KGM Torres EVX review

Is the KGM Torres EVX a good car?

The KGM Torres EVX feels like an old-school EV dynamically, but there’s no denying that it offers a huge amount of space, a respectable range and an impressive amount of standard kit. It may not be the fastest electric car to charge or the most efficient, and its infotainment isn’t the slickest system around, but its pricing of less than £40k softens some of these shortcomings and also helps the Torres EVX undercut the likes of the Skoda Enyaq, Kia EV6 and Hyundai Ioniq 5. 

KGM Torres EVX: model range, specs and rivals

The Korean conglomerate KGM isn’t hanging about refreshing the line-up of the brand formally known as SsangYong. While there will be a new pick-up coming that plays to the old brand’s key strengths, KGM is also aiming for EV adopters with an all-electric version of its latest family SUV, the Torres.

The Torres EVX, to give it its official title, is a 4.7 metre-long SUV that has the same beefed-up design as the petrol-powered version. The cars share a platform that KGM claims is new, although given that work started on this car before the takeover, it’s likely to be linked in some way to older SsangYong tech.

The same certainly can’t be said for the EVX’s powertrain. KG Group needed quick access to a proven set-up, so it turned to Chinese giant BYD and agreed on a joint venture to produce batteries in Korea. As such, the Torres EVX features BYD’s ‘blade battery’ with cell-to-pack construction. Capacity stands at 73kWh, although KGM says that the forthcoming pick-up will have a 80kWh set-up, and that this larger layout could conceivably make it into the Torres EVX in due course.

There are just two trim levels available with the Torres EVX, and both come with plenty of goodies for the money. The K30 kicks off the range with 18-inch diamond-cut alloy wheels, full-LED headlights, electric adjustment as well as heating and ventilation for the front seats, a steering wheel, keyless entry, front and rear parking sensors, a 12.3-inch infotainment system with sat-nav and both Android Auto and Apple CarPlay connectivity, dual-zone climate control and cruise control.

The range-topping K40 has bigger 20-inch wheels, premium leather upholstery, adaptive cruise control, a 360-degree camera system and a blind-spot monitoring system. You also get a more energy-efficient heat pump as standard to help preserve the driving range in colder winter weather.

How much does the KGM Torres EVX cost?

The entry-level KGM Torres EVX K30 starts at the same price as the top-of-the-range four-wheel-drive petrol Torres, at just under £37,000. The highest K40 trim of Torres EVX is just shy of £40,000.

Alternatively, you can lease a KGM Torres or buy a used Torres, all on Auto Express.

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The BYD-sourced powertrain for the KGM Torres EVX makes it the most powerful Torres currently available, with 204bhp and 339Nm on tap. That’s enough for a 0-62mph time of just over eight seconds.

Actually achieving that in the real world might prove tricky, though, because from the off, the Torres EVX feels very much like an older-generation EV. The core suspension set-up is pretty stiff – needed, no doubt, to cope with a kerbweight of more than 1,900kg – and this, coupled with pretty powerful throttle calibration, means that the car will light up its front wheels all too easily, even on a bone-dry road. This is in the normal Comfort driving mode, too; changing to Sport increases the wheelspin to almost comical levels. Switching to the more restricted Eco setting improves the modulation to the point where it becomes a little more straightforward to drive the Torres EVX smoothly. 

Fight your way beyond the chirping from the front tyres, and there’s enough shove there – more so than the standard Torres petrol. But the mix of traction control, throttle-pedal map and stiff suspension that leads to plenty of head toss and deflection off lumps and bumps in the road does make this car feel like something Hyundai or Kia were producing five years ago.

It’s a pity because, in other ways, the Torres EVX is dynamically pretty well tied down. The light steering at low speeds helps when slotting parking the Torres EVX, and it’s accurate enough for a relatively large SUV on country roads that you can build up confidence with the car and carry a bit of speed into corners. There’s enough power for it to sit comfortably enough at 70mph on a motorway, and refinement is pretty decent, with minimal electric-motor whine and respectable levels of wind and road noise. The switch to near-silent EV power does expose a few extra thunks in the suspension, though.

