Out of Spec BITS spent a week in Canada with a 2026 Kia EV4 GT-Line Limited, and the most interesting thing about it is that Americans are not getting it. The car sits on Kia's 400-volt E-GMP platform, the version the video says was designed around building cheaper EVs across several models. The video puts it at 201 horsepower driving the front wheels, with two batteries offered, 58 kWh and 81.4 kWh, and the smaller one quicker: 7.4 seconds to 60 mph against 7.7 for the heavier long-range car. Range is put at 235 miles for the small pack and somewhere around 300 to 310 for the big one, depending on wheels. It is a fastback in North America and a hatchback in Europe.
The efficiency number is the one to write down. The video reports 15.6 kWh per 100 km on the highway at 110 km/h, which works out to roughly 25 kWh per 100 miles, or about four miles per kilowatt hour at a genuine highway cruise. For a sedan this size that is unusually good, and it is what turns an 81.4 kWh pack into a real road-trip car rather than a spec-sheet one. It also reframes the US absence. The complaint about affordable EVs is normally that nobody builds them, but this is a case of a car existing, selling well in a neighbouring market, and simply not being offered. Anyone waiting on a cheap, efficient, non-crossover EV in the States should notice that the constraint here is distribution, not engineering.
The video says the car takes an 11 kW onboard AC charger and covers 10 to 80 percent in 29 to 31 minutes depending on pack, and the host's own test ran 6 to 80 percent in 35 minutes, with a charging curve he describes as extremely flat. It has a factory J3400 port, though he argues the door opens the wrong way for a V3 Supercharger. There is no frunk, but the trunk is described as cavernous. Harman Kardon audio and the three-spoke wheel are GT-Line items. Manual battery preconditioning is there. Dog mode and camp mode are not. On value, he points to the Giga Shanghai Model 3 Premium at $37,490 Canadian as the car the EV4 has to answer, and says he would skip the GT-Line trims entirely.
Inside, the video reads as fond but not uncritical. The floor is flat, the rear seatbacks are curved and comfortable behind a driver the host puts at 5 foot 10, and there are USB-C ports in the seatbacks. He rates the wireless charger among the best he has used because a phone actually sits flat in it, and the car supports vehicle-to-load. The complaints are specific: some scratchy plastic low in the cabin, an on-off switch and drive selector he says drives him crazy across E-GMP cars, and an HVAC readout mounted where the steering wheel blocks it while driving. The infotainment is the familiar Kia and Hyundai system, which he calls fine rather than impressive. He notes the EV5 is also absent from the US, and that the PV5 van may be too.
Bottom line: Skip the GT-Line. The reviewer is right, and the reason is that the EV4's whole argument is efficiency per dollar, which a five-figure trim walk actively undermines. Buy the base long-range car, lease it, hand it back in four years. As for the US, this is the more annoying story: not a car that could not be built at the price, but one that was built and then pointed at other countries. If the complaint is that nobody makes an affordable, efficient electric sedan, Kia already did. It is parked in Canada.
Commentary on a third-party video. Figures and claims are as presented in the source and have not been independently verified. Spotted an error? Tell us and we will correct it.