Kia EV4: The Electric Hatchback And Fastback Compared

Adult occupant, child occupant and vulnerable road user protection are exactly the same car in both columns, because they are the same crash tests. The difference is safety assist, which goes from 67% to 78, and that is enough to take the overall rating from four stars to five. The pack is called DriveWise and it adds front and rear corner radars. So a five star EV4 is a specific car with a specific option on it, not the EV4 in general.

It notes that dooring protection, which warns you before you open a door into a cyclist, is available as part of the DriveWise pack but was not included in this assessment. So even the five star result does not reflect every feature the pack contains. Worth asking us which safety equipment is standard on the trim you are pricing, because on this car it changes the rating rather than just the equipment list.

Every Fastback is the 81.4kWh car at 201bhp, and all three do 380 miles. There is no 58.3kWh Fastback and no GT Fastback. That matters when you read a comparison that quotes 362 miles for a Fastback, because 362 is the hatchback's GT-Line figure on larger wheels and it does not appear in the Fastback table at all. The Fastback is also the bigger boot of the two at 490 litres against 435.

The pricing page carries the line that preliminary data shown may be subject to change, the model page describes the technical data as expected targets pending further development and homologation, and Kia prints a literal TBC against the Fastback's kerb weight, the Fastback's city range and the GT's city consumption. So this is a car you can order with numbers Kia has not finished. That is worth knowing before you commit to a long agreement, and we will get the funder's final specification confirmed before anything is signed.

Kia never publishes a plain maximum charging speed for this car in either body. The only way to read one is off the charge time row labels, and the two documents disagree. The hatchback page labels the fast row 128kW and adds a note saying the car needs a charger delivering more than 128kW to reach full speed. The Fastback document labels the identical 31 minute figure 350kW. Both are Kia's own, so we are not going to average them or pick the flattering one. What you can rely on is the 31 minutes, and we would get the real acceptance rate from the funder's specification before you choose a charging plan around it.

Kia's battery pack table has a row called maximum battery power, at 170kW on the front wheel drive cars and 230.4kW on the GT. That is how much power the battery can deliver to the motor, not how fast it charges. It gets misquoted as a charging figure regularly, and if you see 170kW described as the EV4's charging speed, that is where it came from.

The row label reads AC charge time at 230 volts and 16 amps, 11kW. Those numbers do not reconcile: 230 volts at 16 amps on a single phase supply is about 3.7kW, not 11. In practice an 11kW rate needs a three phase supply, which nearly no UK home has, but Kia does not state that anywhere and we are not going to put words in its mouth. What we can tell you is that the figure is published and the condition attached to it is not. Ask us and we will get the real home charging time from the funder's specification sheet.

Kia shows a grant inclusive price for Air SR, Air and Motion, and a dash for GT-Line, GT-Line S, the Heat Pump version and the GT. If that were a price threshold you would expect everything above a certain figure to drop out. It does not: GT-Line at £39,445 shows a dash, while Motion at £40,495, which is £1,000 more expensive, shows a grant price of £36,745. Kia never explains what the dash means and we could not resolve it from any official source. So the honest position is that gov.uk puts the EV4 in Band 1 at up to £3,750, Kia publishes a grant price for three hatchbacks and no Fastback, and the two do not line up.

The model page advertises starting prices from £30,995 for the Air to £49,345 for the GT. The £30,995 is actually the grant inclusive price of the Air SR, not the Air, whose grant price is £33,245. And the £49,345 at the top of that range has no grant applied at all. So one sentence names the wrong trim and puts a discounted price and an undiscounted one at either end. If you are comparing the EV4 against another car, make sure you know which basis each number is on, and ask us if you want it priced both ways.

The EV4 page says the Kia warranty covers seven years from registration or 100,000 miles, whichever comes first. Kia's warranty terms page says something different and better: cover runs for unlimited mileage up to 36 months, then for 100,000 miles between months 37 and 84. So the first three years have no mileage limit at all, and the cap only applies from year four. On a high mileage lease that distinction is worth real money, and the terms page is the governing document. The battery is covered for 84 months or 100,000 miles, with repairs to return capacity to at least 70%.

This is a car Kia will sell you today with figures it has not finished. Two of its own documents disagree on how fast it charges, its model page states its own warranty wrongly, its grant table does not follow its own prices, and it prints TBC against three specifications. None of that makes the EV4 a bad car and the fundamentals look strong. It does mean that anything you read about it, including the numbers above, is worth confirming against the funder's specification before you sign, and that is exactly what we will do for you.