Kia isn’t planning on bringing the small city car to the US anytime soon. What a shame.
Kia isn’t planning on bringing the small city car to the US anytime soon. What a shame.
is transportation editor with 10+ years of experience who covers EVs, public transportation, and aviation. His work has appeared in The New York Daily News and City & State.
Kia unveiled the EV2, a small and affordably priced electric vehicle built for the European market. The EV2 made its debut at the Brussels Auto Show, where executives touted it as its “most compact” EV to date.
Of course, it was another in a long line of affordable, capable, and impressively designed EVs that won’t be available to US customers — at least not right away. And it arrives at a time when Europeans have many affordable options from which to chose, potentially complicating Kia’s strategy for the EV2.
The EV2 will come in two trims: a Standard-range version, with 42.2kWh battery pack and 317 km (197 miles) of range based on the WLTP cycle; and a Long-range trim, with 61kWh pack and over 440 km (273 miles) of range. The Standard-range EV2 will accelerate from 0-100 km/s in 8.7 seconds, while the Long-range will do the same in 9.5 seconds.
The EV2 has a crisp, squared-off profile with sleek surfaces, tall, upright proportions, and signature LED daytime running lights front and rear, in a clear reflection of Kia’s current design direction. When it arrives, it will slot beneath the EV3 and EV4, the latter of which is scheduled to go into production ahead of the EV2. And like the EV3, the EV2 will be built on a scaled-backed version of Hyundai’s Electric Global Modular Platform (E-GMP) platform in order to keep costs down.
That means a 400-volt architecture, rather than an 800-volt one for quicker fast-charging. Kia says both versions of the EVs will fast-charge from 10-80 percent in 30 minutes, which is a bit pokier when compared to 20-25 minutes it takes the EV6 and EV9 to do the same. And in a first for Kia, the EV2 will support both 11kW and 22kW AC charging, in a nod to the predominant form of charging in Europe. The EV2 also supports bidirectional charging, as well as vehicle-to-load and vehicle-to-grid charging.
But just because the EV2 is small and unluxurious doesn’t mean it won’t have a few bells and whistles. Kia is stocking its new model with a bevy of ADAS features, like adaptive cruise control and automatic emergency braking, as well as remote smart parking, enabling owners to park their vehicles from the outside by using the key fob.
Kia says the standard-range model will go into production at its factory in Slovakia starting in February 2026, followed by the longer-range version and GT trims in June 2026. That, plus American car shoppers’ apparent disdain for small cars, means the EV2 is unlikely to go on sale here. It’s a shame, too. Americans would likely respond favorably to a $20,000 EV, as the EV2 is estimated to cost.
Images via Kia