Kia officially launched the 2025 Ray EV in Korea with the same low starting price of under $21,000. However, the new model year gains additional features. With incentives, the entry-level electric car can be bought for as little as $15,000 (20 million won).
The “New Kia Ray” was reborn as an entry-level EV last year. After opening pre-orders last August, starting at around $20,500 (27.35 million won), the Kia Ray EV secured over 6,000 reservations in less than a month.
Nice design, but only goes about 100 miles to the charge. That’s unacceptable in today’s market. It will go even fewer miles with additional passengers and the air conditioning turned on. I’d imagine they put a small battery in it to hit that lower price point.
It’s for the Korean market. It’ll get you from Seoul to the east coast on a single charge and there’s high-speed rail just about everywhere for your longer journeys. Perfectly fine for most people in such a small, densely-populated country.
That’s fine but people elsewhere shouldn’t get too excited about it. When the price is listed in US dollars as some sort of bargain instead of the currency where it’s sold, it gets misleading.
Oh Christ why is it so ugly
I thought the box-shaped car fad died out 10 years ago
Not in Asia. Still very trendy in a lot of countries here. Might be ugly outside, but it sure optimizes size and comfort inside.
For that reason I’m annoyed at large SUVs losing their boxiness in recent years. Like, I get it for sedans and stuff, but if I’m driving a big SUV my main concern is utility (you know, the U in SUV) and a curved back side makes it that much harder to fit my grandma’s kitchen table in the back when I give it to my cousin.
I’m still too broke for that. Can I just steal one with a stick with the end shaved to be approximately the same dimensions as a usb A connector?
No, no no. They fixed opting not to put a cheap anti theft device in a decade of cars by “updating software” and installing “dont steal this” window stickers. Some lucky devils that couldn’t get software got a new metal ring in their steering column, and then a sticker. You could even go to your local police department in some locations and get a free, ridiculously useless steering wheel lock, if you heard about it. Mail them to customers? Nah, that might cost money.
Dont worry, they only did this in the US. Every other nation has laws about having an immobilizer in cars, but not the good ol’ USA. Kia even had them in the same models sold elsewhere, just not the US models.
It only affected about 1 million people so far though, who have at best had to go in and have a half ass fix applied at a dealership while being upsold. That just leaves 7 million unprotected cars out there.
At worst, whats a few thousand stolen cars and even more shattered windows among friends? Surely no fine or penalty should occur.
Ohh, also, the software update doesn’t seem to be working.
120ish miles range is more than enough for majority of us drivers despite what people think. Yes long trip will require recharge (which will be quick with tiny battery) or a second car.
This is the near term EV future we should strive for vs expensive, heavy, and environmentally painful 300+ mi SUV and truck.
Alternative is PHEV+range extender like that byd truck
As someone who drove an original fiat 500e with a similar range, I can assure you this is not enough battery for anywhere but the market it’s designed for (South Korea). You will eat through that “best estimate” of 120 miles in a day’s worth of driving, especially with additional passengers and the AC running.
The average US daily drive is less than 40 miles. Accounting for outliers and a margin, let’s conservatively say 60 miles. That’s still probably more than most average commutes.
That’s half the best case rated mileage, which is for sure more than the “realistic” mileage with a full vehicle and A/C running. There’s no way that would reduce it by half, even from the best case rating.
You’re going to get 100 miles of real world range out of that 120 rating. Then you will lose 20 for running the AC. That’s 80 miles. If you add passengers, that’s another 20 you will lose. You’re now down to 60 miles of range. Better hope your commute is under 30 miles each way and that you don’t have to stop for groceries or something on the way home. Also that last 20 miles of battery power, the car is going to go into power saving mode and will turn off the AC.
That’s not enough to make it to the next major city over in some parts of the US ; sure for a daily driver commute vehicle with a charger at each end that’s great, but if you have to leave for any reason (such as say, a natural disaster like a hurricane that just hit), you’re fucked. Having to own multiple vehicles isn’t a solution, or an option for many.
It was found recently that most trips were less than three miles, with only 2% of all trips made are more than 50 miles.
Obviously people often don’t drive very far for work or shopping, but many do maybe every weekend or once or twice per month take a longer trip to visit family or for leisure.
The car needs to be able to handle that, without being a huge pain to have to charge all the time.
The idea that 90% of trips are short is a moronic argument for selling EV with small batteries, unless people have multiple cars, which most people don’t unless they need to, and even then short range can be a problem, because dependency on the cars, means that both cars need to be able to fulfill the required tasks.
Edit:
Funny how this is downvoted, when mostly everybody agree the FIAT 500 sell badly because it has too little range for the price.
Even if only a few percent are short trips, it’s a pain to have to charge multiple times on a single trip occasionally, like once per week.
Visiting family out of town every weekend is 104 trips a year. Commuting each work day is 520 trips. That’s 16% of all those trips that are long distance.
Once you add in the grocery getting; the drives to school (only 10% of children walk or ride bikes); the doctors appointments; the local leisure related trips; I can see how 90% of trips could be short range - and that’s still accounting for taking a long weekly trip, which I don’t think most people do.
From the way you wrote, “The car needs to be able to handle that, without being a huge pain to charge all the time,” gives me the impression you don’t like electric vehicles and might not be open to any of these conversations without it turning into an argument. I could be misinterpreting your tone, and if so I apologise, but I don’t think the content nor the conclusion of that study should be called moronic.
That number is a little misleading as it counts every stop as a “new trip.” I could leave my house and drive 60 miles, stopping every 10 minutes, and they’d count that as 20 trips of 3 miles or less. Meanwhile a car with a 120 mile range probably wouldn’t have enough juice to make it back home depending on how far away my last stop is from the house.
Multiple stays of longer than 10 minutes before returning home were counted as multiple trips
I see your point, though my own experience is similar to @PriorityMotif@lemmy.world, and perhaps just as anecdotal as yours, is that people more often take trips that are A-B-A, A-C-A, A-D-A, than they do A-B-C-D-A.
I suppose it’s just a matter of convenience or time constraints, but running more errands in one trip is an overall time save in many occurrences, and more people should do that.
Makes me wonder how many of these ‘trips’ are one stop then back home and is many contain multiple stops. Or if it would drastically change the average to remove the multiple stop trips.
Thanks for raising that point, I hadn’t considered it before.
@lurker8008 @MyOpinion Mazda offers a series hybrid PHEV+range extender just not ever in Canada. I had a hard time sourcing new winter tires for my Fit because there is no Canadian market for small tires anymore.
(which will be quick with tiny battery) <
This is where you’re wrong.
Charging is not linear. EV’s battery only fast charging to about 80%, after that it would halt to a crawl. It would take way less time to charge a 60kWh battery from 20% to 70% (50% = 30kWh) than it would take to charge a 30kWh battery from 0% to 100%.
@lurker8008 @MyOpinion a lot of people have 2 cars so there is definitely scope for a smaller vehicle for around town.
This is the near term EV future we should strive for vs expensive, heavy, and environmentally painful 300+ mi SUV and truck.
Even for the 300+mi vehicles we should be striving for sedans and wagons, not SUVs and trucks. Less weight and height means a better combination of handling and ride quality. There’s a good reason Mercedes charges you more for the S-Class sedan than the bigger, heavier GLS-Class SUV. The former is optimized for luxury, the latter they market as the “S-Class of SUVs”, but really, it’s optimized for size. This is despite the fact that usually there’s a “SUV tax”. SUVs just cost more than their equivalent sedans and wagons.
why are stupid looking cars so fashionable now?
