Kia Soul EV

GOODBYE

£34,545 OTR/£34,545 as tested/£406 pcm

WHY IT’S HERE

Does this EV to do the job of a normal good value family car?

DRIVER

Paul Horrell

THE BEST ASPECT OF HALF A YEAR IN THE SOUL? NOTHING ABOUT IT drove me bananas. Which sounds like faint praise. But just look at all the largely great cars that occasionally, or frequently, send us into paroxysms.

We have a section of TG Garage devoted to these infelicities: What were they thinking? So this is point one about the Soul. It never troubled the compilers of WWTT – no small achievement.

As a standard-size compact slightly crossover, it’s on the money. Enough space, slightly raised driving position. The steering might be numb but it’s accurate, and a multi-link rear suspension and alert powertrain actually mean that on smooth twisty roads it’s by no means a chore to pedal. On the motorway, it settles nicely.

Koreans are good at electronics. The adaptive cruise control and lane centring assistance are reliable and smooth. The phone pairing and CarPlay work robustly. The inbuilt traffic mapping is fine too.

The ergonomics of the menus and displays are almost flawless, so I can live with the graphics being a bit Windows 7.

Not just the small electronics but the big high-voltage stuff also leads the field. Kia’s EV efficiency is really good. I’ve been regularly getting 4.3mpkWh in summer, which is 275 miles of range from the 64kWh (net) battery. Or say 3.8mpkWh at a motorway 70mph, which would be 240 miles – but you can never maintain 70 for 240 miles, so you always do better. In snowy winter, those numbers were 3.4–3.8mpkWh.

In the time the Soul has been with me, the car hasn’t changed but the landscape has. Rivals are multiplying. In the sub-£35,000 field, you have to look hard to get this much range. VW’s ID.3, with 58kWh battery and 204bhp, doesn’t go as far. And doesn’t give you a volume knob. WWTT?