Car Review: Kia EV9 GT-Line – hands on with my first all-electric car

When I found out the  2024 Kia EV9 GT-Line would be the first all electric vehicle I’d be driving ever in my life I was excited. The 2024 Kia EV9 is a three row SUV that runs fully on batteries. But here in Canada we have a love hate relationship with EVs. We love the fact they don’t use gas but with limited charging stations and shorter ranges in the extreme cold we get here on the prairies in particular, I was a bit apprehensive about what the EV reality would be like.

I’ll admit I have some concerns and preconceptions going in: having never driven an EV before I feel like they’ll need constant charging and attention, they’ll be slow with no pickup, and that every time I left the house I’d have charging anxiety. So what’s the reality like?

I had the opportunity to spend two weeks with this Kia on loan to me from the brand. In this review I’ll try it out in my day to day life, take it on a short road trip, and I’ll take a look at all the features inside. I’ll wrap the review with the pros and cons and let you know what I think—and if the ideas I have about this vehicle are truth or myth.

2024 Kia EV9 GT-Line in-car review

My review style

A quick word about how I’m going to do this review. I’m not going to get deep into things like horsepower and torque and if you’re looking for the nitty-gritty on the specs, you won’t find that here….partly because that’s the stuff you can get from Kia’s website.

I’m approaching this review as an average car shopper… Someone who’s interested in a comfortable but peppy ride, how the main features work, and what it feels like to drive. So in a nutshell, a car review for real people, not gearheads, by a real person…

Let’s put the pedal to the metal and get an overview of the SUV: This is the Kia EV9 GT. With three rows of seating in captain chairs format there’s seating for 6 plus a small 20 cubic foot cargo area at the back. You can opt for a rear bench seat if you prefer.

Watch my full in-car video review of Kia EV9 GT-Line

Interior & Seating

In this model the seats have a motorized folding option using buttons in the back and when laid flat they give you about double the amount of cargo space.

Sitting in each of the rows is quite comfortable and roomy. The very back row is obviously better suited for smaller humans but you could definitely fit a couple of of adults back there in a pinch for a short drive.

Let’s get to the front for the cockpit details on the EV9…

With no drivetrain the front cabin is very roomy and there’s so much storage; from a floor pan, ideal for your purse or briefcase to side door storage and lots of console space.

Speaking of the console, there’s lots of adjustable cupholders and plenty of open and closed storage.

Cockpit

Let’s get the EV9 turned on and running so we can see what’s in the pilots seat here…and there is plenty to interest a tech YouTuber like me… good news is a lot of the smarts in this vehicle that actually seems useful.

The start button is kind of hidden under the steering wheel and the wheel by the way is kind of a squoval shape which was weird at first but now I like.

With it powered up you can see the panel fills the entire dashboard as one large screen.

In front of the driver is your key info like speed and battery life, while to the right is the infotainment screen with access to your media, radio, and for me Apple CarPlay to use with my iPhone. There’s a built in navigation system or you can use what’s on your phone if you prefer.

Already I’m impressed at the finishing in here. The vehicle looks really high end in this trim package. Not just thanks to the tech but also because of the dual huge sunroofs with shades…, the leather seating all throughout and the beautiful color changing LED lighting that lines most of the interior.

When it comes to staying connected, there’s plenty of power-ups in here; USB-C connections in the dash and a wireless charging pad in a nice natural place in the console, partially under the armrest, where it shouldn’t distract you too much.

Rear view camera

Speaking of the tech in this vehicle, there’s a rearview camera in here too, which lets you switch to a camera view of what’s behind you in case the rear window is blocked, or just flip it to use the mirror.

Enough gawking, Let’s get this EV9 out on the road.

Driving Kia EV9

Being an EV it operates completely silently. Which is one of the first things I noticed, this being my first EV and all.

The vehicle is really easy to drive and handles well: a lot like a much smaller car.

Husband Roger and I decided to hit the road for the Rockies and drive to Canmore, Alberta to really get a feel for it.

Along the way I got a few more surprises.

The first was how quiet the inside of this vehicle is…even at highway speeds with no audio to distract me, I felt like zero road noise was bleeding in.

Next was the Heads-up display. It’s simple but effective having basic info like speed right in front of your eyes. You can even adjust the placement on the windshield to a small degree too.

Lane keeping assist

There’s Lane Keeping Assist which lets you take your hands off the steering wheel because the Kia keeps you in the centre of your lane at all times, as long as it can see the lines on the side of the road. It’s freaky letting your EV steer for you, especially with oncoming traffic, but it worked so well and made the hour long drive from Calgary far less taxing. This is definitely the feature I’m going to make sure is in any future car of mine. It’s activated with the push of a single button on the wheel, so it’s easy to use or disengage and a small light on the dash confirms its in operation.

