2026 Kia EV3 First Drive Review: More Like This, Please
thedrive.com
thedrive.com
I do understand the arguments about 90% of the driving is done within 200kms, but the obly reason for me to own a car is the long distance trips. Most of the Europeans are in the similar situation.
Problem is, they are so good that they have a massive dealer markup on them, even if available. Iirc, americans have great difficulty getting a RAV4 PHEV in any state.
The other part of my driving is holidays and long distance family visits, a 400km range EV does not cover that. Especially things like going skiing where the charging infrastructure isn't very good and you end up in traffic jams waiting to charge.
Unless you drive very often you can rent something like a brand new VW Polo for 30 euros a day (40 with extra insurance), realistically in Europe you should have about 5 weeks of vacation per year so you'd have a car for your long distance need for <1500 euros per year, no maintenance, no long term parking issues, &c.
I've never come across that with any artificial voice before.
And I'm fairly good at understanding both Swedish and Danish in addition to my native Norwegian, so used to variety.
The price drove us away, but had it been cheaper we'd likely not gotten it due to that poor voice, given the other options on the market. It just wasn't usable.
We ended up with a Renault Megane e-Tech. In addition to having a much better voice system, being based on Android Automotive, it supports putting the map in the driver console, ie replacing the dials (speed reading gets overlaid of course).
edit: I guess it also says something about how uniform these cars are, feature-wise. Few are radically different, so it quickly boils down to these minor features.
Even on boutique forum of HN
Given the usual car cycles, shouldn’t it be 2025? Are those numbers even meaningful nowadays?
There is am amazing wealth of design language that could be used for electric cars, but for some reason, most manufacturers seem to land between "metabolic syndrome power ranger" and "criminally battered emoji".
They could make it half the size and remove $10k from the price, but they don’t seem to want that.
People keep bringing this up.
The massive size of American-market cars is thanks to regulations introduced by the Obama administration.
They effectively outlawed small cars.
Plenty of people would love to be buy a modernized take on an 80s or 90s car, but they literally can't be made or sold in the US.
I live in Japan, and have a Kei from maybe the early 2000s? My only complaint is that the A/C is like being coughed on by an asthmatic penguin, because otherwise, I absolutely love that car, precisely because it's like driving a Honda from the 1980s. Lots of glass, low beltline, all the rest.
If you want a vehicle that's $10K cheaper then the manufacturer will have to cut a lot of the comfort and safety features that US consumers have come to expect. Those who want cheap vehicles just buy used.
Try "are mandated by regulators".
To me, it looks like shares a lot of cues with a Kia Soul.
For years and years, I thought that the Soul was a nearly unspeakably ugly vehicle. (Not as bad as a Pontiac Aztek, but we don't talk about Azteks.)
But due to circumstances, I got to spent a few months driving one on a regular basis. That changed my perception enough that I can talk about it.
The Soul had a feeling of lightness that is unusual in even actually-light vehicles. It felt stiff, like the unibody was very rigid and that left the real work to be done by the suspension (as is right and proper). It was practical: The shit in the back folded down flat-enough to spend a long evening at a drive-in movie with someone rather close, or to go car-camping with them for a weekend and use it as a bail-out "the rain happened, and then the tent blew away" plan.
Instead of associating that shape with being simply ugly, I instead began associating it with being quirky, efficient, flexible, and rather fun.
YMMV. The form of the EV3 doesn't turn me off at all -- not even a little bit.
(I probably won't ever buy one -- despite my very positive time driving a Soul, I'm still a fan of vehicles that are either much more compact or which are much bigger and more utilitarian -- but it's probably a good fit for lots of folks. If shape were the only concern, I would support an SO's decision to buy one if they felt it was a good fit for them.)
Don't start me on the Range Rover Evoque, which always reminds me of a Kia Soul at two to three times the price.
That car blows me away. It appears bulbous, expensive, paradoxically small in cargo space and utility yet large in appearance. It's got that subaru-outback style plastic trim (why does every vehicle have this??) which giving it a poseur outdoorsy look, but with a grille so large and paint so shiny that nobody could be fooled into thinking it has ever left incorporated city limits. A tree has never been reflected in its paint. It's curved like one of those bumblebee airplanes whose radial engine is larger in diameter than the fuselage is long -- and I believe -- since those airplanes fly -- that they do a better job cutting through the air than this thing.
BMW copied them because they sell well apparently. I will never understand.
(•) A knockoff of that also horrible Land Rover Range Rover design with the narrow and rising window line
While I'm certainly not a fan of this 'genre' of car design, I don't find this one any more offensive than all the other cars it is similar to.
https://media.renault.com/r17-electric-restomod-x-ora-ito-th...
https://www.hyundai-n.com/en/models/rolling-lab/n-vision-74....
it can be electric all it wants, it's still way oversized and that has a terrible environmental cost
A Nissan leaf comes at 1700kg with a smaller battery…
The solution if you want smaller/lighter cars is to consider something like a Prius or similar hybrid. Those weigh less and can still drive 80% of the time electric. But they come with the downsides of having a complex ICE with the maintenance costs that go with it.
It doesn’t.
Env cost is burning fuel. Everything else doesn’t matter.
> Kia wouldn’t confirm if it’ll get Tesla’s NACS standard and Supercharger access when it goes on sale here.
https://www.kbb.com/car-news/gm-shuts-down-tool-that-collect...
Kia/Hyundai/Genesis, Honda/Acura, and Subaru were all named in the report but did not change their practices as far as I know.
Most companies, Tesla included, will do this. Hell, Tesla will happily use your vehicle's telemetry at a press conference to say "look, it was the driver, not the car".
It's hard to argue that driving habits and warranty claims are "abusing your privacy". If you took a TV back to Best Buy that was covered in mud, would you expect them to honor a warranty replacement without asking about the dirt and mud? Or would that be "abusing your privacy" to do so?
The example I found of this was Kia denying a warranty claim because it showed that that specific econobox model was consistently being driven at 100mph, and spent a lot of time at or near redline.
My Audi (an RS, so expected to be considered for performance) will track how many times the ECU has been flashed, so even if you remove the tuning, it is noticeable. It also does a thing called GFF which will capture any time the vehicle ran outside of the stock ECU parameters, and will flag your vehicle with the factory that you may be potentially liable for any drivetrain issues.
Data brokers? I don't know about that, but yes, it is more of a privacy concern.
Leaving that aside, I still consider it a violation of privacy. No one expects that what they do with something they own is being monitored and recorded in order to be used against them at some opportune moment.
As for data brokers, the allegations are that they sell data to Lexis Nexis who then sells it to insurance companies and potentially others.
As for what other companies do … I don’t own a Tesla but I sort of expect a car with futuristic self driving capabilities to come with some degree of data collection. I don’t expect a basic Kia or Subaru or Ford or Honda to do that. Either way, I believe all of these vehicles should not collect any data by default and should be opt in only.
I guarantee the owner's manual makes commentary about sustained driving at or near the redline.
Crampiness is obviously width issue, but asian car’s cannot comprehend that there are people taller than 6’.