Hyundai used the 2024 Los Angeles Auto Show to reveal the Kia EV9-twinned Ioniq 9 electric people carrier. But over at Kia, the sister company unleashed its most powerful family-oriented vehicle to date in the form of the 501-horsepower EV9 GT.
Before going any further, we should address the proverbial elephant in the room. 501 ponies isn't big power in this day and age, not when the EV6 GT develops a Hyundai Ioniq 5 N-matching 641 horsepower and 568 pound-feet (770 Newton-meters) of twist for model year 2025. But that's not all.
Customers in the market for a three-row electric thriller will have to wait until the second half of 2025 for the 2026 model year for the EV9 GT to reach showrooms. While it gets a NACS charge port like all other versions of the EV9, the GT will be exclusively assembled in South Korea, meaning that prospective customers will not be able to claim the $7,500 federal tax credit.
Instead of the look-at-me visual makeover the Ioniq 5 N gets over lesser versions of the Ioniq 5, the EV9 GT is a bit on the tame side of exterior styling. That's not a bad thing in and of itself because many people – yours truly included – like to enjoy performance without attracting too much attention to ourselves from the wanna-race-bro crowd.
Similar to the punchier EV6 GT and its Hyundai-branded sibling, the EV9 GT uses a dual-motor setup. Kia is targeting a 60-mph time of 4.3 seconds, with 60 miles per hour converting to 97 clicks in the metric system. All in all, quite a bit quicker than the combustion-only Telluride.
Photo: Kia
Based on the attached photos of the interior and press release, a six-seat layout will be standard, with the second-row seats being captain's chairs with side-mounted center armrests. Seven-tenths of a second quicker to 60 than the EV9 GT-Line, the EV9 GT is rocking a fancy suspension with adaptive dampers, an electronic rear limited-slip differential, and larger brakes.
Kia says the EV9 GT is the company's first production SUV to receive electronically controlled suspension. The drive mode button on the steering wheel toggles through four distinct modes, of which My Drive sounds the most interesting. In addition to the dampers, each mode alters the steering and brake feel of the zero-emission leviathan.
The GT button on the steering wheel, meanwhile, stiffens the shocks to the max. Even so, the EV9 GT maintains the towing capacity (5,000 pounds or 2,268 kilograms) and ground clearance (7.8 inches or 198.1 millimeters) of the less powerful and showy 2025 Kia EV9 GT-Line.
Gifted with an 800-volt charging architecture, the EV9 GT comes with something called VGS and e-ASD. The former stands for Virtual Gear Shift, which is a gimmick we already know from the Hyundai Ioniq 5 N. As for the latter, that would be electric Active Sound Design, a system that replicates the sounds of gear shifts when Virtual Gear Shift is engaged. That said, pricing has yet to be determined, with the Korean automaker further noting that final power numbers may differ as internal testing continues.
After a 1:43 scale model of a Ferrari 250 GTO sparked Mircea's interest for cars when he was a kid, an early internship at Top Gear sealed his career path. He's most interested in muscle cars and American trucks, but he takes a passing interest in quirky kei cars as well. Full profile
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