Highway Driving Assist

There’s also Highway Driving Assist 2 helps maintain a set distance and speed from the vehicle ahead and assists with lane changes on a highway, while helping to keep the vehicle centered in the lane.

After about 45 minutes I got another surprise…

Posture Care

The vehicle has something called smart posture care and lumbar stabilization. It kicks in on longer drives after about 30 or 60 minutes. It kind of kneads your body and adjusts your body position just slightly to keep you from aches, cramps or fatigue. You’re not getting Pilates level stretch here, but just enough movement to keep from getting stiff or bored. I also really liked this feature and found it did break up the drive.

If you’re the passenger you get to use the motorized adjustable leg rests which stretch out to give you a bit of respite from sitting fully upright. This is actually huge and so comfortable making long drives much more relaxing for the copilot too.

Surprisingly and rather cleverly, the driver has the ability to adjust the passenger front seat from the cockpit; no need to reach around or get out.

Speaking of seat comfort, I have to call out the headrests. These are padded, with a soft foam making them really comfy to lean into. Not like pretty much every other headrest which is like a fabric wrapped brick, by comparison

Lastly on the seats, there’s both seat heaters and cooling on the GT model and I used both and thought they worked very well.

Taking the Kia EV9 on the mountain roads made for a comfortable drive and there was plenty of room for me, Roger, our two dogs and camping gear too.

Charging Kia EV9

Admittedly I was a bit paranoid about bringing this camping with us since as a complete newbie to electric vehicles, I was concerned how much range and time I’d have on the battery with charging not likely to be close at hand.

Fortunately though the EV9 can be charged in a few ways: helpfully for my wilderness excursion: off basic household 15 amp service so I was able to plug it in right at our camp site.

I’ve never plugged in an EV before so this was new to me. The cables for the SUV are under the hood which Kia actually calls the front trunk, which looks a lot different than your standard gas car.

But figuring this out is ultra easy even for someone like me who’s never seen this equipment before. You’ll plug the larger end into the side of the vehicle; and the charging port is located on the passenger side by the rear light. It has a pressure sensitive door that will open when you press it. With that securely connected just plug in the other end to your power source.

It’s here I really noticed how absolutely glacial household power is when it comes to charging an electric vehicle. I kept it plugged in for a few hours and it really only increased the battery life by a couple percent.

So if you don’t have any other charging options in your home, you will definitely need to know that a full recharge is going to take a lot of time. In this case, the vehicle provides you with that information on the screen; and here it was almost 75 hours to a full charge.

That’s where charging stations come in.

If, like me you’re new to this, There’s three ‘levels’ of charging:

Level one is lowest and comes from plugging your car into a regular wall outlet. This only gets you about 5-9 kms of driving range per hour of charging. When I had the Kia plugged in in my garage, with about 40% battery remaining, the recharging time was about 75 hours at that speed. Yes, that means it will take literally days to recharge your vehicle to a full battery.

I have to say that was rather shocking and surprising for me. Again, as a new person to electric vehicles, I don’t think I had an appreciation for how absolutely slow a simple household plug-in would be.

To get a faster charging experience you’ll want to seek out a level two or level three charger.

I downloaded the Flow and Ivy apps to help me find nearby charging stations. Another new adventure for me was figuring out what the cost of a power up would be.

Level 2 chargers can be found in public parking lots or similar and they can add way more range; from about 20 to 40 km/h per hour of charging time . Even so, a full charge would still take about seven to eight hours.

A level 3 charger is also called DC fast charging. This is the highest tear of electric vehicle charging and can add 300 km of range in just one hour. The truth is high-speed chargers are much harder to find but worth seeking out if you need the maximum amount of charge in the fastest time. With a level three charger you can go from 10% battery to 80% battery in under 25 minutes.

You’ve probably heard about this anecdotally, but if you’re going to use a higher speed charging station, you’ll need to be prepared to potentially wait, not just for a station to become available, but while your vehicle powers up.

Surfing my phone got old after a while, so I’d probably bring something else to do or try to plan some shopping… but I’m also wondering about the etiquette of this.. can you just leave your car here and buzz off and come back whenever? Arent’ you then blocking a station?

In terms of cost, using the level 3 charger was $20 an hour and to get from about 80% to full would take me just over half an hour. So a full charge from zero to 100 should cost me somewhere in the $50 range at a station.

While I charged, I got to know the EV 9 a bit better.

Digital Key Fingerprint and phone use

The Kia EV 9 has the ability to be unlocked and started with your smart phone using what’s called digital key 2. To use this you will need to download the Kia Connect app on your smart phone, register your information and subscribe to the service.

With the app you can also find where you parked your car, check its charge level and range and even enable a valet mode, where you’ll get the full report on how fast your car was driven and how far if you ever need to hand it off.

