Kia EV9 - Practicality, comfort and boot space
The Kia EV9 is supremely practical for families, providing space inside for seven plus a useful amount of luggage capacity
The Kia EV9 is a seven-seater as standard, with the top-of-the-range GT-Line S getting the option of swapping the middle row out for a pair of captain’s chairs that can swivel around 180 degrees, allowing those in the back to face each other.
The latter is a nice feature, although we did find them a little impractical in real life because you need to push the driver and front passenger seats forward; otherwise, the backrests of both seats clash. Plus, you can only use the seats like this while stationary, and we can’t think of many scenarios when you might use this arrangement. We also think that – as with houses and the number of bedrooms – a large SUV with more seats will have greater desirability when you come to sell it, so we’d recommend sticking with the standard seven-seater arrangement.
There’s plenty of room up front for a pair of six-footers, and they’ll get a decent view because of the high driving position. It’s a lot taller than the Mercedes EQB, matching the height of the imposing BMW X5. It can’t quite reach the lofty heights of the Land Rover Discovery, but few other SUVs do. Relatively thin roof pillars don’t overly obstruct the driver’s view out, and all models come with a blind spot warning system to alert you to following vehicles alongside you. There’s also a 360-degree surround-view camera system along with front and rear parking sensors to help out when parking.
Size
At just over five metres long (5,010mm), the EV9 is a big vehicle. It’s even longer than the already enormous Land Rover Discovery (4,956mm). The EV9 isn’t as tall as the Discovery, though, 1,755mm versus 1,888mm, respectively. It isn’t quite as wide as the Discovery (1,980mm versus 2,000mm), making it slightly easier to fit through a width restrictor.
Leg room, head room & passenger space
Make no mistake: the Kia EV9 is a genuine, proper seven-seater. The middle row can slide fore and aft like the seats in the Mercedes EQB and they do to help free up extra legroom for anyone in the sixth and seventh seats. This flexibility is enhanced by good shoulder room and excellent headroom across the cabin, even in the final row. Anyone six foot or more should have no trouble fitting in the second row behind a similarly tall person in front.
Families will be pleased to know that the third row in the EV9 comes with ISOFIX points, and there are two further ISOFIX points on the outer positions of the second row, helping to provide greater flexibility in terms of where you can put your children. Access to the rearmost seats is helped by a pair of buttons provided on the side of the second-row seats, and allows the seat to tilt and easily slide forward without having to fumble for an awkward lever hidden from view.
It’s a very good set up, but it isn’t quite perfect for right-hand drive markets. That’s because the seats split and slide in a 60/40 configuration, and the largest portion is on the kerbside in the UK. That means the middle position hits the centre console and prevents the seat on the passenger side from sliding as far forward as its counterpart on the driver’s side. This in turn means access is a little more restricted on the side people are most likely to use if you’re dropping them off at the kerb.
Boot
Even the Kia EV9’s boot is big, with 333 litres in the seven-seat configuration, outdoing the Volvo XC90 T8 Recharge, which only provides 262 litres behind its third row. Drop the third row in the EV9, and you have a massive 828 litres of space that’ll beat most estate cars. Dropping all the rear seats increases luggage capacity up to 2,318 litres, which is getting on for 500 litres more than an XC90, and just over 250 litres more than an Audi Q7.
There’s also the front boot – something many of the EV9’s rivals don’t offer. In rear-wheel drive versions, you get 90 litres of space beneath the bonnet, while the addition of a front motor for the four-wheel drive GT-Line and GT-Line S models cuts this down to 52 litres. That’s still a decent size, and is plenty big enough for cable storage.
If we were to be critical, it would have been nice to find that the second row of seats in the seven-seater EV9 versions split and slide in the more versatile 40/20/40 configuration, just like in the Mercedes EQB. However, the seats in the EV9 only split in a 60/40 configuration. At least these seats do lay down flat when folded.
Towing
The rear-wheel drive EV9 doesn’t have a great towing capacity because it’s only rated to pull a braked trailer or caravan of 900kg, whereas a front-wheel drive Mercedes EQB 250+ can manage 1,400kg. That changes with the four-wheel drive EV9 because it can pull a hefty 2,500kg braked trailer or caravan, which is impressive for an electric vehicle and the same as a BMW iX.
If you’re looking to tow more and still want something electrified, a BMW X5 xDrive50e can lug up to 2,700kg, while traditional petrol and diesel seven-seat SUVs like the Land Rover Discovery can pull up to 3500kg.
