Day: February 22, 2024

Things are moving quickly compared to my last car buying adventure. As I shared yesterday, in the span of about 36 hours I went from casually looking at one set of cars with a planned acquisition date in early May to suddenly test driving a totally different car with the chance of bringing it home soon.

Part of that adjustment was adding electric vehicles to my list. I’ve been interested in EVs for some time. In fact, almost since I got my Audi, I’ve been keeping tabs on the latest developments in the EV world. Despite that attention, I kept saying that EVs would be right for me two cars down the road, not in my next car.

A lot went into this assertion. Mostly it was about cost. If my budget was going down with Car 2024, I would be getting further away from EVs rather than closer to them.

Two things changed that. The EV market has softened in the last year, and prices in general have decreased. Second, as I mentioned in my first post, several manufacturers are offering pretty big incentives to close out the current quarter.

Monday I test drove a Kia EV6.

(Not the car I drove, nor my house.)

I’ve been a passenger in a Tesla several times, and spent a fun weekend being ferried around in a friend’s Lucid. But I’ve never sat in the driver’s seat of an EV. Monday was fun for that alone.

I can’t say my test driving experience was the best, though. We have a rough history with Kia salespeople, specifically when we test drove a Telluride four years ago. We also have several friends who have had terrible encounters with Kia dealers. The only reason S has a Telluride is because she desperately wanted one and found a dealer who would do everything via email so she didn’t have to put up with their nonsense.

The sales guy who helped me Monday, Jason, wasn’t terrible, but he did check a lot of the Kia boxes. Very young. A little too enthusiastic. A little too agreeable. Just a little much in general, although he was a nice enough guy.

The real issue was him not being familiar with the car. Despite scheduling ahead to test drive a specific car, they still didn’t have an EV expert to help me. I got a kid who couldn’t even find the charging port when we were doing a walk-around. He knew lots of specs, but struggled to show off anything that was different from the standard Kia setup. Even when I asked whether the current promotions on EVs would expire next week, he nodded slowly and said “That sounds right,” without much confidence.

I think that is typical of a lot of traditional dealerships that are easing into the EV world. Their sales staff, service crew, and entire organizations are focused on the ICE vehicles that make up the bulk of their sales and services appointments. I had read about people having similar encounters, but it was still disappointing.

“What about the test drive, you dick?” I can hear you asking.

I enjoyed it. Everything everyone who owns an EV tells you is true. The instant power is incredible. It’s shocking even when you expect it. We were able to get on a stretch of state highway where I could punch it a couple times. When you punch it, it goes. I didn’t go zero-to–80 or anything, but closer to a realistic boost needed when passing or trying to merge onto a highway. No engine noise, no lag, no pauses as the transmission worked through the gears. It is an amazing experience.

The car rides lighter than I expected. I figured with the extra weight of the batteries it would feel heavy, akin to driving a Suburban or Tahoe. I wouldn’t say it drove like a nimble little sportster, but I was surprised a bit by the feel.

I also experienced regenerative braking for the first time. Kia uses paddles on the steering wheel to control the amount of regen, allowing the driver to dial in the feel they enjoy most. Luckily I knew that coming into the drive, because Jason never mentioned it to me. Being new to regen braking, I scaled it back so I was still using the brake pedal at full stops. It is weird to back off the throttle and feel the car immediately slow down, though.

I made this same observation three years ago, but it is annoying when you’re taking a test drive, trying to get a sense of how a car drives and reacts and feels, and your sales person talks the entire time. This is multiplied in an EV, which is a whole new kind of driving. I didn’t need total silence but if homie could have eased up on the Sales Guy schtick some it would have been helpful.

Because of that, I didn’t walk away from the drive with a ton of insight. I enjoyed it. It was comfortable. The tech mostly made sense. But as I think back on the drive, I hear more of Jason talking than distinct memories of the car.

One thing that did really stand out was that the model I drove, the Light Long Range AWD, was lacking a lot of features. No sun roof, although to be honest this doesn’t bother me as much as it looks weird. There were some switches and infotainment options that S has on her Telluride that were missing from the Light. And unless the Jason really failed me by not pointing them out, the car has a single, rear-facing camera. Almost all Kias have side cameras that kick in when you are changing lanes, displaying your blind spots. I find these a little distracting in the Telluride, but they are highly useful when parking. Especially when backing into a charging stall as visibility is poor out the small, back window of the EV6. I made sure to back the car up when we got back to the dealership and had to rely just on the single camera in the tail gate. Also no front camera to assist with pulling into garages, etc.

Speaking of charging, Jason didn’t demonstrate how to charge the vehicle, either. Or really talk about charging at all. That would seem like an important point.

There were a few other options that kick in when you jump to the Wind trim tier, but the cameras were the most significant absences.

We went inside so he could give me his card and call over the sales manager for the obligatory “Hey, how ya doin’?” before I left. I had told Jason that I had two months left on my lease, so I was in no hurry to buy. I had also mentioned at some point that I would have to talk to my wife before I made any decision. He told me three times he respected that. It is good to be respected. This led to the strangest part of my visit.

He went over to grab his sales manager and came back with a weird look on his face. “He’ll be over in a minute. But I have a question for you. Would you want to take the car home for the night, so you could show it to her?”

Wait, WHAT?!?!? He was seriously offering to let me take the car home??? I was, honestly, a little taken aback and didn’t know how to respond at first. Eventually I told him I wasn’t comfortable leaving my car there and thanked him for the offer, but declined. Very strange.

Later a Black friend of mine said this was like the Eddie Murphy “White Like Me” sketch. That made me laugh.

My takeaways from the test drive were also tempered a bit because of something my research had uncovered earlier in the day.

Kia/Hyundai have a rather serious issue with the 12 volt battery in some of their EVs. It causes the car to shut down completely, even if the main batteries are fully charged. Kia doesn’t seem to know how to handle it, despite being present for several years. They will often just replace the battery – if they have one – and send you home until it fails again. Some dealerships will hold your car for weeks, waiting for their “EV expert” to come in and diagnose the dead battery. Some dealers claim replacing it with a more expensive battery solves the problem. Others say you have to replace it with a battery that is an exact match. People who get bit by the bug once often get bit again. This does not affect most EV6 drivers, but I couldn’t find clear numbers on how many do have their cars crippled by it. It may be a very small percentage, but those people are extremely vocal on the various forums I popped into.

The more I read, the more I found about other flakey issues like this in the electrical system or in the software that manages vital systems. Corporate Kia can’t seem to get a handle on them. Local dealerships don’t seem educated in what to do when owners show up with their EV6 on a tow truck.

Even though the EV6 is one of the best rated cars in its class, if there is a persistent problem that could leave me stranded, and the company can’t find a fix, that is a major red flag.

Sunday night I could not have been more excited about the Kia EV6. The price was down to a very comfortable point. It seemed refined in a way Teslas are not and far more capable than a Volkswagen ID.4. Every major review praised its quality, putting it best in class in nearly every category. But Kia’s lack of quality control made me wonder how committed they are to EVs, and whether my time as an owner would be marred by bad experiences like the ones I read about.[1]

I test drove the EV6 on Monday. Tuesday I test drove another EV. We’ll talk about that next week.