Video: 2024 Kia EV9 Review: The First (Semi) Affordable 3-Row Family Electric SUV

del Y. You need more space. But your options for more seats in a full-sized, electric crossover SUV, well, you're limited pretty much only to luxury brands. Things like the Mercedes-Benz EQS SUV, or the Tesla Model X, or the Rivian R1S, and those are all like 80 grand and above. What are you gonna do if you really don't wanna spend that kind of money? Well, you haven't had any choices until now, because now there's this. This is the new 2024 Kia EV9 and it's being billed as the world's first truly semi-affordable, three row, all-electric crossover. Well, we've come here to Northern California to drive the new EV9, because it may be your only choice in this category for now. But is it any good? Well, first of all, what exactly is this? Well, the Kia EV9 is obviously a three row, six or seven passenger all-electric, family-style SUV. It's about the size of a Kia Telluride, meaning it's pretty big. It's on the large size of various crossovers and it uses the same platform as the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and Ioniq 6 and the Kia EV6 as well but obviously stretched to accommodate a few more passengers. But that modularity means that it uses a lot of the same systems as the other vehicles do. You can get this thing with a choice of two batteries. One is around a 76 kilowatt hour battery and the other is almost a 100 kilowatt hour battery. You can get them in a bunch of different trim levels that start at the base level called the light trim level. And you have what? The light and the light long range. The light is the one that uses the smaller battery, rear wheel drive only. You step up to the long range, it uses the larger 100 kilowatt hour battery and still just uses rear wheel drive. If you want all wheel drive, then you've got three trim levels to choose from for that. There is the wind, the land, and this one, the top-of-the-line GT line, as they call it. Not a GT, a GT line. This all-wheel drive, dual motor setup produces plenty of power and the top-of-the-line model supposedly will go from zero to 60 in just about 4.5 seconds, which, yeah, I believe it. It's relatively quick. The thing is, it's a big heavy SUV. Your overall impression of this thing from the start is that it pretty much drives and feels like a Kia Telluride, the way you're seated, the how high up you are, really good visibility in just about every direction, the way it handles. I mean, it's got really decently tight steering, but it's got a decent amount of body roll. So, it does feel like a great big, large SUV because, well, it is. From a styling standpoint, it looks like a lot of the new Kias do. It's very angular, it's very blocky, it's very rugged looking. It's going to look very different than the Hyundai Ioniq 7 cousin that's gonna be arriving later this year in Hyundai showrooms, even though it's gonna be largely the same vehicle underneath. It has a very different styling aesthetic to it, both inside and out. Standard are 19-inch wheels, 20-inches come with higher trim levels, 21-inches on this one, the GT line. And the larger the wheels, the more the ride gets a little bit bumpier, I would imagine. Out here in California, the roads are generally pretty smooth, but overall it has a choppier ride than you might expect. It is however extremely quiet and that's not something that's necessarily easy to achieve, given the fact that you don't have things like engine noise, anymore, exhaust noise, it's just electric noise, and there isn't a whole lot of that at all. You can actually make the thing louder if you want to using some of the controls in the, in the multimedia display, but generally prefer not to. I'd rather it doesn't make any noise at all. In terms of what we've got inside here, the styling is very much Kia. You've got this new central display here. There's almost 30 inches of display. You've got two 12.3 inch screens here. The one on the right is obviously a touchscreen and there's a five-inch climate control panel right here in the middle and it's got a bunch of touch-sensitive stuff and it's not necessarily the greatest thing in the world because it is almost entirely obscured from the driver's view by the steering wheel. I can only see basically a little, bit half of it. I have to look around it in order to see the rest of it, and no, that's not necessarily the best idea. It is nice that they have a mix of both buttons, actual hard buttons here for the things that you use most often, like climbing control stuff, and touchscreen stuff as well. So there is a good amount of both of these different kinds of controls. I do really like most of these controls that we have here. The steering wheel itself is big and chunky, but not like Stellantis Dodge and Jeep chunky where you could barely fit your hand around the thing. It feels really good in your hand. It's blocky and solid and really does feel quite nice. And even these touchscreen controls, they're not so bad. You've got the haptic systems here, which if you push it, it'll make a cli-clunk feel to it. That's not too bad. The material quality in here is kind of mixed. You could see where they had to take some costs out in order to keep the costs relatively sane, given the fact that this thing has an enormous battery. The plastic material in here is not what you would expect in a vehicle this expensive, quite frankly, and it's not as as nice as you'd find in some competitor vehicles. It's not even really as nice as you'd find in a Kia Telluride, frankly, which can blow you away in terms of how nice the thing is. It's acceptable. I