2023 Kia EV6 GT EV | Korean Supercar?

We're here once again right outside of Las Vegas at the all-new Kia EV6 GT launch and sadly Mark will not be joining us for this video as he's currently getting leg extensions and hope to play for the Chicago Bulls as a bench player. In this video you get a unique opportunity to hear directly from Kia from a product planner who has a fairly in-depth knowledge base on this product so we'll be giving you a deep dive on the technical side of what makes the EV GT different than its lesser siblings. I'll be taking this for both a track, strangely enough, and street drive and giving you a brief overview of the product as a whole so please enjoy the video. So what is the EV6 GT? Well this is their most powerful EV that Kia currently sells here in North America. It is good for a total output of 577 horsepower from its two electric motors. The front motor puts out 160 kilowatts, the rear motor puts out 270 and according to Kia's marketing team this means it's good for 0-60 in the low threes which is quite impressive to be fair for a low $60,000 product. This means with a 0-60 time in the low threes it's faster than a Huracan Evo Spyder which according to Kia means you should buy this instead of that V10 Lamborghini because clearly a lot of people cross shop these two products. What about from a technical perspective? What do they do to the EV6 other than add some powerful electric motors? Well this is still on eGMP or eGIMP that is Kia's electric architecture that they share with Hyundai which means this is on the same platform as the Hyundai IONIQ 5. This has a total battery size of 77.4 kilowatt hours which means it has a total range with this system output in the low 200 mile mark it's like 209-203 which is not very far but they are balancing that with a 800 volt architecture compared to many of its competitors that are running a 400 volt architecture which means this should be able to charge much faster. On a 350 kilowatt charger or a fast charger this can do 10 to 80 percent in the 18-19 minute mark and if you are on a far more common 150 kilowatt charger you're looking at in the low 20s which is to be honest quite fast. So from a suspension perspective they also altered this platform while it still has a weight bias of 49-51 the front suspension geometry has been altered they added an additional link to the front McPherson strut suspension the spring rates in the front are now softer by eight or nine percent the rear spring rates are up by 11 percent and it has a 15 percent stiffer rear sway bar which is supposed to make this feel a little bit more nimble a little bit less likely to understeer. This vehicle also has a series of drive modes that change system output it'll reduce the system output in eco and normal when you're in GT mode you get the full beams however once you reach a lower state of charge it starts to taper out the total system output the drive modes also change things like regen braking and the dampers themselves which are entirely active this car also has drift mode which will take this architecture which is rear wheel drive and send all of the power to the rear where you can slide this thing to your heart's content and it's not a gimmick like something like a Focus RS it really will slide around like a Hellcat which is hilarious it also has a electronic simulated e-diff in the rear so it's not clutch based but the rear motors essentially act like a limited slip differential and they do do their job the brakes are bigger than they used to be because you now have 21 inch wheels while I think the calipers are essentially the same the rotors have grown in size and the steering has been revised to be a little bit more aggressive but with all of that said let's talk to the Kia gentleman who's going to elaborate on some of my technical information hey my name is Joseph Choi I'm the product manager for the EV6 which includes the GT program that we're here to experience today the EV6 GT is really just a statement of what it is that this organization what it sets its mind to something it's able to achieve so we have a lot of talented individuals throughout design R&D to engineering and a lot of really great leaders throughout our organization depending on the drive mode you're going to get different amount of power and apply to different wheels proportionally so for example in eco mode you start out with 214 kilowatts it's basically a rear wheel drive car but when there's a hard acceleration requirement etc it can apply more of the torque to the front wheels up to 50 percent when you get to the sport level is when 20 percent can go to the front 80 percent to the back or up to 50 50 of course it's all depending on the variables of speed and acceleration and finally when you get to the GT it's still 20 80 and up to 50 50 but it's going to spend more of its time at 50 50 front and rear so the battery itself it's the same 77.4 kilowatt hour battery as what you'll see in the wind or in the GT line but there's different logic that's applied so that the computer is able to manage the temperature differently also in the motor itself the rotors are spinning faster so standard model goes from up to 15,000 rpms this one can go up to 21,000 rpms so of course that means this higher temperature so there's a slightly revised oil cooling execution that is able to manage those higher temperatures so yeah so we can't go into the necessary design of it but it has been updated to be able to handle the higher performance so with that out of the way let's talk about the interior and exterior honestly there's not a lot to talk about because it's essentially the same as the regular EV6 which we have covered at nauseam at this point you get different seats which are essentially lifted out of something like a launcher and they're more aggressive you get some different interior trim you have a fancy steering wheel that has the GT button on it other than that it's essentially the same space it's still a electric SAV CUV where the rear seats fold down you have a ton of leg room a decent amount of headroom and thankfully the electronics in this car are not gimmicky they're very easy to use many ways they're better than most of its competition from an exterior perspective other than the bigger wheels and the neon yellow calipers it's essentially the same vehicle you get some different badges on it and slightly altered front and rear fascias but with I think it's time for us to take this for a quick drive both on the street and on the track ready for a street drive and this gentleman next to me is not mark you can tell by his hairline you want to introduce yourself sir yeah i'm brett evans with motorone.com we're gonna have a great time driving the EV6 GT look i know you're a potential ferrari owner and i saw i know you saw the 0-60 time in this thing oh man i need a kia instead so let's demonstrate that well let's try to at least oh there we go so 0-60 in the mid threes which is blisteringly fast and i have fake engine noise maxed out in this thing and as you talked about in your review and you talked about by yourself the thing you're gonna notice in this car at least on the street other than all my stuff sliding around in the back seat is the mass of this thing it feels like it weighs 4,500 pounds because it does you can't hide that i mean you've driven so you've driven a lot of other products in your own job and again thank you for filling in for mark how does this feel compared to like a macchi gt