2025-26 Wheels Car of the Year Top 8: Kia EV3 Air Long Range

The Kia EV3 was expected to be one of the serious contenders for Car of the Year in 2025. After all, it had already been crowned as World Car of the Year in 2025…

The EV3 looks good, with Kia’s edgy signature styling meaning it doesn’t have to just rely on its adventurous light display on the nose of another anodyne EV.

Any way you look at it, it is a landmark car for Kia and the pivot point for the brand on its battery-electric journey. If the EV3 can fire properly – it’s doing around 250 sales a month but not remotely threatening to jump to Tesla numbers, as yet – then it will become the genuine entry point for the brand as more people plug in.

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But that is a lot of ‘ifs’, with plenty of other hidden ‘buts’ and ‘maybes’… And, whether Kia fans like it or not, the EV3 didn’t even bounce to the front of the EV class in COTY ’25. The Tesla is more efficient, the Polestar is more polarising, and even the Hyundai Inster turns more heads. So, what to make of the EV3?

Kia began its electrification adventure with the EV6, and won Wheels COTY in 2022 thanks to the car’s impressive combination of efficiency, design and driving enjoyment. It was intended, from the get-go, to have a focus on the sporty side of driving – although it’s not as flat-out fun as the Hyundai IONIC 5 N which bagged its own COTY crown last year.

After the EV6 came the larger EV9 and the mid-sized EV5, aimed at Aussie families making the move to battery power with a mid-sized budget. But the latter arrived late Down Under, because the quality standards expected by Kia Australia were not achieved by the Chinese factory producing the EV5. There were plenty of complaints and noticeable changes, but it’s still not great.

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Dynamically, too, the EV5 was a let-down. Despite the best efforts of Aussie suspension guru Graeme Gambold, it is heavy and ponderous, and not nearly as enjoyable on the driving front as the EV6. Or plenty of other EV hopefuls…

Now it’s time for the EV3 and this year’s COTY contest. As background before heading into testing, it was understood the EV3 is a good car in the give-and-go of normal family motoring. It is quiet, nicely comfy, and has good range even with the basic battery and motor. At COTY, it was one of six full EV runners in this year’s judging, not as small or cheap as the Inster, or as big and costly as the IM5.

Still, it’s nicely priced and the size is good. A claimed range of 604km for the long-range battery pack also makes an impressive impact and shows where all EV contenders need to be headlining. There are three model grades – Air, Earth and GT-Line – with two battery sizes and a choice of front or all-wheel drive. None of that stuff is unusual in the EV world, where shoppers are often looking for the best package for their individual needs.

The starting price is good enough for Kia and Korea, at $47,600, but even the sub-$50k opener is not a serious threat to the Chinese brands who are making the big numbers in showrooms. It also costs $53,315 to jump up to the sweet spot in the range – the EV3 Air model with long-range package. Going all-in on the dual-motor and all-wheel drive GT-Line can take the price beyond $65,000. Which is a lot.

And that means it must compete with Tesla, never an easy job despite the downturn in support for Elon Musk’s cars through 2025.

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The mid-level Air Long Range is the car for COTY and the headline numbers are an impressive 604km of claimed range, 150kW/283Nm in the engine room, and an 81.4kWh lithium-ion battery.

Kia claims 7.4 seconds to run to 100, fair enough, but it also weighs in at 1930kg and that’s a lot to be moving around. It’s a 5-Star safety car and comes with a seven-year warranty, which also applies to the battery.

Taking a more considered look at the EV3, it does stand out in the long line of COTY SUVs because Kia’s latest design language is a definite attempt to present something different in an ocean of big boxes.

Inside, it’s clean and minimalistic – although not as plain as a Polestar or Tesla – with nice low lip to the windscreen that means good forward visibility. Kia has made great use of the space between the comfy front seats as, unlike the confusing ‘bench seat’ in the larger EV5, there is a giant storage bin.

The EV3 ticks all the usual boxes for USB charging and has a well-integrated dashboard display that blends two screens into a single display. Thankfully, not everything is hidden in a touch screen.

But the ADAS systems can be intrusive, which is a surprise after the work Kia has been putting into calibrating the driver-assistance package in other models. Some even have a one-touch ‘kill’ button for the really annoying stuff, but not in the EV3. It’s a nice place to sit, with cabin and boot space similar to the combustion Seltos in the Kia range, again, like just about every other EV in the class.

Dynamically, the EV3 is a disappointment at Lang Lang. It feels heavy from the get-go, with over-sporty suspension settings on a vehicle – without the GT-Line aspirations – which is aimed at daily commuting and family holidays.

It also takes encouragement, too much encouragement, to lean into corners and – despite sitting flat with its big battery – is not engaging or enjoyable. Push it to find the limit and it refuses to answer the steering with any enthusiasm.

Over Lang Lang’s lumps and bumps, it also judders and shimmies. They might be extreme conditions, but everything in testing is copied from the real world. And so, just like that, the EV3 is sidelined from its top three aspirations.

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