Saw a Kia Soul EV today in Fullerton

I'm taking summer classes at Cal State Fullerton and drive a Chevy Spark EV.
I was leaving my class at 8:30pm and went to unplug my car from the charging stations we have there and happened upon a Kia Soul EV who was using the Chademo fast charger we have in our lot. Since I knew that the car wasn't publicly available yet I decided to strike up a conversation with the man in the vehicle, waiting for his car to charge.
He told me that he worked for a automotive testing/research company and that they have been testing out the Soul EV for the last few weeks but that he couldn't get into specifics.
This particular car had a white roof but still had the cool looking hubcabs. I asked him what kind of range he was getting and he told me that they were told 120miles is max range but he gets less because he usually drives it on freeways at 65+mph. He said his buddy drives slower and has gotten up to 105 miles with a few left on the battery before. I'm guessing that he doesn't have a charging station installed at his house or maybe just doesn't like to wait because I've seen pictures of the same car on Plugshare before. He told me that it's his daily driver for couple months, I guess until it goes public, and that he likes the car so far.
Anyways, just figured I'd let everyone here know that there's a Soul EV that frequents CSUF's Chademo chargers, if I see him again I'll take some pictures and try to get more information out of him! :lol:

Thanks for letting us know! I figured that with their 27 kWh battery that 100 miles would be no problem if driven right.

Sited the same guy again! Here are some pictures




As you can see the car has Michigan manufacturer plates.
I talked to him about fast charging and he said that today he was charging on our Chademo for 25 minutes and got to 87 miles charge, not sure how low he was when he pulled in. He said that LEAF owners talk to him all the time and he also charges at the Mitsubishi Chademo all the time but prefers CSUF. Essentially all he does is drive, drive, drive I think I saw around 55,000 miles on his odometer :shock: but it was a quick glance so it could have been 5500 :?: . I'll try and get a better look at the dash and see if I can get some numbers on range and efficiency. I did see a rearview camera with the distance lines for parking shown on the main lcd screen looked about 7" in size. He said his company was based out of Carson and I saw a big thick binder that said PS Soul EV and had a hyundai logo on it. Looked like some kind of journal or ledger. Seems like he's here quite a lot so I'll continue to update you guys!

Also, if you have any specific questions you want me to try and ask I'll be happy to try and get the answers!

Thanks so much for posting the pictures. It's interesting that it is all white. I wouldn't mind testing one for them here in the east!

Mike

Thank you mister FBI Spy I'd love to see pictures from the inside, the screens and the efficiency. Keep talking to him and offer him coffee

Chaconzies said:

Also, if you have any specific questions you want me to try and ask I'll be happy to try and get the answers!

Click to expand...

Hey Chaconzies!
I've seen this Soul around the neighborhood(I live in Torrance) but I've never seen the driver around. Would you mind asking him some questions?

1.How far has he gone on the freeway? Has he tried going to SD in the car by using the eVgo station in Carlsbad?
On that note has he tried getting on the 405S via the 110N with the car? Given the quite slow rated 0-60mph time of the Soul and how fast people drive on the 405 I would imagine that interchange is really tricky given you only have a couple of miles to get out of the rightmost lane before it dumps you onto surface streets.
2.From what I've seen on the Kia press website regarding the car and online,the "Supervision instrument cluster" (ie:the screen between the speedometer and the charging meter)unlike the ICE "!"doesn't have a menu for showing navigation instructions on the screen(it's that arrow that's pointing right on the second picture) nor does the Kia supplied video that goes through all the features of the car show it. Does his car have the menu for showing the nav instructions in the cluster? Nav is apparently standard so I find the omission odd.
3. Does using the "driver only" button for climate control really reduce climate control power usage by a significant amount? It sounds like a bit of a gimmick to me!
4. Is his the cloth or leather interior? (I suspect it's the leather interior as there are no pictures of the cloth model on the intertubes) How is the cloth interior?
5. How is road noise?
6. Did they provide him with a UVO EV app? If so does it work well?

honestly the biggest questions I have involve leasing residuals(to be fair Kia Motors and Hyundai are pretty aggressive about leases) and how the base and + models are going to be equipped and priced but I doubt he knows about all that haha.
not to mention given the 5000 unit sales target and the $40k price in SK I suspect the only companies that will be worried about the pricing will be MB and BMW :roll:

btw Chaconzies if you're ever down in the south bay I would be floored if I could take a moment to chat with you about your Spark EV!

Alright I've finished classes now, but I was able to run into the test guy once more. It was a short encounter but here's what I got.

1. He and another individual switch off 10 hour shifts where all they do is drive the car all day with breaks for charging (Chademo) and lunch.
2. He told me that their test period was coming to an end but that they were going to request a few more months with the soul ev because they wanted to get to 80,000 miles
3. He said that acceleration felt pretty quick, definitely quicker than the average economy vehicle. But they always drive in eco+ mode or something.

That was all I was able to discuss before I had to go back in class. The dude is at the CSUF Chademo chargers all the time around 6pm.
Anyways, I was really impressed with those numbers and I think it shows that the car's battery is well tested against battery pack degradation even when constantly fast charging and driving all day.

Thanks for the updates and we appreciate any info we can get right now.