Kia PV5 EV Review: Full Breakdown & Transcript

[00:00] The Kia PV5 has these special vents down here to open when you turn on the air conditioning to let the air through also to help cool the battery but then when the battery doesn't need cooling or you don't have to spray on the air conditioning

[00:12] they will shut so that you have improved aerodynamics to maximize your range being the van you get lots of extra storage space such as this big drawer here there's a cubby up on the dash

[00:24] and a drink to the front seat you have this storage too being a van you get a huge boot and doors which slide so you can open them in tight spaces plus

[00:36] there is plenty of room however unlike a normal van if I lower the front windows and you look here you'll see that they use acoustic glass to improve soundproofing that's because this

[00:51] is the barn conversion of the car world. The bones are agricultural. You know, it's a van. But the finish is pure, desirable country living. Same place, same practicality, but no compromise.

[01:03] Is that really the case? You see, the maximum trade range of this is 256 miles, which isn't loads for a big EV. And the most powerful model, which is this one, has just 160 horsepower. Once again, not loads for a big EV.

[01:17] So, how will that affect their drive? Let's see how quick this thing is. Obviously performance is paramount when you're buying this kind of vehicle. Let's put it in sports mode, drive mode, eco, zico mode and it's

[01:34] just going to climb it. Ah, stability control. Let's use that, let's turn it off. That's all I've got. Ready, three, two, one. Oh yeah! Actually, it's quite quick.

[01:51] What's the difference? What's the power of that? 9.16 to 60 It actually felt a bit quicker than that maybe I'm just surprised that it was that nippy It felt a little bit quicker because it sat higher I don't know Maybe it's just my expectation

[02:03] So it goes alright really? Does it stop alright? I'm not sure Because it's tall, not light and it's on mid-tier tyres Nexons They look handy

[02:15] The safety system, you know there's a car coming across the back of me And it warmed me and vibrated the steering wheel at the same time I think I'm good to go now. I love all that stuff. I don't like the beeps and bongs that happen when you're just driving a straight line man. It's telling you that you're one mile an hour over the speed limit and I'm never one mile an hour over the speed limit.

[02:30] I always end up. And the lane keeping assist. Obviously I always stay in lane. And the driver attention thing. I'm always attentive. They don't apply to me but I know that other people get bothered by them. Anyway, brake test. So a normal SUV would be about 35 metres from the station mark and that's what this does.

[02:46] I've got four weekend braking lights and one pedal drive car but here we go 3, 2, 1, braking go. It's a little bit floaty but not a bad job. Fuck! Fuck!

[02:58] 35 metres. So going for this van based thing is no worse than going for a car based thing. I'm a lot more impressed by this than I thought I would be. I'm starting to like it already. But I do like the way it looks.

[03:10] It is just a box after all. but they've done a good job of hiding the fact at the front at least with the slightly curvy futuristic look the long daytime running lights up there and actual headlights down there it's

[03:22] even got a face hasn't it because this charge port is like its nose you've got your bc charging in there it will do 150 kilowatts this one has two-tone paint i like the paint a lot of green the two-tone really helps it stand out and it's like chunky body work there i should point out

[03:38] So this is the top of the range one. There's two trims. This is the top one. The edge level car has steel wheels with plastic trims. This one has proper alloys. 16 inches. They look quite good. Our model will get this plastic cladding, which will give it a sort of SUV-like look.

[03:51] Down the side, it's getting a lot more box-like and van-like. So it looks like a public service vehicle from the future. Doesn't look like one that would be used in the UK until about 2040.

[04:04] So, yeah, it's sort of alright, considering it's just a big square shape. At the back, it is just a big square shape. This is the most van-like bit out of all of it, apart from this flash of satin there.

[04:16] Hmm. I'm getting the vampires back again. Is he going to descend on the inside? I've got to think about it. Well, the materials are all definitely van-like. We've got hard plastic everywhere. But it feels funny.

[04:28] That doesn't wobble. That said, the switchgear feels nicely damp, and I like where the dry select is there. It's easy to use. And the design is not van-like at all. it's quite quirky, quite interesting. I'm not so sure about the not quite round steering wheel

[04:41] but it's alright, there's plenty of functionality on it because you've got buttons. As for the digital driver's display, it's fairly clear, it's got all the information you need. You can switch through different views by pressing the buttons on the steering wheel. You've got this big infotainment screen there, it's a little bit laggy and the icons are quite

[04:55] small and things like that. Can I press that? Not ideal but yeah I'll do. And you can't control, it's a bit like on a Tesla, you have like temperature and fan but then you have to press this to get into the deeper menu So I bought it pretty good and I like the top set car because you get things like heated seats it steam heated at the rear seats you get electrical seats and actually you can turn into a massage seat by doing that the button for moving it is quite sensitive just using it while I finish

