Bentley Continental vs Kia Ev4

What's the difference?

Any fears Bentley was heading in the wrong direction by abandoning 12 cylinders for hybridisation (not that it had a lot of choice) should be totally salved by the Continental GT Speed. It is a hugely capable, fabulously luxurious and beautiful to behold grand tourer that deserves extra points for not being an SUV. It might just be the supercar you could drive every day, with no complaints.

Note: CarsGuide attended this event as a guest of the manufacturer, with travel, accommodation and meals provided.

An electric sedan is really shrinking the buyer pool, which is why Kia has such gentle expectations for the EV4 in Australia. But it's a lovely driving EV with plenty of perks, and the design alone will brighten up Australia's roadways. For my money, I'd either be going for the cheapest one that's sharp value with plenty of kit, or the flagship GT-Line that gets the big battery and the works in terms of equipment. The Earth for me sits in no-man's land.

Note: CarsGuide attended this event as a guest of the manufacturer, with travel, accommodation and meals provided.

Note: The author, Andrew Chesterton, is a co-owner of Smart As Media, a content agency and media distribution service with a number of automotive brands among its clients. When producing content for CarsGuide, he does so in accordance with the CarsGuide Editorial Guidelines and Code of Ethics, and the views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard so much interesting waffle about the design of any car, ever, but before we get to the wild, and wildlife, justifications for how it looks, just feast your eyes on it. 

Now, not everyone might love it, but it’s hard to imagine a huge, super coupe looking any better than this thing does. It’s no Ferrari, sure, but realistically it doesn’t have to compete with that, because it’s a cruiser as well as a bruiser, a supercar you can be quiet and comfortable in. A Rolls-Royce with rocket engines, even. 

The most obvious change, of course, is that Bentleys have had four headlights, or four eyes if you like, for so long that seeing this new one with two is a major shock, a big shift, but somehow it works.

The proportions, the elegance, the bold 'be big and bold and give no damns what anyone thinks', it’s just impressive, and the interior reflects that same, luxury ethos.

Apparently the new-look Continental is built on three design principles, the first of which is, amusingly, 'Resting Beast'. This is supposed to reflect how the Bentley looks from side on; like a tiger, stalking its prey, or perhaps resting and thinking about its prey. It’s all muscles and strength and power, but also elegance. And who doesn’t imagine tigers walking red carpets in ball gowns?

Principle two is 'Upright Elegance', and here you’re supposed to see, in the car, the strong vertical line one finds in the chest of a thoroughbred horse when it’s standing in particularly powerful way. Great. Love it.

And finally, there is the 'Endless Bonnet', which is a horizontal line that goes from the front of the car - via the bonnet obviously - and all the way to there rear, via cat-like haunches, providing an impression of “speed, even when standing still”.

Those are the bold strokes, but it’s all the little details that make it sing, like the beautiful jewellery-like look of the headlights, which are meant to resemble a tiger’s eyes. So many cats, is it any wonder I started thinking of the Bentley as a very, very flashy Jaguar?

It’s important to note that while it looks very new - and 68 per cent of the Continental’s parts are new - the body panels are carried over, while the front and rear are all new. This is one very effective mid-life facelift, with a heart transplant, then.

The slippery-looking unit that adorns this page is the EV4 sedan. There’s also a hatch, but it comes out of Europe, while this one comes out of Korea, and that would likely make the hatch far more expensive than this bad boy. It's under study, apparently, but yet to be confirmed.

Anyway, to steal a hackneyed football analogy, for mine this is a game of two halves. I actually really like the front end. It looks sleek and slippery and there’s a real presence from the swollen arches.

I am, however, a little less sold on this rear end, which looks sharp and blocky and almost like it has been bolted on. Also annoying is the fact that it looks like it should be a liftback, with the boot hinged up above the rear windscreen. But nope, it's hinged below it, so you still get a dinky little opening to squeeze your stuff through.

Kia's international designers are pushing the boat out at the moment, and they deserve credit for making things different. Whether it sinks or swims with the general public, though, will be the real test.

Inside, it's all pretty traditional Kia, with all three models sharing the twin 12.3-inch digital displays, along with the little climate panel in the middle. Kudos to Kia for keeping some physical buttons, too. I'm less sold on the use of some cheap, hard plastics, even in the top-spec cars.

So a two-door, '2+2' grand tourer isn’t entirely built with the term 'practicality' in mind and it could be argued the existence of this Bentley Continental, the fourth generation, is something of a surprise, when you consider most people just buy SUVs and Bentley has done quite well with its Bentayga (which will, in future, share the same engine used here).

But for what it is, a two-seat car with occasional seating in the rear for emergencies, or very small children, it feels entirely fit for purpose.

An actual human can sit in the back, but it does feel a bit claustrophobic, and you’d be so jealous of how comfortable the people are in the front.

