Kia EV4 Hatchback Review 2025

Given the ever-expanding proliferation of electric SUVs of various sizes, you’d be forgiven for assuming that car manufacturers were abandoning conventional compact family hatchbacks and saloons altogether. Yet rumours of more traditional bodystyles’ demise are greatly exaggerated it seems, especially if the all-new Kia EV4 Hatchback is anything to go by.

Up to this point the electric-only, EV-prefixed models from Kia have all been SUVs, albeit with differing levels of slinkiness. There’s a svelte athleticism about the Kia EV6 that’s replaced by upright stoutness when it comes to the dinkier Kia EV3. All that’s about to change with the introduction of the Kia EV4.

Highlighting its significance within the company is the fact that the five-door Kia EV4 will be built in the firm’s European plant in Slovakia, ousting the combustion-engined Kia Ceed from the production lines in the process. That car’s replacement will in future be sourced from Mexico.

Although its angular styling ensures a very strong family resemblance to the EV3, Kia’s ensured that the EV4 isn’t simply the same design rehashed in a lower, longer form. Its LED headlights are more slender, almost appearing to be intakes in the front wing edges designed to smooth airflow around the front wheels.

Towards the back, the Kia EV4 Hatchback is less perpendicular, the slope of the rear windscreen combined with the aerodynamic hood mounted at roof level, ensuring it cleaves the air with range-boosting efficiency. Elsewhere you’ll find sharply defined flaring over the front and rear wheels that conspire to make it look more planted, even lower to the ground than it really is.

We’ll reserve judgement about the gloss black band that loops over the EV4 Hatchback’s roof from the rearmost edge of the side windows. A similar feature appears in even more striking form on the Korean-built Kia EV4 Saloon we’ll review separately — it shares the Hatchback’s bodywork up to the back doors, where it continues into a long, sloping tail with a short bootlid.

As seems to be Kia’s wont in recent years, the EV4 certainly makes a statement, even when its bodywork is finished in more subdued tones. There’s a muscularity about it that serves to make one of its key rivals, the Volkswagen ID.3, appear to be even softer than before, plus there’s far more of a presence about the Kia than there is with the Citroen e-C4 and the Vauxhall Astra Electric.

Once inside the Kia EV4 Hatchback the theme’s far sleeker and more elegant, almost to the point of appearing to be slightly at odds with the chiselled exterior bodywork. Atop the dashboard is a pair of screens — the touch variety for the infotainment screen in the centre — neatly combined within a single 30.0-inch panel. Although there’s a bar of fixed, touch-sensitive shortcut buttons below it, Kia continues to champion the cause with plenty of physical buttons, switches and rollers, including to alter the temperature of the dual-zone climate control system. Other manufacturers take note.

There’s space inside the Kia EV4 Hatchback for five passengers, although it’ll likely be a more comfortable experience for four, particularly if you have a couple of child seats mounted to the Isofix points on the outer rear seats. Boot space with the rear seats in place is provisionally quoted at 435 litres, significantly trumping the Astra Electric’s 352-litre tally and comfortably ahead of the VW ID.3’s 385-litre capacity.

Details about the Kia EV4 Hatchback’s electric drive system options are still rather vague at the moment. So far Kia’s confirmed that a front-mounted 204PS motor will be fitted from launch with a choice of a 58.3kWh Standard Range battery and an 81.4kWh Long Range alternative. They mirror the choices fitted to the EV3 which it shares its underpinnings with.

When fitted with the larger capacity battery, Kia’s provisional WLTP Combined cycle claim for the EV4 is 391 miles between recharges. We expect the smaller standard range version to be around 290 miles. Similarly, Kia’s yet to confirm recharge times for the EV4, but in the EV3 the Standard Range requires 29 minutes for a 10%-80% replenishment using a 350kW DC charger, while the Long Range needs 31 minutes to do the same.

Given the trim level hierarchy elsewhere in the range, it seems a safe bet that the entry-level EV4 Air will have a choice of Standard and Long Range batteries, while the latter will be the sole choice for the more sportily styled GT-Line and GT-Line S versions.

Pricing and exact specifications for UK market Kia EV4 Hatchback models won’t be revealed until early summer 2025, with the first cars reaching customers before the end of the year. All versions benefit from the additional reassurance of Kia’s seven-year/100,000-mile warranty.

Keep this page bookmarked further news on this important new range and to read our forthcoming full and comprehensive Kia EV4 Hatchback review in the months ahead.