It’s coming. The affordable Kia EV3 subcompact electric crossover has been spotted testing on the streets of the United States wearing California license plates and some black and white camouflage. (Kia, it’s time to drop the camo, we already know what the car looks like.)
The four-door EV, which is already on sale in its home market of South Korea, is expected to be priced around $30,000 to $35,000 when it officially hits U.S. dealers at the beginning of next year. Factor in the possibility that the EV3 may benefit from the $7,500 federal tax credit, and you get a sub-$30,000 battery-powered car that’s both good-looking and packs a seriously high-tech punch for its price segment.
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Kia starts testing the EV3 in the United States
Kia has officially started testing the U.S.-spec EV3 on American soil, signaling that it's actively working on what will likely become one of the most affordable new electric cars sold stateside.
Overseas, the EV3 can be had with either a 58.3-kilowatt-hour battery pack or a larger 81.4-kWh unit that’s expected to offer around 300 miles of EPA range on a full charge. The camouflaged unit in the video embedded at the top of this page, courtesy of KindelAuto, appears to be an entry-level version. That’s because it has three-module LED headlights and vertical-only taillights, whereas the upper trim levels–in South Korea, at least–come with 12-module lights at the front and rear lights that extend horizontally onto the hatch.
Sitting on a version of parent company Hyundai Motor Group’s E-GMP platform, the same underpinning the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and Kia EV9, the EV3 features a front-mounted electric motor that makes 150 kilowatts (202 horsepower), enough for a zero to 60 miles per hour sprint of 7.5 seconds. An all-wheel-drive version is in the works, but we don’t know when it will become available.
Unlike its bigger brothers which benefit from an 800-volt battery pack, allowing them to reach charging speeds of over 200 kW, the EV3 has 400V tech. That said, the peak DC charging rate is still decent at 128 kW, with Kia claiming a top-up from 10 to 80 percent state of charge can be done in under 18 minutes, which leads us to believe that the charging curve may be quite impressive.
The EV3 also gets something called i-Pedal 3.0, which is a fancy way of saying it has multiple levels of regenerative braking and one-pedal driving. It also has clever underbody protection that makes it more aerodynamic, a compact HVAC unit that’s 33% smaller than the one fitted on the Niro EV, dual screens on the dashboard and vehicle-to-load functionality as standard.
Gallery: Kia EV3 GT-Line
In Korea, the EV3 was so popular that it amassed over 10,000 reservations in less than a month, prompting the company’s boss of domestic business, Jeong Wonjeong, to call it “a game changer.”
But what about that possible tax credit eligibility? Well, multiple outlets reported that Kia is planning to build the EV3 at its Monterrey factory in Mexico for the North American market, although Kia has not confirmed or denied this. According to The Korean Car Blog, Kia set a production target of 110,000 units per year at its Mexican facility–10,000 units more than at its Gwangmyeong factory in South Korea which is responsible for assembling units for the local market, Europe and other countries.
If true, it means Kia has high hopes for its entry-level EV on American soil. It also has a chance of making the EV3 eligible for the $7,500 IRA credit, as long as the batteries follow the guidelines, thus transforming the four-door subcompact crossover into one of the most affordable, if not the most affordable new EVs in the U.S.