[05:22] there we go and you also get fake leather but is it worth the extra money well do you know what I've actually configured my ideal pv5 and to find out what it is and the settings of the car I click on the pop-up back up there or scan the chart on screen now or find them in the description

[05:36] on this video but overall I quite like it and it is very practical I've only shown you some cubbies but here's the other one so we've got big storage in there deep cup holders you can even fit huge bottles in there bigger bottles little place your mobile phone or you can put it on the mobile phone

[05:50] charging pad you have a glove box there and this is the poshest thing in the car the manual cover look a little patch in the manual it's like fake suede the door bins there and they're very big and the door handles if you put my mobile phone there oh I'll never know where I left it huge sun visors

[06:04] like you'd expect in a van and the vanity mirrors are illuminated you don't have to worry about turning them off it just does it when you put that on the wire. Overall it's pretty decent but it just lacks the quirkiness of the interior of the Volkswagen ID.5 and that brings up quite a few annoying things

[06:19] about this car sorry van van's last car mtv i think there's a QR code there on the dash you think oh that's exciting it's probably there to download some game or something now or maybe to watch one of car's brilliant reviews he's scammed all the site like that and you just end up on

[06:34] Keir's website on a page which wangs on about their sustainability and stuff and I quote minimizing use of natural leather it's flagging recycled and bio-based materials and pursuing bio-fabrication I mean this is just nauseating virtue signaling. Up close this kit seems like a

[06:51] bit of a bargain three car row starts from £30,000 and this one here is £38,000 compare that to the equivalent of oxygen ID but three car row will set you back £56,000 no brainer I'm taking this

[07:04] unless I'm leasing because each month this thing will cost you 610 pounds and ID Buzz 660 so there's a 50 quid difference and for that kind of difference gotta be honest with you I would take the ID Buzz

[07:16] because it's definitely more bomb conversion than this thing it's great the driver has their own car mess the passengers get one perfect position holding the wheel and just chilling unfortunately

[07:29] there's not one over the other side and the window leg is at a different height so you end up try to relax like that and it doesn't work and while I'm at it this is as far as the front windows go down and like with many SUVs the detachable load cover went thick underneath the false floor

[07:48] there's someone sitting there talking is it so you can't even put it like that you can't even put it like that you have to sort of put it like that not ideal here's the piano black plastic trim for this part of the bodywork

[08:03] and as you can see it scratches super easily and you're not going to be able to polish it out in the same way you'd be able to if it scratched on the pink and if it's just bad on the other side oh dear, look it's actually worse most van drivers like to get too close to the car in front and bring them out the way

[08:20] this won't let you because when you try to do it this happens look it auto brakes and goes, tell me the warning it's having none of it look what? It's hard to join that being a van driver and Keir's just removed it.

[08:33] Oh, so frustrating. But that does bring on to five good things about this car because that feature, to every other road user, is quite useful. Blimey, look at this. You've got 100 watts of power to the USB-C charging there.

[08:45] And you can do more. You've got a three-pin socket with 16 amps and 3,000 watts of power. It's a new warranty. Eight years on the battery. if I press and hold this button I can turn off the lane departure warning and then if I press and

[09:01] hold the mute button I can turn off the speed limit warning then if I pull up on this paddle I can put it into auto regen braking which will automatically slow the car down depending on how

[09:13] close it is to the car in front and then if I pull on that paddle again and then pull up on one of these paddles I can then change the level of regen braking from soft to severe then if I pull on the paddle fully I'm going to fall one pedal drive another great thing about the Kia

[09:29] PB5 wait a minute what's this? looks like someone's left their pet in the car it's quite warm today that tortoise is going to have to smash a window or something

[09:42] oh look on the screen it says I am waiting for my owner September is 20 degrees oh they're gonna be fine this has got a dog mode no need to panic another great thing about this PV5 is just the space in the back seats

[09:59] I mean look at it, wow so much room and check this I can, the kind of seats quite a way I don't even need them because I drop off, now an ID Buzz you can stretch out and then use the seats in front but here you can't because they're actually on this plinth but you can still get your feet far forward enough

[10:17] and actually I quite like it because you can sort of get into this position in fact that is proper limo position See where the footrest there It great Also because you have three proper seats full size and it a very wide body

[10:29] you can fit three adults in the middle right here. Absolutely easily. And if you need to go in extra two people, there'll be a seven-seater coming along soon. And when it comes to fitting a child to, oh my God, it's easy, because there's so much space. The door's open nice and wide, and the other six ankle points are dead easy to get to.

