You remember the Kia EV9 concept, don’t you? Big, boxy-looking thing revealed late last year, looks like a Soul EV but fancier? That’s the one.
Well, it’s going into production next year. Hooray! This is all part of Kia’s master plan to launch two new electric cars between now and 2027, with the South Korean brand aiming to be fully-electric in Europe by 2035.
So what do we know about the EV9? Mechanically not a lot, other than that it’ll be based on the same E-GMP platform used in the excellent EV6 and ultra-stylish Hyundai Ioniq 5.
Given those cars carry a 73kWh battery and hit around 480km of range on paper, we can expect the larger EV9 to be a touch more limited in that respect. You’d expect the powertrain options to be carried over, too, so anticipate 0-100kph in the region of 6sec. Nice.
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Inevitably, the question now is, ‘Which bits of the concept will be kept for production?’ The shiny, space-age car you see in the photos here comes with suicide doors, retractable roof rails, and solar panels in the hood vent ducts; unlikely to make showrooms, we’d say.
Kia’s bean stackers will probably also reject the 27-inch interior screen. And those cameras will probably make way for conventional mirrors. People need to afford it, after all.
But we will at least get three rows of seats. And in electric-car terms, a seven-seater that isn’t a van is an exciting development.
NOTE: This article first appeared on TopGear.com. Minor edits have been made.
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