Kia Sorento vs Hyundai Santa Fe vs Skoda Kodiaq: Which Seven Seater?

Skoda lists the 1.5 TSI iV only against the five seat SE, SE L, SportLine and L&K, and that is confirmed independently on its engines page and in its own brochure and price list. So if you want a plug-in hybrid and seven seats, the Kodiaq is out and the Sorento and Santa Fe are your two options. This matters because the Kodiaq iV turns up on plenty of best seven seat plug-in hybrid lists, and it should not be on any of them.

On SE L the five seat Kodiaq is £45,865 and the seven seat is £43,025. On SportLine it is £47,685 against £45,470. The five seater costs more than the seven seater, which reads like a transcription error and is not: the five seat entry price on those trims is the plug-in hybrid, which is dearer than any seven seat version of the same trim. On L&K it runs the other way round, £50,035 for five seats and £52,710 for seven. Skoda explains none of this anywhere, so anyone quoting a flat from price for an SE L or a SportLine is quoting the wrong car.

On a seven seat Kodiaq, seats up means behind the third row, which is 340 litres. On a five seat Kodiaq, seats up means behind the second row, which is 910. Same label, same table, two different measurements, and the gap between them is not a difference in the cars. We have split them out above so you can see it. Never put 340 and 910 next to each other and never compare either to another brand's seats up figure without checking what it means.

Kia's biggest number is labelled behind first row seats upright, which means the second and third rows folded with the front seats still in place. Hyundai's is labelled seats down. Skoda's is labelled seats down. Those are probably the same thing and the labels do not confirm it. So 1,996, 1,949 and 2,035 litres look like a tight three way and some of the difference between them is a measurement artefact rather than real space. If maximum load volume is genuinely the deciding factor, go and measure the thing you need to carry.

There is no unbraked row anywhere in Kia's weight and capacity table, for any of the three powertrains. So if you have seen an unbraked Sorento figure quoted somewhere, it came from somebody's assumption rather than from Kia. We are not going to add to that. Tell us the trailer and we will get it confirmed against the derivative.

Kia UK prices the 2.2 CRDi across all three trims from £43,725 to £52,875, and nothing on any of its pages suggests it is going anywhere. At 2,500kg braked with seven seats as standard, it is the strongest towing proposition of everything here. The Kodiaq matches 2,500kg but only on L&K four wheel drive and the vRS, which are the two most expensive ways to buy one. If you tow a caravan and carry people, the Sorento diesel is the obvious answer and it is the one everybody has stopped mentioning.

Skoda publishes 40kW DC charging and 26 minutes from 10 to 80 per cent, which on a plug-in hybrid is genuinely unusual: most will not take DC in any form. Kia's charging table for the Sorento has a three pin row and a 3.3kW Type 2 row and no DC row at all, so the Sorento does not rapid charge. Hyundai publishes nothing either way for the Santa Fe, which is not the same as a no but is no use to you. So the one with the longest electric range and the only rapid charging is also the one that will not seat seven. That is the central trade in this comparison.

11kW AC charging requires three phase power. Nearly every UK home is single phase and caps a wallbox at about 7.4kW. Skoda does not state the three phase requirement anywhere and publishes no single phase charging time, so the 2 hours 30 on its brochure is not a figure you will see on your driveway and we cannot tell you what you will see instead. Kia is the opposite and better behaved here: its 3.3kW is single phase and its 3 hours 25 is a time you can actually achieve at home.

The introduction says up to 76 miles. The plug-in hybrid section of the same document says over 70 miles, with 112km in brackets. Both are Skoda UK's own figures in the same PDF. We are quoting both rather than picking the flattering one, and either way it is more than double what the Sorento and Santa Fe manage, which is the real point. If the electric range is what is selling the car to you, ask us to get the figure confirmed against the exact trim.

Euro NCAP states on its own site that a rating is valid for up to six years from the date it is awarded and expires after that, and its star rating protocol says the same. So the Sorento's result lapses in December 2026, which is within weeks of you reading this. That does not mean the car got less safe. It means the test it passed has been superseded twice over and Euro NCAP will not stand behind a six year old result as a description of a current car. The Kodiaq's and Santa Fe's both run to 2030. If a current safety rating matters on a four year agreement, that is a real difference between these three and nobody else is mentioning it.

Euro NCAP's own results pages are closed to automated reading, so we could not get a star figure from Euro NCAP itself for the Santa Fe. Hyundai's own press offices in Spain, Poland and the Baltics all say five stars. A French motoring title says four out of five for the 2024 test specifically. And the Euro NCAP press release that search engines serve up for Santa Fe five stars turns out to be dated 28 November 2012 and to be about the previous generation car entirely, which is probably where a lot of the five star claims come from. So we are publishing the four category scores and the date from Euro NCAP's own datasheet and leaving the headline alone. A 69 per cent safety assist score is the weakest of the three on that measure and that is a fact you can act on.

The structure is three years with unlimited mileage, then a 100,000 mile cap for years four to seven. And the battery cover on the hybrid and plug-in Sorento is seven years rather than the eight Kia gives its fully electric cars, which its own warranty page does not mention at all and its Sorento brochure does. Hyundai's five years genuinely has no mileage cap, which on a high mileage agreement is worth more than it looks. Skoda's three years is the weakest of the three and it can be extended at a cost.

The Kodiaq iV cannot do both, and that removes the car with the longest electric range and the only rapid charging from consideration entirely. Between the other two, the Sorento publishes more and is more honest about it: a 13.8kWh battery, 34 miles, single phase charging times you can achieve at home, and all three boot states properly labelled. The Santa Fe publishes no battery capacity, no charging rate, no charging time and no behind the third row boot figure. Both tow 1,700kg braked.

2,500kg braked, seven seats standard, and 179 litres behind the third row so you can actually use all of them with luggage. The Kodiaq matches the towing but only in L&K four wheel drive or vRS form, which is a lot more money, and the Santa Fe has no diesel at all and tops out at 2,000kg. The caveat is the Euro NCAP rating expiring in December 2026.

89 per cent adult occupant, 82 per cent vulnerable road user, a July 2024 rating with six years left in it, and Euro NCAP's own confirmation that it covers the plug-in too. It also has by far the widest engine choice of the three, six powertrains against three and two, so there is more chance of one of them fitting exactly what you do. You just cannot have seven seats and a plug.