I drove six feral cats in Kia’s EV6
Thoughts on the EV6 RWD GT and its cat-transporting abilities
One of my complaints about car reviews is that they’re often not grounded in reality.
Like, you just want to know if you should buy a new Kia. You find a review, but it’s some smug dude in his 40s (who looks like he’d corner you in a bar and talk about the stock market) flogging a family SUV on a race track while regurgitating technical specifications straight from the brochure.
Useful if you want to be a knob and need aspirational content. Not useful if you want to drive a car like a normal person.
So when I got my hands on Kia’s rear-wheel drive EV6 GT I wanted to judge it on a task we’ve all done at some point or another. A job which is as day-to-day as doing the dishes, or deciding what to wear.
In this review I ask the question: how does the Kia EV6 fare when picking up six stray cats from a vet clinic across the city?
Now, Kia has quite prescriptive rules when they sign over their review cars. More so than other manufacturers I’ve dealt with this year.
Amongst their requests was that I paid any speeding fines (unlikely to be accrued), return the vehicle when requested (rude but fair), and not to travel with pets unless absolutely necessary.
I decided there's a lot of room for interpretation in the words 'absolutely necessary’.
Is it not absolutely necessary for my readers to know how the EV6 handles the job of moving six cats? Could I reasonably recommend this car to anyone if I hadn’t tested this most basic - and cute - of tasks?
So with this justification in mind, the boot of the car well protected, and six cats waiting, I set off.
Say what you will about Kia, but I think they’re punching above their weight when it comes to design. Their new generation of cars look good and the EV6 is amongst Kia’s best. It’s wide and sporty with nice shaping on the panels.
For a lot of reasons, Kia’s EV6 cars are compared heavily to Hyundai’s IONIQ series. Both are at the same price point. Both have the same user interface and operating system. But while Hyundai has chosen to make a car which feels very futuristic – a stylistic choice I applauded for its bravery – the Kia looks like a more typical sporty SUV.
Many manufacturers have taken advantage of the extra space available in EVs. From BMW to Hyundai, we’re seeing a lot of minimalism in the interior design which make the cars feel very roomy.
Curiously, Kia seems to have gone in the other direction.
The EV6 feels wide on the road, but isn’t so spacious inside. Of course, there’s no physical handbrake dividing the space between the passenger and the driver. But instead of leaving that area empty, they’ve put a little plastic tub for your possessions.
They’ve also put the car’s start button and the knob used to select drive, reverse and neutral in the large, fixed centre console. Whether or not you prefer this setup will entirely down to personal preference and how many trinkets you like to carry with you.
On this matter the cats had no opinion. They were in the boot after all.
Now, I’ve been saying six cats. You’ve probably been picturing me walking into a vet clinic, scooping up three desperately thrashing strays under each arm, putting them in the back of the car and quickly closing the boot.
While this is not outside the realms of possibility, it’s not exactly how it went.
In fact, I was picking up one cat and her five kittens. They were all in a carrier and quite okay with the entire mission (though they might have protested more had they known how much staring at them I would do in the coming days).
While the cats may not have cared much for the EV6's interior design, they might have noticed the smoothness of the ride. Personally, from the front seat I felt it was a bit hard - a driving experience closer to what you’d expect from a sports car. I was acutely aware of any potholes or bumps, more so than the IONIQ. Whether this is the suspension or the tire profile, it’s difficult to say.
The other interesting quirk of this car is the sound. I found the EV6 to be noisy for an electric car. The wind and tyre noise seemed to penetrate the cabin quite a lot and the car itself also made an interesting humming sound. It took me a while to work out what it reminded me of, but eventually it twigged. The car sounds like a whirly tube. You know those plastic, corrugated tubes you spin over your head? Perhaps this is a sophisticated ploy by Kia to trigger a nostalgic response in adults who had shit toys as kids.
But all this can be ignored when it comes to acceleration. Even in the single engine rear-wheel drive, this car moves. Again, the effortlessness of electric cars is so fun. The moment I had the thought of overtaking, the EV6 was there to meet me. I suspect the two-engine AWD version of this car would be devastating to drive. I love petrol and diesel cars, but honestly, it’s hard to see how they survive against the speed and ease of an EV.
In all regards, the EV6 excelled in its cat-transportation duties. Should you be transporting anywhere up to six, perhaps even ten, mid-to-full sized cats you’ll have no troubles. But the EV6 is not precisely cheap. You’re looking at around $85,000 on road for the model I drove. You’ll pay another $10k on top of that if you want the much beefier dual-motor AWD.
You may well ask: “could you get the same cat transportation capabilities for less money?". Sure. But if you’re in the market for a new EV, this is a reasonable price. Whether that’s an acceptable payoff is up to you. And the six cats you may or may not be fostering.
That’s it for now — please keep sending me your addresses for the Christmas letters! I’ll be sending them out in the coming weeks.
And if anyone wants a kitten I’ve got three who still need homes.
Steph