What Kia Got Right (And Wrong) With the 2015 Soul EV

Join the discussion on Huffington Post Tech and tell me what you agree/disagree with or what you would add!

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Kia did an exceptionally good engineering job for their first EV. I've had mine for one year, and would never go back to 'infernal combustion'.

There is one feature that it lacks, and one that could stand improvement:

1- No daytime running lights. The LED array above each headlight would make excellent DRL's, but Kia must have been worried about the constant current draw. Didn't think LED's drew that much power.

2- Regenerative braking needs an increase. Should be able to stop the car without using the brake pedal. The built-in 'idle creep' we're accustomed to on combustion cars with auto transmission really is unnecessary on an EV.

1- "No daytime running lights." - It depends on where you live. For me the LED array above each headlight is an excellent DRL.

2 - "Regenerative braking needs an increase." Agreed. The new Ioniq EV has an option for this. Would be great to get it on the Soul EV as a software upgrade.

1. No washers for the headlights. Here in Norway where they use salt on the roads and we use spikes in our tires, it all leads to bad visibility on the headlights.

2. Cuise control: Should be adaptive like on the VW Golf electric.

3. There should be an option to charge only to 80% when pluggin in the charger without using the timer. Ideally, it would be best if one could set the %, like for instance 60%.

4. More information in the display from the battery, like how much you have regenerated in one trip.

5. The latch door in front of the charging connectors tends to freeze up during the winter.

6. The ability to use "defrost rear" option when plugged in. This way, the side mirrors would be free of ice when getting in the car to drive.

7. The lack of a usefull app to start/stop charging, see status and run the climate control remote.

What they got right:

Everything else

Why did they remove the fold down armrest in the back? I thought I remembered seeing it on the gas version and then one day I told my kids in the back to fold it down and they were like "fold what down". I thought I was just confused.

Also agree with the regenerative braking and it would be nice to have an option where it would actually stop the vehicle and not have to constantly be switching pedals between 4 and 10 MPH.

Just picked up my Soul today, so I have little to add. But I do want to say I like the pickiness of previous posters' complaints. Nothing too bad (though I live in warm Los Angeles, not snowy/salty Norway). I love the idea of a software upgrade to allow full stopping through regenerative braking (as with the BMW i3). Any techies out there with a guess as to whether that's possible?

Ok they need to fix the scheduled charging or "reserved charging" feature big time.

The off peak charging times from my utility provider is 7pm to 7am m-f and all day on weekends. So naturally I set the schedule to start at 7pm m-f and 12am on weekends.

Wednesday night when I get home and plug in the trickle charger at around 8pm I see the middle charging light flash which means reserved charging is activated. How can this be? I double checked to make sure my clock was correct and that I didn't mix up AM and PM. Everything was fine. I pressed the bypass timer button and charging started.

As it turns out reserved charging only works if you're plugged in before the scheduled start time. Why the hell?????? So if you miss the start time you need to bypass. But like Birkeland mentioned you can't set a charging threshold when not using a schedule and it will charge up to 100%. If you need to unplug or disconnect after reserved charging starts you need to use the override mode to continue charging. But here's a disastrous scenario... You plug in the car at 6:30pm. At 7pm charging starts. But at around 8pm there's a brief power outage but power is restored quickly. Maybe you didn't notice it because it was so quick. But due to the interruption, the charging was stopped then started again when power restored. But instead of charging, the car goes into reserve charge mode. You wake up for work and the car got 2km worth of charge.

This is a serious design flaw in my opinion that needs to change or get fixed.

As it turns out reserved charging only works if you're plugged in before the scheduled start time. Why the hell?????? So if you miss the start time you need to bypass.

Click to expand...

I'm not happy about that either, but scheduling works the exact same on the Leaf and other EVs, too. If there's a compelling reason why, I would like to hear it.