[10:42] There is so much room. It's a really, really practical space. You have windows that open. You don't have any door bins like you do in the VW. ID Buzz. In fact if you want to see my full index video review of the ID Buzz click on the pop-up banner it's got the QR code in the description of this video. So that'll be okay I guess,

[10:59] I'll have to make do with that. There is, look, this pocket here for your mobile phone and then you've got your charging points there. There's something here which says 2 kilogram max. I think you can get some attachments that you can plug into there and hang things off but here hasn't

[11:14] the supplies done for the video because it doesn't want anyone to know. I wonder what it's like when when you fold down the seats. Okay do they fold forward? No they don't fold forward again

[11:27] so if you're loading things you do have to step up in the boot floor speaking which, don't see how much stuff you can fit in this boot. It's absolutely massive 1330 litres of space now you do have some useful features like storage bins here

[11:40] and here underneath here storage areas as well, cables and there's some more storage under there but I don't really need it I'll show you why I'm just gonna put this load cover extend it forward so everything is out of sight and keep it

[11:57] nice and fair I'll just put that there like that I don't see how many suitcases we can get in here

[12:09] That's 15 suitcases in total and I've run out there's still some space left there I think you would do another three easily so 18 suitcases or 15 suitcases and to the honest James

[12:31] your pet, about pet James, you secretly love it and you might think that I secretly love the PV5 but you know what I have a bit of an issue and that's that on call I found this Kia EV9 the top spec of the top spec Kia car for £44,000 it's three years old

[12:49] yes and it's got 16,000 miles on the clock but makes me wonder have one of these new or spend a bit extra to get that EV9 though it's not a clear cut thing is there is always a risk when buying a used car and that is you don't

[13:01] necessarily know the history of the car unless of course you do a car vertical history check and it's definitely worth doing because here's a car vertical history report on a Kia EV6 that Sean was trying to sell. Luckily the person who went to buy it

[13:15] did this report because they found out look it's been involved in an accident and you can even see the damage so yeah if you're thinking about buying a used car no matter what it is do a car vertical history check and use the code CARWOW for 20% off. Now let's find out what this PEV5 or whatever it's

[13:30] called is like to drive. Sean's got the hang of it. One of the great things about vans or van based MPVs such of this is that you sit really high. You actually sit high than most SUVs. Look at that RAV4 in front. It's quite low down. This is like Range Rover height, maybe even more. And that means Ford visibility is

[13:46] great. And I like to lean into it. So in sports cars I'd put the seat as low as possible. Normal cars I'll leave them in the middle, but in a van I jack them all the way up. And that combined with the fact that you've hardly got any bonnet means you really can just know exactly where the front of the car is.

[14:00] isn't it really close to people? Apart from obviously being in the woods. Not as close as you'd like. But, navigating through tight spaces, this is surprisingly simple. Huge dormer as hell. Forward visibility is really good.

[14:13] I'm not sure about these pillars, right? So, that's a thick pillar, quite a blind spot. And I think what they're trying to do by adding this bit of glass here to give you something to look through there, but effectively what you've got is two A-pillars. So, two blind spots. So, get them back, can't complain about that.

[14:26] And if you look over your shoulder, the rear pillar, isn't that fat considering and they've added a little bit of glass in there so when you're filtering out junctions it does help actually it's hard for me to do that today because i pulled the muscle on my neck at the gym

[14:38] i swear the gym does more harm to me than good or anyway not for that so i've got the car in four one pedal drive which is great for when you're in 20 limits such as this gives you full control but if you do need to use the brakes they are pretty smooth steering's light as well which is

[14:54] good and that brings me on to the incredible turning circle. Kia says the turning circle is 11 meters which is slightly better than a VW bus so that's still pretty good an ID bus but look at this like

[15:06] significantly better than that Toyota RAV4 even with that car parked there I am fine look I'm fine actually there's lots of parking cameras just to show fine oh that's the real one there's no front one I mean you get the idea I can get close to that I'm

[15:18] still looking in that camera and it's actually the rear what am I doing what an idiot so easy to drive You wouldn't think it because it's so long, but actually, dead simple. And the suspension good in town as well it quite soft even with these bumps here I probably shouldn be driving over this like this but I just trying to measure a point Smooth and stuff Sometimes vans can get a bit bouncy but this isn actually this drives more like an SUV than a van oh great they going that way because they want me to try and park it okay

[15:44] this is gonna be easy there's a big gap now this doesn't have an auto park feature on it but let's park it anyway and try not to park it for this old lady that'd be unfortunate wouldn't it let's give it a go so oh she really is in the way don't look at the match but on a curb these alloy wheels

[15:58] Normally if you're in a van you'd be on speedies and you wouldn't give a toss. I've got it set up already. Oh this is just going to be perfect. This is what we call entertaining content.

