headroom is a-okay. Nothing great. Maybe for taller passengers it might be an issue but for the legroom, my god look even if you were like 7'2 and your knees would be up here but then you'd be like bent over. I don't know what I'm talking about. The seats in the center, there is leather but I gotta tell you this leather what you're looking at is non-vegan leather or rather it's vegan leather not non-vegan. This is vegan leather. In fact, no animals were harmed in making any part of the interior of this car. Isn't that amazing? And most especially that these materials in here are also recycled material though I gotta tell you when you sit in here nothing in here feels recycled because it looks and feels pretty premium. Yes, there are hard plastics that still don the rear of these chairs and yes some on the doors as well but I have to say that it is of good material plastic. I like that and these seats they really keep you in play. I like that. Now, let's get on to the nitty-gritty of what's up front. You know, Jack and I have been doing this for quite some time and we've been jaded by the sound of engines so what we do is when we do these walk around and reviews, we actually kill the engine to make sure it's as quiet as possible. I realized that this is an electric vehicle and there's no noise so why did we even turn it off? And let's start the car, please. It's the sun frying our brains. Yes, because it's summer and check this out. I just realized that the seat when I turned off the engine it moves back. When I turned it back on, it moved forward to my original driving position which means there's a couple more inches of even more space behind me. Boy, I really am short. Anyway, let's get through the automobile up front and the first thing that you are greeted by is two very large 12.3-inch HD screens. One for your instrument cluster and the other is for your infotainment. For your instrument cluster, on the left-hand side, it's all digital obviously, you've got your speedometer and then you've got your trip computer in the center and then your other functions on the right-hand side. Another cool feature is that when you turn on the indicator either to the right or to the left, either camera will pop on and you will see the image here on your instrument cluster. That's pretty nifty. Moving on to the steering wheel, it's a flat bottom. You've got buttons for your cruise and your audio controls here and also your drive modes on the steering wheel. What drive modes you have, we'll get to that a little bit later when we go for a drive. Moving on to your infotainment screen, also big large touchscreen that has Android and Apple capabilities. It also doubles as your screen for when you put it in reverse and then in fact, I can show you. You turn on there, you've got the camera all around, you can change that, you can even put it in 3D and move around. Oh, look at the pretty car. Okay, now that's your infotainment screen which is actually pretty awesome and then right down below that, you've got your air controls. Now earlier when we turned the music on, we thought that we couldn't find an audio knob button but actually when you press this button, it automatically switches to your audio setup. So this obviously becomes your file and tune and this is your audio but when you move it to your air, it becomes the air controls. That's actually pretty nifty man. Oh and speaking of audio, there is a 14-speaker Meridian system in here and it will blow your mind. Absolutely amazing sound quality inside this automobile. 14 speakers in a cabin that well it is pretty large but not exactly like SUV size. So the sound quality in here is great. Moving on to the center console. This is a floating center console as you can see. Obviously because the car is so long, the wheelbase is so long and there are less moving parts inside the automobile so they have all this space to play around with and they can make so much space here even underneath. Bottle holders aren't so big on the doors but here look at this. This is Jack's thermos that size that he's obviously compensating for something. I don't know but it fits. No, you should be quiet. It fits snugly in there. In fact, I could put my proper sized flask there where I'm not overcompensating. You have also air coming through the seats here which are cool seats okay and also you can have them warm seats. Why in the Philippines? Why here? I don't know and also you can warm your steering wheel but really not the best of options. This is your lever, drive lever but now it's obviously a knob so twist to go into drive and whatnot and then here you have a charging pad. Now I've been trying to charge my phone but unfortunately I have a case but for reference this is an S22 Ultra so it does, it would fit without the case. I'm not trying to endorse anyone or anything right. I'm just for measuring thing and then the glove box, not the glove box but the center console box here is actually pretty big. The glove box is actually pretty huge too. Look at that. It's so deep. I can fit Jack's foot in there and he wears like a size 27. You can obviously like other electric vehicles control also some of the lights in here, the ambient lighting. It will obviously change also depending on the drive modes that you're on. You also have a sunroof if you want to open that up. It isn't a panoramic roof but at the very least you have one. Oh I didn't mean to open that. Oh okay and then because it is a saucy car you have lights here. These map lights do turn on but you don't press a button. No, you caress it and then turns on. You caress and then when you caress it again it turns off. Will this work if I lick it? No, no, no, no, no, please. Oh and one more thing this is obviously an EV so why then would it have paddles? Well it's not exactly what you think. Why don't we go on a drive and I'll explain exactly why but before all of that do please consider subscribing to our channel because we love creating these content videos just for you guys. Content videos? What? You've really lost it. Yeah man it's the heat. It's the heat. Let's go. Yeah let's go. First and foremost the paddles that we were talking about. They are not like