okay so here's the thing about a minivan everyone can agree on one thing which is a minivan is very practical very livable if you need to go on a trip or if you have a lot of people you're taking with you a big family car seats minivans are like the most livable thing but nobody really wants a minivan let's be honest like you get one out of practicality but you're not really Desiring a minivan but what if you could get a minivan in disgu guys what if you could get a practical three row SUV that has all the features of a minivan but isn't a minivan now we're talking so this here this is the Kia ev9 it's actually two different specs of the ev9 but I've been living with this thing for about a week now driving it every day and I'm telling you right now it's not missing anything it's a three row fully electric SUV full size lots of space and all the things that you think of when you think okay minivan here's what I need here's the space I need the features and practicality I need it has all of it but then of course you have to contend with the fact that it's electric and it's a Kia and every time I do this I review a Kia and it's like this is the highest end fully option GT it's like $75,000 if you take the Kia logo off of it I think we can all agree very compelling for the cheapest three row fully electric SUV it's it's really good it's not missing anything but then you put the Kia logo back on it and then you think do I want to spend $75,000 for AIA but stay with me I think you might be convinced by this one so first of all there's several trims of this thing this is the one I've been driving in this ocean blue which I think looks sick but I'll get to it in a second over here we have a lower-end trim which has a little more silver trim it actually has a metallic paint job but slightly fewer options this thing starts in rear wheel drive at $55,000 it's called the light then there's the wind which which is all-wheel drive that's $644,000 then the land is $70,000 and then the GT this is basically fully option everything you can possibly get starting at $74,000 but now think about his competition cuz I've been driving this the whole time thinking about the other options you could get as far as three row fully electric and you've got Tesla Model X rivan r1s which I love I've done a video about that and then I mean you've got maybe the future Escalade when it comes out or maybe one or two that are right about to come out this is the cheapest one but they' they've really managed to cram a lot of stuff in here and then it's just a materials choice so first of all I'm going to start with the key I've showed you guys the key before I review the ev6 but same idea here has got I mean I first of all I like this key because you can sit on it in your back pocket and not accidentally hit any buttons small detail but you got that lock button there pretty sweet lights and then if I have the car locked here and I flip it over and I hit that hold button so I got to be really close to it just to make sure it works but I hold that for a few seconds it lights up and then I can hit forward or backward and it'll actually move the car by itself into or out of its parking space which is pretty cool there's nobody in the car but I'm sort of dog walking this fully electric fullsize vehicle wherever I want let go move it backwards I guess I have to be close to it for it to start but let's move it backwards go ahead go ahead move back into the spot perfect and parked easy it has the lights on the front which is a good opportunity to show you that these little pixel lights on the front here light up in a different welcome animation based on whichever one you choose in the settings now I already liked and showed you guys how much I liked the other electric Kia I think they're one of the brands doing the best job at like Reinventing themselves with a new aesthetic for their electric vehicles and the v9 I think is just as good looking as the other stuff too it's got this little animation stuff happening but also these big drls it's beeping at me because it doesn't like leaving the lights on but now it's turning off also you might have seen that move that's some active aerodynamics to open up and let the air in for cooling some stuff or to close it up to be a little more aerodynamic and just walking around this thing so the fundamentals are great big long wheel base as you can see but basically the same length of a body as a tell you ride just more space between the wheels so then between those Wheels is a 99.8 KW battery it's going to get an EPA estimated 270 M of range I found that to be close to Accurate maybe 250ish it's pretty big and then the GT is going to have the most horsepower 379 horsepower and 516 pound feet of torque and that doesn't sound like a lot for something that's pretty big full size and electric so it weighs a lot but it is still pretty Zippy for a dual motor all-wheel drive three row not quite Minivan and then they've been doing this interesting look with the wheels I'm going to go over to the this one first cuz it's even more distinct it's got this silver triangle sort of a cap look on the wheel this is what key is doing to try to make their EVS look a little more modern and distinct and it looks weird at first but I kind of I don't hate it for some reason then I'll come around to this one over here and this one's a little more normal looking but it's all black and I almost at first thought I could remove these little panels here like they're plastic but nothing seems to come off so it's a 21in wheel on the GT and this is about as aerodynamically efficient as you can make it on the front oh there is a front trunk by the way this is a groundup EV and they have left enough room to put stuff in the front it's not very big so I don't know how much you're going to use this but in the rear wheel drive versions this is about twice as big so it's like a backpack space here now but maybe maybe a full carry-on if you don't have the all-wheel drive version but close that come around the side you have this Black Mirror cap here with the blinker big light on the side these Auto ESS when you're driving and these are some big doors man I was just noticing how heavy they are when we were opening these doors and closing them but huge seal huge door here and we'll get back to the Quality materials in a second but all this black trim on the GT I think looks nice and then look at that side profile