All-electric Kia Soul EV Stockton Kia to London trip

Join Sohail Khan, our managing director on his fully-electric trip from Stockton Kia to London, in the All-New Kia Soul EV. 

Sohail covered 284 miles in total with a stop at our Leeds Harley-Davidson dealership to do some work and then at the Toddington services for a short break. Watch the video review to find out how the journey went for him. 

We caught up with Sohail after his trip to find out how he found it, here's what he said: 

284 miles is a long way, how comfortable did you find the journey? 

The drive was really smooth, the ride is very comfortable and the 1-speed automatic transmission makes the car so easy to drive. The only downfall is that the car can get cold if you don't keep the heating on, due to it being battery-powered and not powered by an engine. 

How easy was it to charge the car on your journey? 

Charging the car was actually really easy, before the journey I definitely had charge anxiety!
Having a fast charger at our Leeds Harley-Davidson dealership definitely helped me on the way to London. For the rest of the journey, I downloaded the UVO app to locate fast charging locations, this helped me to plan my journey (which is definitely needed). The only issue that I had was on the way home, the first charging station I stopped at wasn't working. Luckily I had almost 100 miles left on the battery so I could continue to the next services (this is very important). 

How much did it cost you to charge the car?

Because I stopped at our Leeds Harley-Davidson store, I didn't have to complete a full charge at the public chargers, the top-up at Toddington services on the way to London cost £3.19 arriving at London with 109 miles left on the battery. According to zap-map.com a full charge at a public rapid charger costs £15.36, which compared to a full tank of petrol or diesel is incredibly affordable!  

How do you charge the Kia Soul EV?

There are a number of ways to charge the Kia Soul EV. At home, chargers come in either 3.6kW providing up to 15 miles of range every hour, 7kW up to 30 miles of range every hour and 22kW providing up to a whopping 90 miles of range per hour. your car will also come with a 3-pin AC charger, this is for emergency use only and is the longest charging time of up to 8 miles per hour. 

Using public charging stations, the Kia Soul EV uses a CSS charging standard, which is AC and DC combined. This allows for both type 2 connectors which are used at home or at public slow and fast AC points. The lower section is DC connector used to carry high power charging through a rapid charger. charging times for these are as follows- slow 0%-100% is 21 hours, fast 7kW 0%-100% is 9 hours, fast 22kW 0%-100% is 9 hours, rapid 50kW 0%-80% is 1 hour and rapid 100kW 0%-80% is 30 minutes. 

Where can I buy the Kia Soul EV?

The Soul EV can be ordered from Stockton Kia the price and PCP example can be found here. We also have a demonstrator model available to purchase here.