Let’s be honest: in the electric car world you’ve got the heavyweight champions that thunder across continents like overweight cruise ships, and then you’ve got the cheeky lightweights that don’t bother with heroics. They just slip through traffic with a smirk that says, “I fit anywhere and I’m loving every second of it.” Meet the Kia EV2, a pocket-sized rebel that’s coming to conquer the urban jungle without emptying your life savings. As someone who’s been banging the electric drum for years (because really, why keep choking on fumes when silence and instant torque are basically free?), I’m properly excited. This isn’t a bellowing supercar; it’s a clever daily sidekick, and that’s exactly why it’s brilliant.
The EV2 is Kia’s latest weapon in the battle for affordable electric mobility. This isn’t some bloated American land-barge; it’s a proper European job, designed and built in Slovakia for our narrow streets and spiteful parking spaces. It slots into the B-segment, the happy hunting ground of small crossovers where the Peugeot e-2008, the upcoming Volkswagen ID.2 and its Korean cousin the Hyundai Inster slug it out. The EV2 turns up with a wink and a promise to cause delightful havoc.
Gliding through the morning crawl without barging anyone out of the way is its party trick. Under the floor sits a single electric motor good for 113 hp and 147 Nm, enough to fire you from 0 to 50 km/h faster than your kettle boils, and without waking the neighbours. Sharing its DNA with the Inster, it keeps front-wheel drive, stays lively and predictable, perfect for nipping past dawdling diesels on the ring road. Two battery choices: 42 kWh for around 300 km of real-world range or 49 kWh to nudge closer to 350 km. It’s not going to win any hypermiling awards, but who honestly commutes from London to Lisbon in a city car? This is built for the school run, the coffee dash and the emergency chip-shop detour, and it’ll do all of that without breaking a sweat.
On the outside it follows Kia’s Opposites United design language: a face that says “I’m tough but I’m friendly.” Up front you get the Star Map lighting signature with vertical LED bars that look like they’re winking at you from another galaxy. Boxy body, black plastic cladding around the wheel arches, a stance that suggests it could handle a muddy festival car park if it ever felt the urge. Roughly four metres long, wide enough to feel planted, narrow enough to squeeze into spaces that would make a Range Rover driver weep. And the rear doors? On the concept they open backwards like a posh Rolls-Royce, perfect for chucking kids and shopping in without doing yoga. Whether that survives to production is anyone’s guess, but I’m keeping everything crossed.
Inside, it’s rather good fun. Kia calls it an “urban picnic” vibe and, weirdly, they’re not wrong. Minimal dashboard, big central screen that swallows wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, over-the-air updates so your car gets better while it’s parked outside, seats that fold flat in all sorts of clever ways, vehicle-to-load so you can run the campsite kettle off it, panoramic glass roof option, and, wait for it, removable speakers in the headrests. Four adults fit without starting a civil war, and the whole cabin feels like someone actually thought about real life instead of just copying the competition.
Price? Brace yourself: around €30,000 for the entry model, probably under €25,000 once the grants kick in. That’s less than you’ll spend on petrol in two years with an equivalent petrol clown shoe, plus you get Kia’s seven-year warranty that basically laughs in the face of breakdowns. World premiere: 9 January 2026 at the Brussels Motor Show, where it will stroll in looking innocent and steal the entire show.
Why does this little thing make my pro-EV heart beat faster? Because it proves electric cars are no longer toys for tech billionaires or tree-huggers with trust funds. This is proper democratisation on wheels: clean, quiet, absurdly cheap to run. No more petrol-station queues, no more carbon guilt, just driving pleasure that saves you money and gives the planet a breather. In cities that are choking on traffic, the EV2 is the antidote we’ve been waiting for. It’s taking the streets back, one impossible parking space at a time, and making every journey just that little bit more enjoyable.
Ready to join the uprising? Head over to our marketplace where you can browse and buy 100 % electric cars without the usual nonsense. Jump in at https://volty.be/nl/buy/cars/overview/.
