I wanted to LOVE the KIA EV6!!!
ShortCircuit
·ShortCircuit
·2022-05-05
·
3,498 words · ~17 min read
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- The Kia EV6 is a car that a lot of people
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in our office like a lot, and I'm not among them. It's fantastic in many ways,
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and just incredibly annoying, and a whole bunch of others
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so I'm going to nitpick a whole bunch of things in this,
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and if those all seem like stuff that you can live with there is a very good car underneath.
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Seeing it in person, I am shocked by how much I like the looks of the EV6.
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Just going off the photos, the IONIQ 5, I thought looked incredible,
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and the EV6 was kind of, huh. But having seen both of them in person
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the IONIQ 5 five looks kind of like a chunker and this thing, in my opinion at least, looks awesome,
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and a whole bunch of people in the office agree. Kind of have this cool sporty sort of cat fishy front
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that goes into this long sweeping thing that goes up into the, people say it's an Austin Martin
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kind of taillight. I think it looks more like a Prius Prime, but whatever.
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It's pretty sweet. (laughs) My favorite part though, is right under here.
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There's this little light that during the nighttime lights up the haunch.
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Kia calls it their silhouette lighting. It's pretty sweet, If I'm honest.
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What surprised me the most about the looks though, is that despite this being one of the first in Canada,
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no one cared, not a single second glance. You drive past a bunch of people and no one looks,
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until I drove past a bunch of middle schoolers
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on their little e-scooters. They were just like, "Ha, oh my God."
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So that's who you impressed Kia, take from that what you wish.
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Another surprise is just how damn big this thing is.
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The wheel base on this is the same as a Kia Telluride,
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it's longer than six feet. That's for sure. It kind of makes it a bit weird
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when you're going around tight corners. I'm sorry, Kia but I nearly curved that tire a couple times.
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Just you don't expect to be this long. Coming around to the tailgate, Kia does have a thing where
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if you stand here for six seconds, it'll open up. I think it needs to be locked, but whatever.
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You can just touch it right there.
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One important note is that there is no sensor so if your garage is a little bit low, mine's here,
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it actually goes up to there, you have to hold this button for three seconds
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to set the height. Pretty simple, fairly standard.
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I didn't know, 'cause I don't come from a power tailgate family. In here, there's a good amount of space
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and you're able to put down the seats just like that.
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Works awesome. It is kind of annoying that they give you this.
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It's your charging cable if you want to just plug into a random house socket,
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but I don't get why they couldn't have just packaged it in a way that goes underneath right here,
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or maybe in the incredibly small front. It's just kind of awkward.
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I would take out the cable and throw away this package. Overall though, the functionality here is pretty great.
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Like this bit you can take out and stash underneath.
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(car clanking) Oh.
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Okay it's kind of difficult. (upbeat music)
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(car clanking)
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Just like that. One thing I was kind of shocked to learn is that
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this one with the 14 speaker Meridian sound system
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has a subwoofer. They really fooled me because somewhere around 80 Hertz
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it just rolls off into nothing, there's no sub base whatsoever.
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Let's have a look at it though. I'm guessing there's a little six inch sub in here
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but it does not do a whole lot. The good news is though, that the other 13 speakers are quite good.
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So if you are an audio file, you will likely be very happy
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by just chucking this sub in the garbage and putting another little sub down here with an LCTY
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and if you are not an audio file, you'll probably be happy
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with the standard six speakers setup. Even though getting these seats down was super easy
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in order to put them back up, you need to come around here and pull that.
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It's pretty simple but not the most intuitive.
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Getting in though. It's my first time in the backseats. This is quite a nice little area.
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It's pretty borderline, my hair is hitting, but my head isn't.
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I'm six feet tall by the way. These seats are comfy. You have heated seats.
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I'm sure that's only a top trim option. We also even have little USB charging ports
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on the sides of these seats.
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I just moved the trunk, cover back one notch and now,
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oh, I can recline, sweet. Oh, when you go back, you lose a lot of headroom.
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That's too bad. (laughs) Oh, this thing goes up with it.
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Moving up to the front though. The storage situation is a little bit weird.
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So, LTT water bottle does not fit, unfortunately,
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and this little spot here is not storage it's a fuse box.
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(Andy and Alexander laughs) (car door bangs) Sitting in the driver's seat there's a whole lot of,
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"Did you guys even test this?" Like this is a brand new electric vehicle
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and there's not really a good spot to put your phone. Well, there is, it's right here, there's even a Qi charger,
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but unfortunately that means that I can't use Android audio
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because that's wired only, and in fairness you should use wired only
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just because the audio is so much better, but like they very easily could have had a USB port here,
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little cord that goes up to my phone. Would've been awesome, but they didn't.
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So instead, the USB ports way up in here
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and my phone I have to plug in and chuck down there.
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Not a huge issue, that's not too bad, but it means that I can't put my water bottle down there
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'cause it's gonna bash up my phone. I guess this means that I just have to Chuck my water bottle
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into the backseat. It is nice that it'll remind me though to grab it.