mean, it certainly doesn't feel low rent in here, but you just kind of wonder, "Does it really feel, this one specifically, like a $77,000 vehicle?" No. 50,000? Yeah, I'd call it that. But once you get up to these high and lofty prices, you expect it to be a little bit nicer than this, just in terms of the material quality. The driving experience is really quite excellent. It's quiet, it's smooth, it's really quite efficient as well. We've been averaging just about three, 3 1/2 miles per kilowatt hour, which in terms of any electric vehicle, especially one as big and heavy as this, that can carry six or seven people, it's really very impressive. It's getting really decent fuel economy. (laughs) Fuel economy. Efficiency, we'll call it that. You can recharge the EV9 at a pretty high level of electrical power. The top model I think can charge up to 235 kilowatts. Not everyone can do that. The larger batteries I think it's something like 210 kilowatts, but even then, it has an 800 volt architecture, so that means that it can recharge from about 10% to 80% capacity in about 25 minutes. And given the experience that I've had with other kinds of Hyundais and Kias, really, it will do that, as long as your conditions are right and you can find a working Electrify America charger or another brand, it will actually do that kind of rapid charging really without a problem. I have to say that this thing is also extremely comfortable. The front seats have plenty of space, tons of headroom, even with this optional moon roof that comes in the higher trim levels. The belt line is just about perfect. You can see out without a problem. This really kinda reminds me of an old Ford Flex, in terms of its shape and your seating position and how easy it is to see out and the kind of of cargo capacity that it has as well. The second row is also extremely spacious as well. There's more backseat room than you'd get in a Chevrolet Tahoe or a Cadillac Escalade, which is kind of extraordinary. The third row actually has sufficient room for two full-sized adults. In this model, you've got captain's chairs in the second row. If you get to the higher trim levels, captain's chairs are your only option. They don't have a bench for the second row, those come with the lesser trims. Although Kia says they're examining the idea of putting a bench seat in the second row for people that might want that. So, that may be coming, but for now, if you get something like this GT line, you get the two captain's chairs instead. Now they are power actuated, so you can actually push a button, they tilt forward, and you can get into them that way fairly easily. So, it's not that big of a deal. And the third row itself is manually activated. You pull a strap, it folds down, and you've got a really decent amount of cargo room. So it's fairly high lift over, but you've got a lot of battery under the floor. Once you've got stuff in there, if you could put the second row seats down as well, you've got a ton of room in this thing. The thing is a very large, full-size three row crossover, so it really does work for families or people carrying a lot of stuff. It's impressive in what they've actually engineered here. That extra wheel base that you get over a Telluride means you've gotten more passenger room in that second row, really than a lot of competitor vehicles. So, you know, kudos to you. If you need something that has this kind of space and that is very comfortable and is still stylish and you want that electrical operation, I mean, they've really engineered something impressive here. So how does this compare to things like the Rivian R1S? Or the Mercedes-Benz EQS? Which are really the only other kinds of three row, fully electric crossovers on the market. While it actually drives just about as well as either of them, it doesn't have the kind of crazy systems that you'd find in the R1S, like 800 horsepower or more, and the ability to rocket to 60 in three seconds flat. But then, you know, if you're just looking for a family vehicle, you really don't need that kind of capability. This is much more of a mainstream realistic family vehicle. So, if you're looking for that kind of thing, Kia's got you covered in that, at least until the Hyundai versions get here as well. There isn't anything available like that yet from any other manufacturer. Chevrolet has one in the Blazer EV, but that's only gonna be two rows. The Tesla Model X does have three rows, but it's expensive. Right now, Kia is importing all of these EV9s into the United States, but eventually they're gonna be made at their plant in America in West Point, Georgia. So, hopefully they're going to start qualifying for some of that sweet US tax discount, which will help bring some of those prices down to a little bit more reasonable levels than what they're going to be. So how affordable is affordable? Well, it's still gonna cost you a pretty penny, but it's not gonna be luxury levels like you'd see in some of the German competitors. The 2024 Kia EV9 is on sale right now in showrooms, and prices range, frankly. It starts at about $54,000 for the base model and then can run all the way up to about $78,000 for a fully-loaded GT Line version like this one. Now that is a lot of scratch for a Kia, but you have to understand that this basically starts right where the Telluride ends. If you get a loaded Telluride, that's about mid $50,000. So, this is basically the Telluride Plus, but obviously with the all-electric powertrain. If you'd like to learn more about the new 2024 Kia EV9 or any of the Kia lineup, you can look everything up on cars.com. (light upbeat music)