I said for gears. This is an electric vehicle so obviously there are no gears. This thing's basically like a scooter. It's a twist and go with one gear albeit with a hell of a lot more power. No, these paddles actually control the regenerative braking of the car whether you want to make it as light as possible or as heavy as possible allowing you to basically dictate how much power or how much you slow down and how much power is fed back into the batteries. That is what the paddles are for. The other thing I pointed out earlier is drive modes which is a button on the steering wheel. Now you have three drive modes. You've got eco, normal, and sport. Sport just well it's already an electric vehicle but sport just makes it it tighten up even more and the response albeit it's already an electric vehicle so the response is like really really good. The response is even better like I'm on sport now and let me show you. Holy smoke. Damn this thing jumps. Whoa damn. Whoa we gotta slow down. That was maybe normal from now on. Yeah I wasn't prepared for that. Damn that was quick. It just goes to show just how quick this car is. I forgot to mention earlier during the power when I was talking about the engine and whatnot. It is claimed to do zero to 100 kilometers per hour in under eight seconds. Impressive. The last electric vehicle that we were in was the BMW iX. Now I can't say that this automobile is comparable to the iX because the iX has two motors. This only has one. It's a rear wheel drive and it's got about half the amount of torque and half the amount of horsepower but what you would expect an electric vehicle is because of the weight of the battery is that the car would be like life-changing absolutely smooth and unnervingly smooth really. In this car, no. It still does feel like your average premium automobile where in the case that you still have a connection to the road. It's odd because now you're actually kind of we're in a tunnel. Jack where are you taking me? Ah here we go out of the tunnel. Anyway where was I? Yes the car still has a very good connection to the road so the feedback is still there. You don't necessarily hear the road but you can feel the imperfections of the road especially when you're on C5 or on EDSA which is we're on C5 right now because I thought it was important to know what the car actually feels like driving it in traffic. As of the moment the regeneration system is on automatic and when I release the accelerator it does slow down quite a bit. Not as much as say for example the Nissan Leaf where when it's on completely high regeneration it acts like a golf cart. This is not as much as a golf cart but you can feel the car ever so subtly start to slow down without you having to step on the brake pedal. So that at least you know you're saving X amount of electricity and putting it back in the battery. How much electricity? Well it really depends on how you're driving and where it is that you're driving. For instance if you were to come down from Baguio using automatic regeneration you could bring back as much as four to five percent back into your battery just going down from Baguio. It's pretty impressive. There is also the matter of the sound of the automobile which I've actually put it on as loud as possible. Check this out. Can you hear that? That's just dynamic. If I switch to stylish, not as loud. Kind of eerie actually. Let's go with cyber. No that was the road. That's still the road. My goodness don't they ever? Whoa it does sound very robotic. It does sound sci-fi-y. Anyway what I'm trying to prove here is that it doesn't actually sound that loud. We actually increased the volume. Hopefully that our microphones picked it up but the sound is customizable between three selections or types of sound. You can increase the volume as well and then you can even change the mapping of how the sound comes on with how fast or how slow you accelerate the automobile. That's one customizable thing. The other customizable thing is the ambient lighting inside the car. Depending on your mood you can change it to yellow, blue, red, and what have you. I think being stuck in traffic is actually a good time to talk about the charging times of the automobile. Now earlier we showed you how slow the charging can be if you use the portable charger. Obviously that's just going to be for emergencies but obviously it gets faster when you do charge at home which speaks exactly what type of vehicle this is. It's trying to market itself to. It's those urban professionals that have access to wall sockets in their home. Now Ayala obviously has their charging stations all over Luzon. In fact as of last year there were 21 sites already but considering that it's Ayala it probably moves as fast as this car. So meaning they're zooming past that number of stations already. What I'm trying to get to is that those people that let's say for example live in a condominium that want to be able to use an all-electric vehicle sites out there will be available for you to charge the said vehicle. Unfortunately if you're let's say for example your association doesn't allow you yet to have a charge box in your garage perhaps in time with the more pressure that the consumers that buy these EV vehicles pressure the association to put up EV chargers perhaps that will happen in the future but as of the moment yes obviously that this type of vehicle is going to be geared towards those that have access to their own garage, their own charging stations which they can purchase aside from the vehicle from the Kia dealers. Now since we're stuck in traffic and I really don't want to waste any more of your time I guess really the last two questions would be how much is this car and when exactly will it be ready for sale? The EV6 is Kia putting their best foot forward. It's their full electric flagship. It has all that range, a comfortable and spacious cabin, latest tech, and shocking performance. Get it? With that said you bet we were pleasantly surprised when Kia told us it would be priced under 4 million Philippine Pesos. It will be available soon but no specific dates yet so make sure to subscribe so you don't miss out. Stay safe and see you soon.