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Andy was getting in the backseat for a B-roll shot and now he's locked in.
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- [Andy] Help me out. - We have no idea how to turn off the child locks in this,
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it's actually a problem. - [Andy] I Wanna go.
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- Now it's time to address the worst part of this car,
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everything here, all of the stuff that you interact with.
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to help save time and work more efficiently. This stuff it's a mess honestly.
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Porsche took at the Taycan and they were like, "Why do we make things that were easy,
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way more difficult." And then VW came along and they were like,
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"We can outdo you guys by a mile, make it just so much worse to use."
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And then Kia came along. It was just like, "VW, hold my beer.
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I'm gonna do this." So (laughs) here we have, what is quite an awesome
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little spot, your volume, tune, seek, next track,
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your media. All of this is great. Shut up.
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It's not the most responsive either. Our problem is though, where are our climate controls?
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You have to press that. Now we don't have volume. We do have temperature and our fan speeds right here,
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but now I have no media controls. It's just, ugh.
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Why, why did you have to do this Kia?
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The absolute worst part about this, you might also accidentally hit one of these.
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I cannot recall how many times I've been just driving down the road, I'm being like,
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"Why is my hearse a hundred degrees?" It's because when I was hitting some of this,
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I rest my hand here and accidentally press
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any of these buttons. The passenger seat cooling is a pretty common one
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that I hit as well. It's terrible. As for the actual touch screen that's here,
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it works perfectly fine. My biggest complaint about it is that it's just
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a little bit too far away. I kind of need to crouch forward every time that I use it
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making it just not as nice to use. I'm sure with a week or two you'll have it down,
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but there is a problem with though is the 12 inch screen
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that's directly in front of me. It's a kind of a waste.
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So we can look here. We have my speed on the left here
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which is typically occluded by the steering wheel.
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Fortunately, we do have a heads up display, that's the only thing that I've been using for speed
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pretty much. We also have our charging over on the right. Same thing, can't see it because of the steering wheel,
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but what sucks is that in the center I can't put anything that's useful there.
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So, we have attention mode, my last break was 13 minutes ago apparently.
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I could not care less about that. Go here, drive info.
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It's all fine information that I want to have but a speedometer would be a lot more useful.
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We have a compass, but no map. If it was a map I would be totally fine with it,
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and information, this one's kind of cool.
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If you look at it, then I don't know. It's fine. It's just, ugh.
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Andy just asked if when you have nav on if it will show in here, as far as I can tell,
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no, it only tells you like the next turn that you have to do.
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So let's say I want to go over here.
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Set his destination. Sure. It does tell you when your next turn is
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but it's not giving you an actual map and it seems kind of like a waste.
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Let's take it for a drive though, 'cause for the most part that is a good point in this.
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Driving around, the first thing that you might notice is that that camera's pretty shaky.
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This is a very smooth road. The ride is just a little bit on the harsh side.
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It's well, it's pretty typical EV stuff really.
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The Volvo had the same problem where it's just a little bit harsh
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especially when it you're going a little bit slower, and then, as you get going faster
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it sort of evens out a little bit. What I was hoping was
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that this car has electronically adjustable dampers
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so I can put it in sport mode here and the whole thing stiffens up.
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It's pretty awesome actually, but when I put it in eco or normal
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it doesn't get quite as comfortable as I would like.
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There also is the added downside that there's no custom mode.
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So I can't go in and play around with having like the dampers on their softest settings
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and having the power train in its sporty setting, and I can just do eco mode with my right foot.
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Speaking of my right foot though, there is a lot behind it.
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This thing has 320 horsepower and 446 foot pound of torque.
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Now, realistically you're probably not buying the one that's not powerful but if you do,
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it has a zero to 60 and 4.6 seconds.
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It is shockingly quick up until about a hundred kilometers per hour at which point it sort of
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tapers off and isn't super fast, but how many people that buy this are going to care
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if they can smoke like a Kova at 150.
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I doubt it. One thing to note though, is that as the battery drops down past about 50%
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you do lose that initial snap. And also you can turn off traction control
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and it snaps even harder. (laughs) I love that you can turn off traction control on this.
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It's just great. For the range, it's really quite good.
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You can get about 350 kilometers real world
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with climate control settings that are reasonable and a slightly heavy right foot pretty easily.
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I think for most people that's gonna be more than enough. As for charging, it's your typical non Tesla EV,
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just huge pain in the ass. Unless of course, you have a charger at your house,
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in which case, you will charge it up there and probably never charge it up anywhere else
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except on long road trips. One thing that's nice when you're driving around
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is say you're changing a lane, when you turn on your signal
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you get a little camera up here. It's pretty awesome actually
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and also if there is someone in your blind spot, it will show up a little red thing
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on the hood and around your car so you'd have have to try pretty hard
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to lane change into someone. Overall this car is very good, but like everything else
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it has a bunch of little annoyances that just add up to not really loving it.