that's good it's not a minivan it's not a minivan but if we get around to the back here you can start to see it looks maybe a little more standard I'll show you the those tail lights I still think look pretty good cuz there're these big tall tail lights here uh but you know maybe maybe that's a little more mini vany from the rear profile fine same as a tell you ride a little bit I guess a little bigger but okay Power opening rear trunk behind the third row and let me know if you think that's practical enough for you again there's three rows in here so this is just a storage behind the third row so that's definitely enough for a couple of bags maybe some carry-ons back here obviously groceries will fit there's also a tiny little bit of a sub trunk so that's already kind of occupied by some stuff and you have your charging cables right here but also full-on Outlet back here and then some buttons to power fold the second row which you can't reach from back here so that's good but folding these back seats is as easy as grabbing this and if the headrests are down then it folds flat right into the back space right there so this is going to start to feel minivan but I think practical is the word we're looking to use here so now two rows of SE and a lot of rear trunk space but I'm want to pull these back up cuz I want to show you guys what the inside of the car is like with all three rows up so you kind of have to do this with two hands pull this row back up and then let go but let's make our way to the inside cuz it's more impressive than walking around the outside so let's get in the ev9 it's kind of tall nice little roof rack also how is it always so loud here okay inside the ev9 so a couple things stand stand out right away if you've seen the ev9 review a lot of this will be familiar but some of it's actually even better it's more updated it's more spacious but there is a good amount of plastic so if you're not okay with a lot of plastic in a $75,000 vehicle this one might be a little bit of a bummer but again my key is it's not missing anything like it has every feature I would want in this trim so that also does mean there's a lot of buttons but if I put my foot on the brake right in here that's where you power it up I was kind of not really into that positioning I kind of would either want a button around here somewhere or just no button at all foot on the brake but you know e these days they've got power buttons um I'm glad that these are physical buttons too so you can bump up the temperature or bump it down right here and you've got your fan speed up and down so I love that that's always good to see with HV controls but then it starts to get cool down here look at this this is a USB port USB type c Port right here but you've got a button right here to switch it between battery so charging only or USB data to the car and battery so if you just want power to charge boom you're there if you want data for your screens then that's there push button I've never I've never seen that before actually that's kind of cool you've got the storage in the middle and of course you can see all the ambient lighting kind of around the middle of the car this little garage door slides back it's kind of plastic but it still works it does what it's supposed to and this push button makes cup holders out of this space so if you want to organize it a little more carefully you can do that or just let it be a free open space if you'd like to I'll close that my phone's down here on the wireless charger and that's your indicator to make sure you're charging so if I pop that out it turns off you've also got your camera controls you've got brake Auto hold a fingerprint reader to log into your profile and my favorite part down here the pedals have a plus and a minus button just you know because you're going forward and then breaking so like more and then less energy I don't know it's plus or minus speed but basically all this paning is it's pretty basic like this is what you'd find in a Honda Odyssey plus a little bit of lighting right it's there is no real leather in this car so all this is going to be fake leather and you know plastic feeling but you've got a heated steering wheel you've got heated seats right here love that memorize two different heated seating positions as well also ventilated seats it's not missing anything what else do you have you have the opposite of the Fisker you have a gigantic sun visor here which has a gigantic mirror and a huge light that's actually kind of soft you also have an HUD up there which is very welcome you also have a mirror here which can be a regular mirror or a camera mirror love seeing that especially if you have rear passengers you probably want to go with the camera mirror you also have a manually shaded or wide openen sunroof that opens and is motorized so that's pretty sweet sweet also back there you can shade even more glass Above This the back passengers and very welcome to see Wireless carplay and Android auto so again my phone's over here not plugged in but guess what carplay wirelessly works great especially if it's down here on this wireless charger but I actually want to give a quick shout out to Kia's software this might be my hot take of this video but I think K all right bro chill I think Kia software might be the most responsive definitely top three most responsive car software I have ever used because you know how sometimes you watch car videos and people are like oh wow the infotainment it's very smooth it's responsive and then they swipe and it's like 12 FPS and you're like we have iPads that look better than this for $200 like what are you talking about this is actually really good so again you can jump in carplay but look at this this is actually pretty good you jump in a map Ms you can jump into all the media stuff is here plus you still have like carplay like lined up here now I'd never used the maps built in that's it's not great but if you do and you navigate to a charger with the built-in nav it will actually precondition the car's battery knowing you're about to get to a charger so if you do want that to happen you have to use the built-in Maps otherwise maybe run them at the same time with carplay I don't know anyway this is a lot of screen it's like 30 in of screen but it's touch screen all the way to this point right here so you do still have like HVAC controls if you want to jump in here and do AC and temperature and and sync