Our Kia EV9 Charges Like a Champ—So Long as You Avoid Tesla Superchargers

Take a road trip in an electric car, and you’ll quickly realize it’s not an EV’s range but the charging experience that makes the difference between smooth sailing or choppy waters. Our long-term 2024 Kia EV9 Land covers 270 miles at a steady 70 mph in MotorTrend’s Road-Trip Range test and regularly outlasts its occupants in real-world use—especially when toddlers are in tow.

The key to keeping both parents and kids from melting down is making sure the stops don’t drag out into interminable waits. In the first four months with our Detroit-based EV9, long-distance travel has been almost painless thanks to the Kia’s quick charging, our own advanced planning on PlugShare, and the improving fast-charging infrastructure.

There are a lot of reasons to be optimistic about the future of EV road-tripping right now, most notably that Tesla is opening the largest and most reliable fast-charging network to other automakers. But for Kia EV9 owners, Tesla Superchargers may not be the savior we’re all hoping for. They may actually end up slowing down a road trip.

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Faster Than Your Average Four-Year-Old

When everything works as designed, the Kia EV9 is a fast-charging champ. Plugged into a 350-kW Electrify America charger, our long-termer replenished 134 miles of 70-mph driving range in 15 minutes and 225 miles after 30 minutes in MotorTrend’s fast-charging test.

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If you think a half hour is long for a fuel stop, you clearly aren’t familiar with how much time a toddler needs to wash their hands. (A minimum of six minutes procrastinating followed by 30 seconds to actually do the task and then at least three minutes to needle you with an unintentionally profound question, if you were wondering.) Without fail, every time we’ve stopped on a family road trip, the EV9 has been ready to hit the road before the kids.

The EV9’s fast-charging performance would be impressive for any EV, but it’s outstanding for a boxy, three-row SUV. The miles-of-range-added metric is based on both the amount of energy pushed into the battery pack and the vehicle’s energy efficiency when driving. In our testing database, the only EVs to accumulate more range in the same amount of time are either slippery sedans like the Lucid Air or low-profile compact crossovers like the Kia EV6.

How does Kia do it? The EV9’s official peak charging rate of 210 kilowatts isn’t anything special. Rivian, Tesla, Lucid, and GM’s EV trucks can suck down power quicker, and even the cheaper EV6 charges at up to 235 kW. But just like road-tripping an EV isn’t really about range, charging an EV isn’t really about peak power. In MotorTrend’s fast-charging test, the EV9 sustained a blazing 185-kW average between 5 and 80 percent.

Our long-term Tesla Model Y, by comparison, maxed out at 254 kW but only averaged 116 kW while charging from 5 to 80 percent. As a result, the Tesla needed an extra 6 minutes to charge a battery pack that’s 15 percent smaller. A big peak power number might earn an automaker bragging rights, but sustained power and economical efficiency get drivers home quicker.

Things Get Plugged Up

Unfortunately, even the quickest-charging EVs are only as good as the public charging infrastructure they rely on, and although it’s improving, the U.S. still has a long way to go to provide EV drivers with reliable and abundant charging options. On the Sunday afternoon of Labor Day weekend, I set off from northern Michigan knowing I needed a 10-minute top-up to make it home, so I aimed the EV9 toward the one 350-kW charger along my route. When I arrived, I dropped my wife and kids off at a burger joint and crossed the parking lot to the Electrify America station only to find all four chargers in use and two EVs queued up ahead of me.

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For 37 minutes, I paced around and enviously stared at the adjacent Tesla Supercharger station, which never saw more than three cars sharing its eight stalls. You couldn’t make a more convincing advertisement for buying a Tesla if you had the Pentagon’s budget.

After plugging in, I hoofed it to the fast-food joint where I ate a cold sandwich (ordered 40 minutes earlier) and monitored the EV9 charging well below its capabilities from my phone. Electrify America used to be notorious for broken chargers and fickle software that either refused to start charging or stopped in the middle of a session. Anecdotally, those days seem to be behind us, but the U.S.’s second-largest fast-charging operator still has issues with equipment that routinely struggles to deliver the requested power.

Superchargers Won’t Save Kia

Superchargers are supposed to be the cure for these kinds of fast-charging woes, at least in the short term. As Tesla opens its network to competitors, Ford, Rivian, and GM drivers have gained access to more than 15,000 plugs that deliver reliable power with no fuss.

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Kia vehicles won’t connect to most Superchargers before January 2025, but you can get a taste of what’s to come by plugging an EV9 into one of Tesla’s newer Magic Dock Superchargers today. It’s not the charging experience we were hoping for.

In the first 15 minutes, a Supercharger adds less than half the energy of a 350-kW Electrify America station, delivering just 60 miles of range. Instead of the impressive 185-kW average we observed during our original fast-charging test, the EV9 putters along at a constant 84 kilowatts from 5 percent beyond 80 percent. This is not a fluke or a fault with the charging session—this is exactly what’s supposed to happen.

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Ironically, the EV9 slows down on Tesla’s 250-kW Superchargers for the same reason it’s so quick on 350-kW fast chargers. The EV9’s larger battery pack charges at around 552 volts, which means it requires less current to charge the Kia at 210 kilowatts than it does to deliver the same power to a 400-volt Tesla or Rivian. Lower current means less heat, and less heat means you can zap the battery with higher power for longer.

The problem is Superchargers max out at 500 volts and you can only push electricity into a battery by matching its voltage. That the 552-volt EV9 can charge at all using Tesla’s stations is a modern engineering marvel. Kia has cleverly wired its motors so that they can step up 500-volt charging stations to match the pack’s voltage, but the power is limited to that 84-kW ceiling. When Tesla flips the switch that allows Kia vehicles to access some 15,000 fast chargers, EV9 owners will have to choose between slower but entirely predictable Superchargers or less reliable 350-kW units that have the potential to trim a bunch of time off a road trip.

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In theory, Tesla’s fourth-generation chargers should solve this problem—they’re designed to deliver up to 1,000 volts and 350 kW of power like the most powerful Electrify America and EVgo stations. But the few V4 Superchargers that have been installed in the U.S. so far are all wired to last-generation V3 power cabinets, limiting their output to the same old 500-volt and 250-kW peaks.

Realistically, if Kia wants to give its customers the charging experience they deserve—one that consistently highlights how fast the EV9 charges—it needs to follow Tesla’s lead and take more control over the infrastructure. The company is doing just that as one of eight automakers backing the next great hope for EV fast-charging, a joint venture called Ionna that’s promising to install 30,000 chargers at locations modeled after gas stations starting later this year. By having a say in the hardware and software that powers Ionna, Kia will soon be a nationwide network of abundant, reliable, high-power chargers to flaunt the EV9’s capabilities.

For More on Our Long-Term 2024 Kia EV9 Land:

• Can the 2024 Kia EV9 Electric SUV Replace a Gas-Powered Family Hauler?
• We Downloaded More Torque and New Features for Our Kia EV9. Was It Worth the Cost?

Seats are comfortable over the long haulPortable charging cord doesn’t plug into 240-volt outlets