[16:13] Top level car content right here. Not only have you got Matt Orson rebuilding the Bugatti, you've got Matt Watson parking a Kia van. Now let's see what the pickup is like from 40 to 70 miles an hour. Here we go 3, 2, 1

[16:27] 50 60 slowing down now 70 some terrible noise at the car and when you're cruising along at 70 this is definitely more car-like than van-like you do get some wind noise from the front end of the car

[16:40] because it's quite bluff and I've noticed when I'm cruising just a little bit of whistle from just up here it's almost like the car's got a leisurely rather than any more intrusive noise I need a road noise at all though

[16:53] So, seeing this space on the van, once again, really, really impressive. I wouldn't say it's as quite a couple of litres out of four in front of me, though, but easily acceptable, and I just love the seating position, the company seat. I could do lots of miles in this, quite happily.

[17:05] Well, let's see how many miles I could actually do. So, I'm averaging 3.1 miles per kilowatt hour. Times that out by the batch capacity, a KSA 71 kilowatt hours. Usable for about 67, multiply that out, you end up with about 210 miles of range

[17:19] in KSA that should do 250, so that's adequate as well. I think a lot of the band across, actually for a van it's all quite impressive. Can you hear that noise? Can you tell that because I might pick it up?

[17:31] Anyway, there's one other thing I want to test, I need to get into the back seat. Okay, now what I wanted to test from here is how comfy it is when you're one of the passengers because after with vans, when you start over the rear axle it's a bit more bumpy

[17:45] and indeed it is, I can feel the vibrations more through my bottom which in some ways is pleasing and in other ways is a little bit annoying. It's not terrible though, definitely not as comfy as I was in the front, but I could live with it, especially as I can...

[18:00] chill like that. That's good. And then just... lovely fun along the journey. And do you know what? While it's not quite as comfortable to sit in as a normal SUV,

[18:13] this ability to travel like that and have a nap actually more than makes up for it. Anyway, I'd better get back to driving and see what this thing actually handles like if you took it up some bends. So, let's get back into the front. Right, here we go. Yeah, it's definitely comfy under the front.

[18:27] But, as you can see, through the corners, does it get into trouble? Actually, do you know what? It handles alright. It really does. I thought it leaned quite a bit in the bend, but it doesn't because the weight's low down.

[18:39] Even for a tall vehicle, it stays quite flat. Let's try these bends here because downhill, a bit off-combo, more tricky. car coming the other way, do I worry? No. Grip them went round, it was fine. They're doing decent speed there as well.

[18:51] Not over the linea, obviously, but pretty much to it. This car is impressing me. In fact, I'm calling it a car, not a van now, aren't I? There is one thing though, there's just one thing, and it's here, I'm gonna illustrate now. It's not wheel drive, so,

[19:03] and if you heard that, if you're on a tight bend, you put your foot down, you can hear the wheels just start to spin a bit, and then the stability backs off the power. Now with the VW ID, bro, that's rear wheel drive, you get a sensation of it pushing out the bend,

[19:15] So that is a little bit more fun to drive as a result, but this is solid. It's a solid performance Kia. I mean, you really could have one of these instead of Kia's bigger, more expensive EVs like the EV9.

[19:27] Do you think I've gone mad? Click up there. I've just got my car pedal to it now to see my full and depth of the overview of that car. Actually, do you notice that? I've seen it happen twice now. As I was chapping then, I was accelerating, going over a bump, and the steering wheel kicked really hard.

[19:41] It really went like that in my hand, much more so than in any other car that I've driven over that bump. It was very noticeable. One thing about electric powered steering is that it can dampen that effect, so modern steering systems can hide it, but this one really did kick quite hard.

[19:57] Was it shocking? That is the only negative, I think, really. And let's be honest, that ain't going to happen often. So overall, I remain impressed. But does that mean you should definitely buy this car? so then what's your final verdict on the kia pv5 should you avoid it consider it shortness it or

[20:13] just go right ahead and buy it well i reckon if you're after a good value practical spacious ev should go right ahead and buy the kia pv5 just don't lose it well not yet until the lease prices go down a bit they will be question is though do you agree with my verdict let me know in the

[20:29] comments also if you want some proper standard electric suvs watch my group test there for some of the best sellers see if they're worth the extra cash anyway i hope you enjoyed the video if you did give it a like if you haven't done so already please subscribe to this channel we'll be

[20:43] outputting some more videos soon and as ever thanks for watching and i'll see you next time