Category Archives: What’s new

KIA EV3: the heart and Soul of an electric SUV

KIA’S electric car range has been rendered soul-less – but only because they’ve replaced the Soul EV with the EV3 as its smallest electric car in the range.

The newcomer sits below the Niro EV, EV6 and EV9, and you don’t have to look too hard to see a strong family resemblance between the smallest and the largest. Continue reading

KGM ACTYON: premium attention to detail

WHILE the push towards electric goes on, figures show there is still a very healthy demand for the good old internal combustion engine.

Figures for last year show that around a million motorists said ‘no thanks’ to full electric power and continued to opt for the ICE route.

With that demand very much in mind, that’s why the only option you have if you’re considering KGM’s all new Actyon is a 1.5 litre turbocharged petrol engine. Continue reading

BYD SEAL U DM-i: the ultimate Chinese takeaway for family motoring?

IT’S only been 12 months since BYD started selling their electric cars here in the UK – and now they’re branching out into the plug-in hybrid market.

I’m going to go all Michael Caine here because not a lot of people know this (it was news to me) but BYD was the first manufacturer to mass produce a PHEV back in 2008. It wasn’t exactly a success, but the game has moved on.

Continue reading

KGM TORRES EVX: it’s the same, but a bit different…

DIFFERENT week, same car. Well, not exactly, as we’re now fully electric as opposed to the petrol power of last week’s KGM Torres.

In reality, pretty well exactly the same as the petrol version sampled earlier – all that differs is what’s under the bonnet and the price. In this guise, the K40 EVX costs £47,495, so around 10k more than the similarly specced petrol variant. Continue reading

KGM TORRES ICE: an SUV to get people talking

IT might spark a bit of a love-hate ‘marmite’ moment, but there’s no denying the KGM Torres gets people talking.

Park it in the golf club car park and pretty soon you can see the surreptitious glances and before long there are people sidling up to take a closer look. Continue reading

SEAT Arona FR Limited Edition: a grey-t little SUV

SOMETHING that’s a smaller version of SEAT’s pretty decent Ateca is a car that’s heading in the right direction – onto a lot of driveways.

Since it arrived on sale in the UK, the Arona has been one of the Spanish firm’s best sellers, selling in even greater numbers than the Ibiza, on which it’s based. Continue reading

VW TIGUAN LIFE eTSI 150: best seller now a bigger proposition

THERE was no real compelling reason for Volkswagen to make wholesale changes to their popular Tiguan SUV – but that hasn’t stopped them.

Not content with over 7.5 million sales worldwide since it hit the streets, the new third generation version has been extensively revised both inside and out to make it an even better proposition for the family SUV buyer. Continue reading

KIA EV9 GT-Line: Boxing clever with latest flagship model

IN the market for a big seven seat electric car? Well, they don’t come much bigger than this.

Bigger than your average parking space (though having said that, what car isn’t these days?) Kia’s gargantuan EV9 evokes memories of the box-on-wheels Land Rover Discovery, and makes a compelling case for itself with its impressive list of standard kit and its high end electric vehicle technology. Continue reading

SUZUKI SWIFT HYBRID: evolving for its loyal followers

SWIFT by name and swift enough by nature, Suzuki’s compact supermini has a loyal following – and it’s evident that’s not likely to change much in the near future.

Despite the fact there’s still a perceived demand for small petrol cars, the best selling Ford Fiesta is no more, and other rivals to the Swift are heading down the electric only road. Continue reading