It’s been a few months coming, with spy shots and specualtion abound, but it has finally been officially announced that the electric Kia Soul EV will be availabe in th US for the 2014 model year.
The latest Soul news were revealed during a media launch for the newly redesigned 2014 Kia Soul, with the South Korean automakers finally announcing that the all-electric version of the popular Soul would hit the United States sometime next year.
There is little else to report other than that, as Kia are yet to reveal pricing or specifications, making it tough to predict where it will fit or how it will fare.
CHAdeMO Quick Charge Connector
One thing that is known, thanks in large part to those spy shots and information mistakenly leaked by sources close to Kia, is that the CHAdeMo Quick Charge option is likely to be a standard feature.
What that means is that the 2014 Soul EV, much like the Nissan Leaf and Mitsubishi i, will be able to be fully charged in as little as 30 minutes.
Like the afore-mentioned ev models, the forth-coming Soul EV will also come with a J1772 (type 1) charging inlet for slower, level 2 charging.
Speculation in the industry is that the Kia Soul EV specs will be pretty much similar to waht appears on other small electric cars.
That translates to about 100 miles on a full charge, a top speed of 87 mph, and about 12 seconds to go from 0-62 mph.
In order to create a level of separation between the EV and the standard Soul, the electric model will feature a few different styling cues.
The belief is that the biggest difference will be in the aerodynamic design of the car, but may also include subtle changes to the front and rear bumpers, as well as a specially-designed rear spoiler.
As for a price? At this point we would not like to speculate, although anything below $35,000 would be considered as highly competitive pricing!