There’s also a fingerprint sensor on the centre console that I had hoped would allow me to activate the vehicle with my thumbprint. It turns out this instead let you save different driver profile information to the vehicle and then access it quickly with a fingerprint tap.

Now might be a good time to touch on the remote car entry; the paralellogram-shaped key fobs are chunky but boast way more remote buttons than a lot of keys I’ve seen, including lock and unlock, rear lift and hood opening, and the ability to access some of the futuristic parking controls… whether you’re in the car… or outside it.

Remote Smart Parking Assist

Remote smart parking assist is kind of an interesting feature that I had to wrap my head around. Essentially it lets you get out of the vehicle and then roll it forward or backwards into a space. I wasn’t quite sure why anyone would want to do this but I suppose if you’re forced to park in a very narrow area that doesn’t allow you to easily open the doors to get in or out, this would be an ideal way around that. You’ll engage the Smart parking assist button and then take the key fob out of the vehicle with you. Forward and back buttons on the key fob let you roll the vehicle in small slow increments essentially straight forward or back into a space. This does take some getting used to, but can be quite effective.

In-car Parking assist

If you need or want more help with parking, the parking assistant can help you get into any parking lot space, or even parallel park your car.

Once you push the parking assist camera button, the vehicle will begin to look for suitable spaces. Instructions and options will appear on the infotainment screen allowing you to choose the parking space you want and whether you want to access it while you’re sitting in the car or if you want to get out and use the remote. I have to admit that it takes a whole heck of a lot of trust and faith the first few times to let the vehicle take over completely autonomously, but the car handled each parking attempt masterfully. I will say using any of the parking assistance features does feel like it takes far longer to complete the task then just parking by myself would so well this is a pretty cool feature to brag about, it might not be the most practical to try to pull off in traffic.

Electric vehicles in Canada: Truth or myth

I want to come back on some things I touched on in the beginning. Some preconceived notions I have about electric vehicles.

The first two concerns I had were that an electric vehicle would require constant attention and constant charging. The truth here is that it all depends on how much you drive. While I did take a short road trip of about 200 km round-trip, I had more than enough battery to get me there, back, and then some. The rest of my driving was short trips in the city around my neighborhood. Did I end up with charging anxiety? In truth I did not. But with that said I would be extremely apprehensive about taking a fully electric vehicle on a longer road trip. Both because I would be worried about recharging, and I don’t think I would enjoy having to stop for long periods of time to recharge and stress about finding a vacant high speed charger.

I like to get where I’m going and get on with my day, and I really feel like lengthy recharging periods would be extremely limiting to how much travel I can enjoy.
Even so, I will commit to one day taking a fully electric vehicle on a much longer road trip, and if you guys have any ideas about where I should go or which vehicle it should be in, make sure you tell me about it in the comments.

The last concern I had was about the vehicle being wimpy.

I have to say this is where I was most shocked about in reality. There is so much pick up in the EV 9 and it was amazing for passing quickly, or those times when you need to make more zealous driving maneuvers.

Overall review: Kia EV9 GT

Overall I have to say I really, really enjoyed my time with the Kia EV 9 GT. Let’s go over my experience with the Kia EV 9 GT and its pros and cons.

On the pro side, this is a fast, comfortable vehicle with plenty of nice touches and finishes like the wide dual sunroof, leather seating, plenty of storage and charging and easy seat adjustments. The seating is supremely comfortable and boasts lots of extras like the leg rests and padded headrests. Plus with a rear-view camera and eye-filling infotainment screen, all your trip info is easy to see.

There’s plenty of space for passengers, cargo and puppers too.

It’s also got lots of safety features like the very effective lane keeping assist, highway driving help. And the parking features are ideal for less confident drivers.

So what are the downsides?

I’ve got to admit that finding fault with a new car it a bit tough; with all the shiny new features it’s easy to be dazzled by shiny new toys. I did find the parking assistant features to be rather slow to execute, but I also don’t see that there’s a way around that. Just might be something to be aware of for practicalities sake.
I also kept forgetting to turn the vehicle off simply because it makes no engine sound. But that’s no fault of Kia. Similarly, the only other big complaint I could make has nothing to do with the Kia EV nine. And that’s that recharging at home with a household plug-in takes forever—literally days. So if you are getting ready to invest in an electric vehicle, you might also want to put aside some of your budget for a higher speed charging option at home.

In short, I’ve had a great experience with my first electric vehicle and my first Kia, and I can definitely recommend the Kia EV9 GT for you. The EV9 starts at $59,995, while the GT-Line version is priced at $78,995.

If you want to learn more about in car technology, you can take a look at my review of Alexa Auto… Or check out some other new cars I’ve had the opportunity to review here on the blog, like the Chevy Traverse, or learn about Alexa Auto.