Kia EV2 review – first UK drive

Make and model: Kia EV2
Description: Small electric SUV
Price range: From £27,995 to £36,345 plus optional extras

Summary: The Kia EV2 feels remarkably mature for a small electric car, combining useful range, strong equipment and a satisfying driving experience in a compact package.

Read Also

1 month ago

Volvo EX60 tested: why it’s Volvo’s best EV yet

44 autotech

For a broader ownership picture, see our Kia EV2 Expert Rating, which combines media reviews, safety data, reliability, running costs and warranty cover.

Kia’s electric range is now well established. Five years after the first EV6 arrived in 2021, the line-up has expanded rapidly, with models covering everything from small crossovers to large seven-seat SUVs.

The EV2 is the smallest and most affordable of the lot. It’s a five-seat electric crossover with the same bold, boxy look as several of Kia’s larger EVs, and is built at the company’s factory in Slovakia.

Read Also

1 month ago

The Z4 Color ALPINA Never Made, Built by an Independent Atelier

39 autotech

It also arrives with plenty to live up to. Kia’s recent electric models have generally been very well received, while both the EV3 and EV6 have previously been named The Car Expert Car of the Year. The EV2 is expected to become one of Kia’s biggest-selling electric cars, and on first impressions it has every chance of doing so.

There are cheaper EVs of a similar size, and some rivals offer more space, but the EV2 immediately feels like a quality product rather than a budget one.

Price and equipment

The regular EV2 range starts at £28K for the Air, which at the time of writing falls to £24.2K after the government’s £3,750 electric car grant.

There’s also a First Edition at £28.5K (£27K after its smaller £1,500 grant). Unlike the rest of the range, it uses a 42kWh battery rather than the larger 61kWh unit, giving it an official range of up to 195 miles. It also gets a more powerful 146hp (107kW) motor.

The mid-range GT-Line tested here costs £32.7K (£29K after the grant), while the range-topping GT-Line S is £36.3K (£32.6K after the grant).

Air, GT-Line and GT-Line S all use the same 61kWh battery and 135hp (100kW) electric motor. The Air sits on 16-inch wheels and comes with heated front seats and steering wheel, wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, front and rear parking sensors and a reversing camera.

The First Edition is slightly different. It combines the smaller battery with its own equipment package and sits between Air and GT-Line on price, so it’s more of a launch-specific alternative than a natural step through the regular trim hierarchy.

GT-Line moves to 19-inch wheels and adds sportier exterior trim, synthetic leather upholstery, electric adjustment for the driver’s seat, rear privacy glass and a small 15-litre frunk under the bonnet.

GT-Line S adds a tilting and sliding sunroof, ventilated front seats, ambient lighting, a Harman Kardon sound system, wireless phone charging, 360-degree camera and vehicle-to-load capability.

A heat pump is available for £700, although only on the GT-Line S. Restricting it to the most expensive model feels a little mean.

Kia’s seven-year/100,000-mile warranty remains one of the strongest reasons to consider the brand, particularly for buyers moving into their first electric car.

Inside the car

Slip into the driver’s seat and the EV2 immediately feels bang up-to-date. Two 12-inch displays for the driver information and central touchscreen sit alongside a five-inch climate-control screen in one neat panel stretching across the dashboard.

Better still, Kia hasn’t gone down the route of putting absolutely everything into the touchscreen. There are two rows of physical switches underneath, including proper climate controls, so you don’t have to plough through menus simply to turn the temperature down. It sounds like a small thing, but increasingly it isn’t.

Kia has built a strong reputation for the fit and finish of its interiors, and the EV2 continues that theme. There’s quite a lot of hard plastic around the cabin, which isn’t surprising in a car at this price, but the materials themselves feel good quality and everything appears well put together.

Rear-seat legroom is plentiful enough, although taller passengers may find headroom a little cosy.

Boot space follows a similar theme. At 362 litres it’s adequate rather than generous, and there are rivals that make better use of a similar footprint. GT-Line and GT-Line S cars partly compensate with the additional 15-litre frunk under the bonnet. Fold the rear seats and total luggage capacity grows to just over 1,200 litres.

So the EV2 is practical enough for most buyers, but outright space isn’t one of its standout qualities.

Driving range and charging

With the same 61kWh battery and motor fitted to the three regular versions, differences in official range come mainly from equipment and wheel size.