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So we have these floppy paddles here and they change the amount of regenerative braking
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that you have. I personally like it the most
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with the eye pedal on, that's your one pedal driving,
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it'll completely stop you if you let off of it. The problem is though, is that I don't know why
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but it'll just randomly leave this mode.
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So you'll be in the not single pedal regenerative breaking
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which is about the same until about 10 kilometers per hour.
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At which point it starts moving forward on you so if you're expecting it to stop
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it's kind of just a little bit scary. It's just strange.
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The adaptive crews in the EV6 is quite good. It isn't exceptional like Audi system.
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So if there's a car that's stopped in front of you, it will stop you,
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but it's a bit back clunchy. If there's just someone driving in front of you though
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or you're gonna stop and go traffic, it's pretty awesome.
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Also, the lane keep assist is quite good.
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It's a little ping pongy I found,
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but I actually used it, which is more than I can say
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about pretty much every other car that I've had. I think it's mostly down
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to having the hard button here to enable and disable it
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so when things get a little bit too complicated I can easily take over unlike in the Volvo
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where just it's two menus deep, never used it.
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One thing I love about this car though is the windshield wiper stock.
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It is just hands down the best windshield wiper stock I have used in a car.
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So you turn it and it just gives you a little readout
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of what your front wipers are, how much your auto wiper setting is.
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It's easy, and simple to use, and well thought through.
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It's also a carryover from non EV Kias
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so I guess that's why it's well thought through.
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Oh, let's just pull over right here, I need to show the people our absolutely fantastic
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parking camera. There we go.
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Look at this. You have the 360 there and this one
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that you can just turn around so you know exactly where you are.
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It's by far the best 360 camera that I've ever seen in a car.
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It is a little prone to dirt and water getting on it,
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but it really isn't that bad. The only thing that does kind of suck is
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that it shows up a white car here instead of a blue one.
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Everyone should color match. Well, while we're pausing for one sec
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just stay here, Andy, watch this.
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Okay, maybe I have to get in the position. Come on.
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Go. Yeah, huh, you're supposed to be able to hold these buttons
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and it moves forward and backwards so you can get into small parking spots.
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I can't get to work right now. Andy wants to do another launch.
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That was good, that was a good one. (Andy and Alexander laugh) Ah.
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- [Andy] My headphones are in the trunk now! Oh my God! - [Andy] For real. - So good.
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- [Andy] I don't have my headphones now. (laughs) - Electric torque is so great.
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What isn't great but's more just fine,
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is the handle thing. It's reasonably sporty.
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I'll put it in sport mode. Yeah, little bit sharper now.
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There's quite a bit of body roll even though
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all the weights nice and down low, it's skateboard platform.
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And as you push on, it's all under steer a hundred percent.
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I don't even think that changing the anti roll bars will be able to help you too much there.
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That said, if you're coming from an SUV this will be fricking incredible, you'll love the handling.
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If you come from, I don't know, a golf GTI like me, you won't be as happy.
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Oh, I nearly forgot these seats they're pretty good. They're heated and cooled.
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The cooling only comes and the top spec GT line but they're nice and comfy.
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They hold me in reasonably well, I appreciate them.
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The only thing that I don't like about the driving position is that the steering wheel has to be just a touch higher
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than I want so that I can see my speed. Oh, can I hands free this corner?
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- Nope, nope. - [Andy] No. - Can't that wasn't a good idea. (laughs)
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Oh, I have a little twisty here though. Sport mode. (Alexander groans)
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Yeah. You're not whipping it around corners,
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it's certainly no Fiesta ST. Finally the price.
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This one right here is in British Columbia, in Canadian dollars, $65,000
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and for that I would buy a Tesla probably.
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I'm not a huge Tesla fan but if those are my options, yeah.
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That said, I would easily buy this over an RD4.
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So the Kia EV6, it's quite a good car
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with just so many tiny little screw up
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that, I don't know, I don't like it in the end.
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Like even just little things like we have these dedicated buttons here
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that you can change to whatever you want except that it isn't really whatever I want.
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Like we have a steering wheel button here for
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I put it to quiet mode, which turns off the back speakers for your children
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to sleep. That might be useful maybe.
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(laughs) The other mode button here, they were so useless that I ended up just setting it
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to sounds of nature. (bird chirping)
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It was the one that I felt was the funniest so I just kind of threw it away on a gag.
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Oh, and there also were fake engine sounds, I just turned those off. I was kind of driving around being like,
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"Why is it so loud?" And it was just the speakers being like
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(screaming) the whole time. (Andy laughs)
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So, yeah, the Kia EV6 makes me want to
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drive the IONIQ 5 really bad. Sorry, Kia.
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Better luck next time. Okay, good note to end on. I liked it more than the Audi e-tron.
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Mostly because it's way less expensive. Hit like, get subscribed, and just have a fantastic day.