Hardly any other car polarises as much as the Kia Soul EV, or e-Soul as it is called in Germany. No, what is meant is not even its box shape, but rather the contradictions in the car itself, light and shadows at 4.20 meters length.

There you are looking forward to a reasonable battery capacity of 64 kWh, still a moderate 3,800 Euros away from the model with a little more than half, which nobody buys anyway, and then the air resistance of the box shape absorbs something that one would urgently need with electric cars.

And the box shape does not have any adventage, because a luggage compartment of 315 litres is little despite its length of 4.20 litres. Kia uses front-wheel drive and, unlike Hyundai, does not install batteries under the luggage compartment.

Another great thing about the car is the heat pump, which is available at an extra charge. But if you look at the charging behaviour of this comparatively large battery, it's only satisfactory in the direct current range. Alternating current can only be charged at designated charging stations with max. 7.4 kW and at home even significantly less (single-phase).

Another example? That would then be the already famous guarantee of 7 years, which, we assume, saves the customer money. But how does this fit in with an inspection interval of 15,000 km, when it is emphasized everywhere that electric cars need less service?

The next example does not actually apply specifically to this car. But who can explain that the longer range can only be achieved with the more powerful and therefore more power-consuming engine. If you pay attention to the long range, you would use the smaller engine.

It will be interesting to see what will happen if one day there is the option of a smaller engine together with the greater range. But this can take a long time, because, as good as the car seems to be even on the inside, the delivery time of one year can probably only be met for vehicles already ordered, new customers have to wait longer. How does this remind us of? 05/19