There are paddles behind the steering wheel so you can dial in varying strengths of regenerative braking, but none of the settings are strong enough to give you a full one-pedal driving mode, and it doesn’t offer the level of control you’d want in low-speed traffic because there’s a lag between when you lift off the accelerator pedal and the regen system kicking in. And every time you get back on the accelerator, it switches off regen, so you have to keep thinking about what you’re doing to drive smoothly. Ultimately, it's just easier to do it yourself using the brake pedal.

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While the company has suggested that the Torres EVX might be available in the future with a larger battery pack, for now, you get a 73.4kWh useable pack with a range of 287 miles between charges. On a cold day doing plenty of stop/start driving on high-speed country roads, we only saw an efficiency high of 2.6 miles/per kW/h, which suggests a sub 200-mile range. However, we anticipate that figure should be better in warmer weather, and at lower speeds where there’s more chance of using regenerative braking to put some electricity back into the battery as you’re slowing the car down.  

The Torres EVX has a maximum charging rate of 145kW, potentially taking the battery from 10 to 80 per cent capacity in 37 minutes. That’s not bad, but the Skoda Enyaq charges at an even faster 165kW, and along with its smaller battery, means shorter 25-minute top-ups.

Residual values, according to our experts, suggest the Torres EVX will maintain around 44 per cent of its original value after three years or 36,000 miles. That’s not quite as high as the 49 per cent the Peugeot E-3008 is predicted to hang on to, but that’s offset by the fact that the Torres EVX costs less than the Peugeot to begin with.

Insurance costs for EVs generally tend to be higher than a traditional petrol or diesel car, and this is also the case for the Torres EVX. While the standard petrol Torres is in group 33, the EVX is in group 48. That’s also a lot higher than the E-3008, which starts in group 32.

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As with the regular petrol KGM Torres, you get bonnet-mounted grab handles and roof rails to give the impression of it being a tough SUV, but the front of the EVX differs slightly from the petrol model. Due to the electric EVX not needing as much cooling, the EVX doesn’t have its sibling’s grille. Instead, you get a light bar across the front, with the middle section divided into sections to give the impression of a traditional grille. The headlights are mounted lower in the bumper than with the petrol model, giving the electric version a different look at night.

The Torres has a relatively high driving position, and the long flat bonnet gives it the impression of a commanding driving position. And while you might consider the stuck-on bonnet grab handles a bit odd, you can use them as a gauge of width when driving down a narrow street.

Just as with the KGM Actyon, the Torres has a pair of 12.5-inch displays, with the driver’s one dealing with speed and trip information, and the central display controlling most of the car’s functions. It’s an uncluttered look, but we’d prefer more physical dials and buttons, especially for things like climate control, because it makes simple tasks like adjusting the temperature more distracting on the move than they ought to be. Even the criticised interior of the Volkswagen ID.4 has a panel of touch-sensitive controls close to the steering wheel to save you from having to delve into the screen in order to switch on certain important functions, such as the windscreen demister.

The rest of the dashboard has a good level of perceived quality, especially for the money. Most of the dash is trimmed in soft-touch materials, with cheaper-looking hard plastics well hidden on the lower areas of the interior. The copper-coloured interior trim also looks the part and is a welcome variation from the endless piano black utilised in countless rivals.

Sat-nav, stereo and infotainment

While going all in on screens gives the Torres EVX a less fussy interior style, it hasn’t quite worked out as well as it could have. The issue is that the screen is laggy, taking too long to switch between menus or accept inputs, which contributes further to the issue of it being distracting while driving.