or a you know even a taikon well you know there's no denying that those are those are avowedly performance oriented product taikon especially you know like that feels like a proper porsche one of my uh my uh former colleague clint simone who's at edmunds.com now he always said that uh the taikon was the car that got him excited for an ev future you know like until then all evs were kind of just like appliances so they're really kind of like pushing really hard and comparing this thing nominally at least to a taikon gts um and this is 60-ish thousand dollars yeah yeah and a taikon gts is double that so you know they really kind of are are trying to do this whole value play with uh you know you get all performance of a taikon at a much much much lower price um and that's that's totally fair for people who are are concerned with straight line speed like you're about to demonstrate yeah yeah from zero to 60 i agree with their marketing this is i mean the drill the joy of evs is what really interests people was the actual acceleration number on that top speed and but the finer details of what kia has struggled with or hyundai is driving dynamics and i can tell you this does not drive as well it's a taikon i'm gonna be honest oh for sure but you're right it is half the value i mean half the money and if you're coming from something like a stinger or an internal combustion kia i think obviously you'll appreciate the access to performance at this price point in the mid-60s and then when you take it out of gt mode and you drive this like a good boy or girl um it is a gt car right it is the only thing you hear is a little bit of wind noise a little bit of tire noise and it's a totally quiet serene experience what do you think about the ride quality and i know i talked about the seats earlier they're not for everybody but what do you think about the ride quality they claim and they did change dampening wheels some of the suspension components do you think it's offensive to a regular person absolutely not no they're definitely not offensive i think this is a pretty we had some good freeway time on our drive to valley of fire and um like las vegas freeways are expansion joints and concrete and kind of terrible and they this thing does a great job over some of those some of those kind of nasty or higher frequency like buzzy buzzy noises and so i think they've done a great job of managing you know trying to get this thing to drive nicely while also being five percent or not i don't hate to say five percent fun but being a little bit of fun oh yeah for sure yeah they've done a great job with with making sure that it's not it doesn't punish you in exchange for being a you know nominal performance car yeah i i think what e-gimp as mark and i like to call it this platform does a good job of is absorbing nvh and harshness and all that other fun stuff yeah i think if you're actually going to buy one of these cars you're going to balance your decrease of range compared to one of the more let's call it less powerful variants those cars can get almost 300 miles of range yeah this is eking out barely above 200 so you're banking on that 800 volt architecture to allow you to charge this thing relatively quickly they claim on a 350 kilowatt charger 10 to 80 percent in like 18 minutes and a more realistic 150 kilowatt hour charger in the low 20s yeah they said 21 minutes on a 150 or 18 minutes on a 350 so you really are getting a whole lot of charge speed which is probably this car's greatest triumph over the likes of like the mustang mach-e gt you really get really quick public charging times with still you know getting you know 200 and change out of the out of a full battery yeah so i think with that i do appreciate you spending some time with me sir we're going to head to the track and see what a 50 or sorry 4500 and change pound sav sports activity vehicle can accomplish all right let's do it so i'm out here at las vegas motor speedway and we're going to do a couple hot laps in ev 6 gt which is about the most irrelevant measure of this car you could possibly imagine but i am thankful to be on a racetrack to say the least i'm chasing matt who is a pro driver who's about 10 times the driver i am the first thing i'm going to tell you out here on track is this feels like a big heavy car that has a lot of power you never ever you never ever forget the mass it is surprisingly well suited for an sav or you know cuvev product out here but you can definitely hang the ass out on this car which is very very entertaining it's super fast and i will say being out a little bit uh being out here on track it's weird in an ev because normally in a internal combustion car you would be used to hearing more than just tire noise but that's all you feel in here in this car and you're met by a very very large acceleration number this is brake by wire as you can probably imagine there is regen but the pedal doesn't translate a whole lot of feel to you which is a little disconcerting when you are carrying the speeds that you do it is a little bit disconcerting to see how much speed you can carry in a car this heavy and devoid of let's call it traditional sports car feel it is predictable to slide around though as we talked about off camera or as we talked about on camera with the engineer in gt mode like i am right now it'll go 50 50 though it favors 20 80 so when it needs to send power to the front it will but it does definitely favor the rear wheels as you can probably see by my endless sideways i'm gonna be honest you know again as i said in the beginning of this drive being on track in an ev6 gt is largely an irrelevant measure of performance for a car like this but at the same time it is very very funny monkey i am final thoughts on the kia ev6 gt if you are coming at this product as an enthusiast because this is how it's marketed and you are a e39 m5 or porsche cayenne or more drivers suv said sports sedan customer parts of this vehicle are going to drive you absolutely nuts particularly the total absence of any sort of driver communication the steering the brake by wire system the chassis don't offer a whole lot in communication that said this vehicle is still very very entertaining to drive so if you're looking at it from a more traditional car enthusiast perspective some of this is going to be very disappointing but we live in a different world and this is sadly or fortunately depending on who you are a true dedicated ev in the cosmic sense of fun what the ev6 gt offers particularly on a back road or track is sideways hilarity i joked with jacob from the straight pipes that this car makes you like laugh like a little kid while it does feel like you're driving a simulator and that if you have a accident you can basically just hit the respawn button it really does do the sideways thing in a way that very few cars i've ever driven offer but enough about that because the reality is very few people are ever going to drift their kia suv sav what about this car as a ev competitor well it's quite good honestly well yes sixty one thousand dollars is a lot of money compared to many of its performance rivals it does the ev things better i prefer it to the maki gt its dynamics are quite good it's very quiet the electronics inside the car work well the seats are unique looking the car is while polarizing from an exterior perspective it's interesting looking and it has an 800 volt architecture and that's the big one so with that thanks for watching hope to see you soon