"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey welcome back i'm keith barry i'm john linkove and i'm kelly funkhouser so this week uh we have a we have an interesting ev this week it's the kia ev6 uh no 90s rock music jokes it's it's the ev6 um and it is kia's first entrant into this this kind of new crop of these purpose-built evs uh it's built on the same underlying platform as the hyundai ioniq five kia and hyundai share a corporate parent um but it the car itself is very different um it starts around forty thousand dollars and has starts with a range of about 232 miles uh and that 40 000 is before the 7 500 tax credit so this is this is an affordable vehicle we drove uh we rented from kia a gt line version of this vehicle which is a dual motor all-wheel drive version of it um it cost about 56 000 before the tax credit and it has about a 310 mile range estimate so this is this is an all-new platform and one nice thing about that is that means um before we get to anything else that means it comes with a ton of of of tech and safety stuff right kelly yeah so the ev6 comes with lots of standard eight ass equipment so it's got the automatic emergency braking blind spot warning it even has that little display that pops up in your instrument cluster and it's a camera view of the blind spot when you turn your turn signal on my favorite thing that i'm really excited about is the augmented reality heads up display so this is a heads-up display that's projected onto the the windscreen in front of you and it has information about the eight ass systems that you might have on so say you have even navigation and you're going to a route it will project little turn arrows right next to the actual street rather than you know kind of guessing if there's a few little streets coming up it will show you exactly the right one that you need to turn on and it also has with the adaptive cruise control it puts a little light bar indicating that it's tracking in a way the car in front of you so you can see that all right the car it's using the adaptive cruise control it's locked on to that one in front of me and it's going to adjust the speed so it has all these little extra bells and whistles like you said um that are really exciting and especially exciting that it's in ikea we've seen this before from you know some of the luxury brands like mercedes just to clarify a d a s a dash that's what's that what's that acronym stand for sorry yes i i do the alphabet soup yeah exactly um advanced driver assistance system so that covers everything from those active safety things like i said automatic emergency braking all the way to convenience features which are lane centering and adaptive cruise control and stuff that we kind of think of as building blocks towards self-driving cars so this is kind of a car from this is kia's kind of next step like next generation it's got all the new stuff it's not just electrified but it also has that um that technology as well yeah it's joining the big leagues and has is impressive i know kia told us they targeted at what the machi the model y and the volkswagen id4 so that's kind of uh yeah it's definitely the big leagues who who is this car who is this car for well interestingly enough uh you know kia when kia came and did a presentation for us on the ev6 they they brought the general marketing materials and and maybe on one hand you could be a little surprised in one hand you can you can look at it and say you know maybe they're they're just being honest um and that they're not saying that they're building a car for everyone from the college graduate up to the you know you know retired uh baby boomer they're targeting people with large household incomes 100 100 000 or so you know and up um singles and single people childless couples or people who have decided not to have children or people who have yet to have children you know it means it's it's marketing stuff but you know for the most part it's going to be your early adopters people who have kind of flexible lives they own their own homes because obviously they're going to probably this isn't what they said but because they have to be able to charge the the vehicle so they're going to want to be able to put a charger in their house versus living in a community where they can't do that or renting a home you know but but the families that do have kids are probably going to be looking at smaller children uh pre-teens you know uh you know late single-digit children so to speak you know um not big kids not big families like that yeah what's the size of the vehicle itself because it can be i know i was kind of surprised when i first saw it because i'd seen pictures of it and then i saw it in person and was it seemed like kind of i i uh one of brian piselkowski is when i ran into him he said you know what kind of looks like a little rally car uh the size of it's like it's it's a little smaller than you think but it's a little bigger than a small vehicle yeah i mean i wouldn't consider it you know look no one's going to say it's um it's not a volkswagen gti size it's bigger than that it has more presence but it's not the suv uh way that many manufacturers have gone to start is it all-wheel drive yes does it is it a crossover okay whatever people want to call with the terms and play with that great um yes it's not an off-road vehicle but it certainly comes with all-wheel drive for all weather capability and and you know it also brings some performance with dual motors um but yeah it's a it's a hatchbacked midsize sedan if you want maybe a you know a generation previous prior uh camry size or toyota camry or something like that size but more of a hatchback um it look it's it's plenty roomy for four people even five people and you get flat load floors you know across the whole thing you know flat flat floor so you know you don't have issues with where your feet are going to go or such so um it's it's very roomy and and i would say even having seen the toyota mirai fuel cell vehicle and such you know this doesn't have the constraints as cargo that that vehicles like that have um because you know the bat everything's below the floor so you know you have the full fold down seats etc so um it's it's not a vehicle i think that it won't go well it's making a major compromise to buy it size-wise unless you're coming out of a tahoe a chevy tahoe unless you're coming out of a you know a kia tell your ride into it yeah it's it's it's average american family vehicle kelly did did the did the dog make it into the back of this vehicle or were we not allowed to do that do you think it would when you saw it is this uh as the dog owner on this podcast is this uh is this a is this a sort of a does it look like a dog would fit in the back um i wouldn't buy this for a dog family car i'd look for something a little bit larger uh i i consider it kind of what what john was saying more of a sedan with a hatchback uh than even a crossover so if you