up and do whatever all that stuff is still indicated on that touchcreen but then all this touchscreen stuff this is actually good I don't know why you'd want weather in the car you're already outside I guess I don't know the future weather I guess that's neat um you have search which works decently well but you can find some features not all of them are actually going to show up media setup it's good this is carplay so this is the media that's being pumped into the car right now and then setup for a bunch of other basic stuff so vehicle stuff settings if you have EV stuff that's your charging what your battery status is currently at this is good I I am very happy with the software in the ev9 now I don't want to forget about the rest of the space in this car cuz real quick these driver seats while they're not leather they are very soft and they're comfortable they even have these like active bolster where if you go into sport mode or go over a certain speed they'll hug you a little bit more and these headrests these might be the softest headrests I've ever felt mainly because they're like gel and they also kind of have this mesh so they're kind of like a Herman Miller office chair it's really good but of course there's more rows so let's go to the back seat the second row seats is going to be really telling about how much space is in this car big heavy door let's jump into the second row so now I've got myself a good amount of leg room plus this little storage here behind a 63 driving position and I'd say that's a pretty good spot for a road trip not too bad if I close this door here comfy and interestingly this is the six row setup so it's two in the front the captain seats in the middle and then two in the back you can also get a three row middle but I think a lot of people minivan people you know this convenient access is pretty nice and these chairs I saw some other videos of these particular chairs in the ev9 swiveling around so you can like face the back seats if you wanted to or like put a car seat facing the other way whatever it doesn't do that in this vehicle in the US I think anywhere in North America it might just be Korea so unfortunately these don't swivel but they do have armrests and they do have nice headrests and they're they're comfortable too now the third row test that's that's the fun one cuz I remember the back seat of the r1s and even though I like that vehicle it's pretty small put the headr up this is also pretty small so 63 here 63 here 63 here not great I don't really want to be in the back seat of this for more than a couple minutes but if you have some smaller people like uh let's say what a minivan people usually have oh I don't know kids then this is totally fine in the back seat still has multiple cup holders USB type-c speakers in the back it's got the air vents everywhere it's got the glass roof over the top it's not missing anything let me crawl back out of the back seat real quick I'm already getting cramped but there's still some stuff I want to show you obviously second row is more comfortable you have all this ambient lighting you can see here the blue and green sort of Android look and this is harder with one hand but I can show you that there's storage back here there's a drawer so you can put stuff here or if you pop this back storage inside this thing so you can keep your charging cables or whatever other stuff you want to put in there pop that closed pop that closed nice in a lot of ways this is the easiest spec of this vehicle to review because it they it just has everything even has not a huge screen but a little screen overhead for your air conditioning controls for the back seat turn up turn down temperature whatever you want to do fan speed you also have these little Nets over to the side on the windows to the left or to the right so if you want to mesh give yourself a little bit of a shade sun shades there um also USB type-c on both of these seats for the back seat and if you want to bump up your leg room a little bit you can even move that passenger seat forward or backward from button on the side of it from the back seat so I I am honestly finding it hard to say that I would pick the rivan r1s for anything much more than just build quality the rivan is obviously uh maybe it's not obvious but it's quicker it has 800 something horsepower so it should be quicker it's more off-road capable but if you look at all the sort of a minivan spec minivan capabilities like okay it doesn't have air suspension but the dampers on this thing are tuned very well to the point where it always drives soft it rides really nice it's got these big wheels but it absorbs potholes it's got this nice sophisticated rebound it sort of drifts a little bit over bigger bumps but other than that it's fine it just rides smooth now in case you're wondering I know most people who would buy a minivan or an ev9 probably don't care but there is a drive mode button right here and if you press it your drive modes are normal sport my drive snow and Eco so I think in Eco you can decouple the front and rear Motors and some times be only single motor Drive which is going to be more efficient then you go back to normal and normal just drives around as soft and pillowy as can be no problem visibility is great speakers are pretty good A little bit lacking in Bass But honestly totally fine I talked about the camera mirror already like dang they thought of everything man I think KIA KIA has been shockingly high on my power rankings of electric cars that I would buy they have truly let me lock it they have truly reinvented themselves with the Aesthetics and the feature set of their electric cars now we on the street is there's going to be an even faster GT version of the ev9 that's insane totally unnecessary but that's cool too if you want that probably will have less range though uh but as a general power rankings for three row electric vehicles if you made me pick one now again you're picking between r1s 90 grand Tesla Model X 90 grand and this 50 to 75 grand so you can say yes I'm I'm paying a lot of money for Ika but also you could say I'm not paying a lot of money for 250 to 280 miles of range 200 plus kilowatt charging not a lot of road trips basically a minivan fully electric totally silent smooth three rows lot of space a lot of features this thing's pretty good what do you think which one would you pick thanks for watching catch you in the next one peace
