10 Things I hate about you… Kia EV9 gripe #3
After 8 months and 10,000 miles, I am extremely happy with my 2024 Kia EV9 GT-Line. Nothing is perfect, though, so I’ll walk you through my top 10 gripes with the EV9:
#3 “25 standard collision-avoidance and driver assist features” aka the driver nannies
NOT FIRE. Cat ball.
The Kia EV9 product page proudly proclaims that all trims of the vehicle feature:
10 airbags, including front center head protection
25 standard collision-avoidance and driver assist features
Blind-Spot View Monitor
Kia’s newest generation Auto Emergency Braking technology
Parking Collision-Avoidance Assist, Front/Side/Rear
Highway Driving Assist 2
Remote Smart Parking Assist 2
Sounds pretty nifty. If you’ve driven almost any car made in the past 5 years (or luxury cars even older than that), you’re likely to have encountered some (or all) of these features.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the passive features of having a 360-degree camera view. Ditto on having a rear-view mirror monitor. I feel like ultrasonic parking sensors and blind-spot monitoring are basically must haves. While I’ve not needed it yet, it seems likely that auto emergency breaking will prevent or reduce the severity of rear-end collisions. So, still all good.
The other active assist technologies could use some work.
Highway Driving Assist 2 (HDA2) works great much of the time. It can reduce fatigue on long or boring drives, and it can also help keep your EV efficiency in check. It can also be a bit jerky at times, or inexplicably reduce vehicle speed suddenly - for no discernable reason. Alas, good performance 95% of the time isn’t reassuring when dealing with a 6000lb SUV.
But, let’s say that you don’t want to use HDA2… no problem, right?
Well, not exactly. The EV9s aggressive lane keeping can’t be turned off. If you live in a rural area (like I do), there are a number of instances where ambiguous lane markings, poor road surfaces, or narrow roads confuse the assistance technology. It’s not dangerous, but it is annoying to have your vehicle tugging you around when not warranted. To be clear, none of these instances have ever felt unsafe - just undesired.
Ultimately, these things diminish my confidence in the suite of assistance technologies. Perhaps unfairly, my experiences with HDA2 make me less interested in trying the parking assist. Maybe it’s my loss, but that’s the risk manufacturers run when attempting to be on the bleeding edge. Just ask Tesla*.
Speaking of asking Tesla, no conversation about Kia’s HDA2 is complete without mentioning Tesla’s Autopilot. Based on features and performance, I’d say that HDA2 is basically the same as AP1 autopilot - or the version on the Model S through part of 2016. And here we are… EIGHT years later. Sure, the Tesla was cutting-edge at the time, but that was so ever long ago…
*Ed - I’m not a hater, but I still can be honest about the dumpster fire that AP updates were, and are, from 2016 through present.