have that expectation going into it then i think you're going to be happy uh if you are expecting something larger to put a dog in i have a big dog um then you might be a little disappointed yeah a little little chihuahua would be totally fine yeah just a little one that you can just hug not a big guy that needs to yeah yeah i would say that if you're going into this expecting however to see out of the back much like the hyundai ioniq 5 be prepared in the winter to be severely disappointed because they don't seem to have rear wipers and because they're hatchbacks they have a big angled window and with winter weather up here in connecticut both of them very quickly the rear windows became covered in muck you know not stuff like big glops of snow or anything like that but just spray you know just aerodynamic spray with you know wind driven uh dirt and such and then you're you're forced to to clean it yourself repeatedly because you can't see out of it while you're driving so yes you're forced to clean the window okay but it would be a lot easier if there was at least a small wiper i mean you know but john that's assuming you can see out of this thing anyways because i know we're gonna do a little comparison of the ionic five but the first thing i noticed when i sat in it was the the the b pillar the the pillar that was sort of behind my behind my head uh that side pillar next to the the door when you come in uh it was huge i i just noticed my side and rear visibility was and we haven't fully tested this yet we're going to buy our own and we're going to test it but i just noticed you know this is a car you're going to need to rely on your blind spot warning cameras you're going to need to rely on your backup cameras because i i couldn't you know i turned my head like this and i couldn't see i don't know if you you experienced that if it was just my seating position um that that brought you i felt i felt that way too it yeah it was a little bit closed in the the the panel the you know big pillar was thick um although it's funny because when kia did the presentation they mentioned that it has you know the panoramic sun or moon roof uh but that it also has a shade which i laughed because i enjoy when you can you know cover that up with the shade as well because we see a lot of these especially evs that have these beautiful glass ceilings uh but they're kind of a pain then when you're in you know a hot sunny day and so i kind of chuckled to myself but yeah you can really feel closed in especially if that that you know roof is closed yeah i think that's that was that was the thing that i noticed most about this car the ioniq 5 felt and i think it was compounded because the ioniq 5 that i drove had this bright light colored interior this kind of light gray interior and this has kind of a dark interior it it almost felt to me that the difference it felt to me like um the ionic 5 was kind of like a you know a macbook and this felt like a gaming laptop like it had this sort of aggressive look it sort of had that you know it's just a little lower the roof lines a little lower uh it just it kind of felt a little more you know a little little more a little more tough i don't know john what what what did you think as far as compared to the ionic five because these are these cars are very very similar the underlying technology is like basically the same right yeah i didn't so we have our our own ionic five which is what i drove and then the the borrow the rented uh kia i found driving very very similar the experience was was there they were similar maybe there's you know the the higher trim kia maybe has slightly different performance or road feel but overall they're both um fully fleshed out feeling evs that they're you know they're obviously not compromises from a pre you know a uh petroleum basic you know combustion engine platform and converted so so write that in there you know that they're they're on par with each other usability i think is really the key difference there you have they each have their own odd controls the uh the um ionic five has an odd gear selector uh that that is a pod off of the steering column which is just it's it's just so unique and so different it's it's not even like the big old you know column shifter you think the you know the three in the tree type of thing um it's it's a little knob that much like the volkswagen id4 which has something up top it's it's it's like that and it's a rotates and it returns back to center um so that's just a little strange but a lot of controls as far as climate and and uh infotainment are a little more conventional and and that's where the hyundai really i think stands out in that when it does the conventional it does it very well and and a person coming from another hyundai won't have any problem moving into this vehicle the the hyundai the key excuse me while it uses buttons and uh and a knob for the gear selector that's in the center console um they minimize the space on the dashboard with the infotainment and climate controls so you actually have a top a button a capacitive touch button that will switch the display underneath the infotainment screen from climate to audio and back so at first i was wondering why kia was insisting on just using the volume control on the steering wheel before i realized that there's a toggle and that the climate control heater button heater knobs then become tuning and volume which is unique but at the same time a little distracting you know yeah unique is a word for it yeah i think it's it can be problematic in a way when you have a dual purpose to control right so the fact that it is a hard knob good so that you no one likes doing everything through the touch screen right um so the knob good but the fact that it's dual purpose depending on what you happen to have had up last on the screen can potentially be problematic right so if you're in a high stress situation whatever you want to quickly turn the radio down you could potentially turn your heat all the way to freezing and that would be the worst possible thing when you're in one of those situations so yeah unique we'll go with that yeah kelly i'm curious how long it took you because i know you're you're the expert in this but i think you're just genuine generally smarter than i am i had to sit there i i can show you on my phone i i googled i had to google kia ev6 volume because i i could not figure out how to turn the volume down in this thing and i could tell just use the steering wheel and avoid it well that's what i did but i'm thinking this can't be the only control and you know i was thinking is it like the lexus ux where it has those weird little thumb wheels on the center console is there like something on the side and then i saw huh why is this oh that's an lc it's an you know that's a changeable display here why is uh why is this this way but it's a touch screen that toggle button so you can't even find it by field to switch between the