You’ll need to spend some time learning the layout, but once you do, it becomes a matter of remembering where things are, such as having to swipe down from the top of the screen in order to find the drive-mode button and auto-hold function. Switching off the speed limit warning is a more involved process than it ought to be, and the Torres could really do with a big favourites button located on the steering wheel, like you’ll find on the KGM Actyon, in order to save a shortcut to your most used menu.

Unlike the petrol Torres, the entry-level K30 has sat-nav as standard, but you can also connect your phone to the car if you prefer to use a navigation app from your phone instead. Just be aware that you’ll have to use a cable to connect to Android Auto, and even though we did use a cable to connect to Apple CarPlay, the connection still dropped out once and needed to be unplugged and plugged back in again to restore the link. The car’s sound system does a decent job, but there’s no option for a fancier set-up, unlike many of its rivals. 

Wireless phone charging comes as standard across the entire Torres EVX line-up. 

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It’s really the amount of space inside the Torres EVX that’s its USP. We think it’s perhaps a missed opportunity not to provide additional seating, because the car is certainly big enough to accommodate seven people, but has only five seats. 

Not trying to squeeze in more seats does mean that everyone will have plenty of head, knee and legroom. There’s a small central tunnel that the middle-seat occupant will need to straddle, but it’s unlikely to cause a major issue if you have to put three people in the back on a longer trip. Anyone looking to put child seats in a Torres EVX can utilise the two ISOFIX points on the outer positions of the rear bench. You can also keep the sun off those in the back of top-spec K40 models with the retractable sun blinds fitted into the rear door cards.

The boot is an impressive 839 litres on paper, which is even more than the standard petrol Torres, although the height of the available space below the retractable parcel shelf isn’t that great. There is further room beneath the floor for cable storage, but KGM hasn’t added any additional storage assistance, such as a cargo net or ‘curry hooks’. In the end, you get a huge box in which to throw items, but you will hear them rolling around.

The towing capacity is impressive for an EV, at 1,500kg for a braked trailer or caravan. That’s significantly up on rivals such as the Volkswagen ID.4 and Skoda Enyaq. It can’t quite match the smaller Volvo EX30, which can manage up to 1,600kg in some configurations.

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With the Torres EVX being a new car, we don’t have any Driver Power customer satisfaction survey information. It does use BYD for its battery technology and electric motor, and the brand, while not all that well known in the UK yet, has been making EVs for a long time, so we hope its electric expertise will pay dividends for KGM. And if anything does go wrong, the car is backed up by a seven-year/90,000 mile warranty, which also guarantees that the battery will retain 70 per cent capacity over that period. 

The Torres or the electric Torres EVX haven’t been crash-tested by Euro NCAP yet, but we expect it should get a solid score given that it comes with a long list of standard safety technology. On the whole, it follows the regular Torres, although you don’t get blind-spot monitoring as standard on the K30 EVX as you do with the equivalent K30 petrol Torres. For that safety aid, you’ll need to go for the top-of-the-range K40 trim.

All the basic stuff is covered, such as autonomous emergency braking to help prevent or mitigate collisions with pedestrians, vehicles or cyclists at low speeds. Traffic sign recognition is also standard, helping to keep you informed of the speed limit on the road you’re driving on.

KGM Torres EVX alternatives

The Torres EVX range starts for the same amount of money as the top-of-the-range K40 four-wheel-drive petrol Torres. A drop in pricing over what was initially reported when the car was launched has made the Torres EVX a more competitive proposition next to the entry-level Nissan Ariya, Skoda Enyaq, and Volkswagen ID.4. 

The Torres EVX has a longer range than those rivals because of its larger battery pack, but in the case of the Enyaq, it’s only a 26-mile advantage, and the Enyaq charges at a faster rate, achieving a 10-80 per cent top-up in 25 minutes, whereas the Torres EVX takes 37 minutes. While that doesn’t sound like much, it can add up if you happen to need to charge multiple times on a journey. The Enyaq is also a more refined EV to drive and has a very well finished interior, justifying its premium over the KGM.