The entry-level Air goes furthest, with an official range of 275 miles. The GT-Line manages 261 miles, while the heavier GT-Line S drops slightly to 257 miles.

Those are good figures for a car of this size and price, and enough to make the EV2 useful for much more than short urban journeys.

Maximum fast charging speed at a public charging point is 118kW. On a sufficiently powerful public charger, Kia says a 10-80% recharge takes around 30 minutes. Using a 50kW charger stretches that to about 70 minutes.

An 11kW AC wallbox will take roughly five and a half hours for a full charge.

There are faster-charging EVs around, but the EV2’s combination of decent range and sensible charging times should suit most buyers perfectly well.

On the road

The EV2 offers sensible performance rather than the rocketship acceleration that some electric cars seem determined to provide.

With 135hp available, the GT-Line takes 9.7 seconds to reach 62mph. That’s hardly exciting on paper, but it’s perfectly appropriate for the sort of car this is, while the instant response of the electric motor makes it easy to nip into gaps or past slower traffic.

More impressive is how mature the EV2 feels.

The ride is comfortable and well controlled, while the cabin remains delightfully quiet at normal speeds. It doesn’t feel like a cheap small car that has had refinement engineered out of it to hit a price.

The steering is another definite plus. Over-light steering has become common on modern cars, particularly EVs, but the EV2 gives you a useful amount of weight and a better idea of what the front wheels are doing.

It’s not a car designed to entertain you on a challenging B-road, but then it doesn’t pretend to be. What it does offer is accurate, predictable steering and a general feeling that the car has been properly sorted.

It’s also good to see Kia retaining paddles behind the steering wheel for adjusting the brake regeneration, rather than hiding the settings away in a sub-menu.

The paddles do rather more than simply offer increasing levels of retardation. Holding the left paddle activates an automatic mode, while a long pull on the right engages Kia’s i-Pedal system for one-pedal driving.

The stronger regeneration settings can bring the car to a complete halt, and the whole system is straightforward enough that you can adjust it without taking your eyes off the road.

Ownership

The Kia EV2 currently holds an A-grade New Car Expert Rating in our unique Expert Rating Index, with a score of 77%.

Media reviews have been very positive so far, although the EV2 is still too new for us to have meaningful long-term reliability data.

It also hasn’t yet been tested by Euro NCAP, so there’s currently no independent crash-test score.

Kia’s seven-year/100,000-mile new car warranty remains one of the strongest packages offered by a mainstream manufacturer and gives the EV2 another advantage over several rivals.

The review score reflects our first drive of the car, while the Expert Rating gives a broader ownership picture by combining media reviews with safety, running costs, reliability and warranty information as that data becomes available.

Verdict

There are cheaper electric cars of a similar size to the Kia EV2, but price is one of the few areas where they’re likely to score a clear advantage.

The EV2 combines good build quality, a comfortable ride, useful range and plenty of equipment with a driving experience that feels unusually mature for a small car.

It isn’t perfect. Rear-seat headroom is a little tight for taller passengers, the boot is only average and it’s disappointing that the heat pump is confined to the most expensive model.

But none of those weaknesses seriously undermine the overall package.

Kia has taken much of what works so well in its larger electric cars and squeezed it into a smaller, more affordable package. The result feels far more like a scaled-down EV3 than an entry-level EV built down to a price.

That’s a very good starting point.

Stuart’s view:

“The EV2 feels pretty much exactly like a slightly smaller EV3, which is a high compliment given that the EV3 is a previous The Car Expert Car of the Year.
What impressed me most is how mature it feels. The engineering and driving experience are excellent for a car at this end of the market, and there’s none of the cheapness or rough edges you sometimes find in smaller EVs.
Rear-seat and boot space aren’t as generous as some alternatives for similar money, so buyers who need maximum practicality should compare carefully. But if that isn’t your main priority, the EV2 feels like one of the most complete small electric cars around.”

Similar cars

Alfa Romeo Junior Elettrica | BYD Atto 2 | Citroën ë-C3 Aircross | DS 3 E-Tense | Hyundai Inster | Jeep Avenger | Mazda MX-30 | Renault 4 | Skoda Epiq | Volkswagen ID. Polo | Volvo EX30

Key specifications