the knobs it definitely is going to be something people are going to want to sit down and learn it and realize that essentially what looks like the you know navigation arrow or like a paper airplane you know type of symbol changes it to the anything but the the climate um control uh so once you learn it then you'll get it and you know we're moving in this direction of everything through the touch screen for better or for worse um so you know it definitely still has some bonuses because it has hard controls for some things but if you learn it hopefully you'll get better at it but it's it's not intuitive so we will have uh we're going to buy one of our own and we're going to talk about what it's going to be like when we buy one of our own we are stealing ourselves to to buy one of our own right now um and uh we'll have you know more full more comprehensive tests and and more likely on a version which is which isn't the uh you know souped-up gt line with all the bells and whistles we'll have one more that's more affordable um but david from los angeles wrote in to talking cars at icloud.com uh with a question that's very relevant here it's exciting to see all the evs that are coming to market but with low inventory and high demand i feel helpless as a consumer since dealers continue to markup cars over msrp not on our nationally advertised lease or finance offers and disregard agreed upon prices at the time a pre-order reservation is made do you have any recommendations on how to navigate this process as a consumer i know that waiting it out is always an option but is there any evie specific advice to avoid dealer markups and and i'll i'll just start here that you know i was the person who on our team bought the ioniq five and in case you don't know consumer reports we go and buy cars for our test program and we use anonymous emails we use disguised phone numbers we don't give our our full information until the very last second we have to so when i called around um i found two dealers uh the closest two dealers to us and these are hyundai dealers for the ioniq five but it should be pretty similar the first two dealers said we're not even authorized to sell it we haven't been trained we just we can't sell you when we're sorry and so that was you know so then i'm i'm an hour away from from where i live and i finally found a dealer and they just said right off the bat you're gonna have to pay three thousand dollars on top of msrp and that was we had to agree to that uh even even you know with our savvy team of car buyers here we just had to had to agree with that so even even we got gouged on this car uh on the ioniq five so with the ev6 coming in through sort of a similar set of dealers i i don't know kelly do you have you have any advice i think there's a lot at play right now um just with the inventory of cars um i think that it's you know one of the worst possible times to buy a new car in terms of getting a deal um and so that probably plays into it as well but also the fact that it's an av i think that uh there's a surprising amount of more demand than than dealers probably pre-planned for um and so they are kind of selling like hotcakes they're you know barely on the lot before they're gone sometimes they're even promised and sold before the dealer even gets it on the lot um and i i did ask our uh sustainability and policy advisor on this um at cr and he said that also there is a strategy from some of the car companies they're trying to sell them only in select locations where buyers can get kind of rebates and the tax benefits but also the companies also get some some kickback and rebates also for selling these um environmentally friendly vehicles in places like california so it depends on where you are and and lots of factors that are going on right now so i don't know if i have a ticker tip or trick um patience is probably key but i don't know how how long all this is going to last um john does that mean that we're we're we're gonna you know people are gonna ironically have to drive you know 350 miles to get a car with a 330 mile range um yeah that's the potential uh you know maybe hopefully you have a trailer on your other vehicle it's a it's a shame i would say that like any advice with the don't make it don't make the decision to buy a car when you're desperately in need of it even more so with an ev and if you're looking to merge switch into an ev the only thing that's going to happen with evs is that there's going to be even more choice going forward and hopefully less expensive now some of the advice is look if you're looking to buy a nissan or you're looking to buy a ford or you're looking to buy a toyota though they don't have a full ev yet the federal tax credits are going to soon sunset as far as the full 7 500 or the full availability and you'll start having fewer available there'll be a lower amount of money you you can you can get out on your taxes um much like tesla and general motors they've run out of credits now they've sunsetted the sunset's going to start for nissan um you know in the within this year maybe maybe by 2023 at the latest um so three thousand dollars markup 7 500 tax credits right well and that it is a huge thing it's eating it's eating up that that credit and and maybe the dealers are using that their advantage knowing that people are going to get that so they're willing to pay it um i think the bigger the bigger challenge that will be for consumers is that the buying online ordering process may be what you see now versus going in and kicking tires and driving home in a car there will still be those people but for the most part manufacturers like knowing what they have to build and not building more dealers like not having inventory sitting on the on the floor planning their their their floor plan basically paying interest on a lot of cars sitting on on the uh the lot you know that they cost some a lot of money so it may be much more of a world where you're ordering waiting planning as if you're buying a bmw or a mercedes in the 80s or 90s where you would order it and three months later or show up that may be the new way of buying a vehicle which will you know raise prices and it'll be they'll be firmer that's all until one manufacturer says look we need to make more sales and they start throwing money on the hood and and then you get into price wars like we've seen in the past but there's a paradigm shift definitely in the way we're buying cars going forward yeah that's some some good advice uh i think i think we've talked enough about kia this week uh we talked enough about the ev6 but if you want to read more if you can't get enough if you're thinking about buying it if it's worth paying maybe a little markup even to get it head over to cr.org and you'll find tons of pictures video more information about the car thanks so much for talking cars with us any questions for us send them to talking cars at icloud.com and we'll talk again soon you\n"