The 20-way adjustable front pews feel like grand armchairs for grand touring, fabulously comfortable - although you can slide across them a bit when driving on a race track, not a common problem - and plush to the touch.

They now come with a 'Wellness Facility' that brings postural, massage and climate functions to help with fatigue on long journeys - and epic blasts across multiple European countries is clearly what this thing is designed for.

In general, the cabin is just lovely, Bentley claims it does the best car interiors in the world and while Rolls might argue, it’s a pretty fair statement.

The spinning central 12.3-inch display remains the highlight, offering you a modern touchscreen, which can disappear to reveal either three classic analogue dials or a plain piece of dashboard, if you prefer a 'digital detox'.

At 4730mm long, 1860mm wide and 1480mm tall, the EV4 sits between the Model 3 and the Seal in terms of its outright dimensions. Kia says the EV4's wheelbase and interior packaging has been designed to maximise backseat space, which I must admit, there is plenty of.

Sitting behind my own 175cm driving position, I had miles and miles of leg room, and enough head room, though there is some kind of optical illusion that occurs in the backseat of the EV4 – even though you definitely have enough space, the dark materials of the GT-Line still leaving me feeling a little claustrophobic somehow.

Something else not to be sneezed at is the inclusion of the household-style power plug in the back. My laptop died while I was taking notes on my test, and I plugged it straight in and powered it up. Super handy.

At the back, there is 490 litres of boot space, which is about middle ground. The Seal is more like 400 litres, but the Model 3 offers more.

Sadly the EV4 is yet another EV that does not have a spare wheel of any kind. Instead you have to make do with a tyre repair kit.

In modern Kia EV style, the EV4 arrives in three trim levels — the Air, Earth and GT-Line — and then in Standard Range or Long Range battery sizes.

The range opens with the Air, which is a pretty sharp-feeling $49,990 before all of your on-road costs. Kia says drive-away pricing is coming, but how much it will be is still to be figured out.

That money buys you the Standard Range battery, which we will come back to in a moment, along with 17-inch alloys, flush-finishing door handles, LED lighting, rain-sensing wipers and heated wing mirrors.

Inside, there are two-tone cloth seats, an artificial-leather steering wheel and dual-zone climate with rear vents, while tech is handled by Kia’s loveable dual 12.3-inch screens (one for your entertainment, and another for your diving info), with a smaller 5.0-inch screen between them that handles climate settings. There’s wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, a six-speaker stereo and four USB-C connections, too.

All EV4 model grades get two vehicle-to-load (V2L) connections (so you can plug things in with a normal household plug), with one in the backseat and the other as part of the exterior charger – though the latter is an accessory on the Air. All also get access to the Kia Connect app and over-the-air updates, too.

Stepping up to the Earth ups the spend to $59,190, which is a gigantic financial leap, but you’re mostly paying for the bigger battery and longer driving range, as well as 19-inch alloys, cloth-and-synthetic-leather seats, a powered seat for the driver, and Kia’s very cool and comfortable mesh headrests.

Finally, the GT-Line tops the range, and is yours for $64,690. It gets a more polished look, courtesy of the exterior plastics being swapped out for gloss-black detailing, and it rides on its own 19-inch alloy design. It also gets a sunroof, a powered boot, dynamic welcome lights and projection headlights.

Inside, there’s a heated steering wheel, full synthetic-leather seats, relaxation seats to get comfy when charging, and ambient interior lighting. You also get ventilated front seats, a better eight-speaker Harman Kardon stereo and wireless device charging.

That is a big, broad pricing spectrum, and something tells me Kia has worked very, very hard to get that entry-level model below $50k, where it can compete with the likes of the BYD Seal ($46,990) and Tesla Model 3 ($54,900).

There is some sadness that the world’s biggest producer and promoter of 12-cylinder engines has cut production of them altogether - the epic W12 is no more - and this does feel, on a smaller scale, like Porsche ditching flat-six engines forever.

Previous hybrid efforts from Bentley, including a V6-based one that the company now admits was a bit limp wristed, might cause some concern when you hear that Bentley will, henceforth, make just one engine for all its cars, and that it is a hybrid, albeit one attached to a 4.0-litre twin-turbo V8.

But then they point out the version in this Continental GT Speed’s is “the most powerful Bentley engine ever” and that sounds pretty good.

The engine alone makes 441kW and 800Nm, which almost sounds ample, but the addition of the electric E-motor is good for another 140kW and 450Nm, with the aid of a 29.5kWh battery, which somehow adds up to a combined output of 575kW and a nice, round, and impressive 1000Nm of torque.

All that power does have to move 2.5 tonnes of precious metal, which sounds like an ask, but is effortless in practice - hurling the Speed to 100km/h in a properly supercar-like 3.2 seconds on its way to a top speed of 335km/h.

Yes, vitally, it sounds pretty damn impressive when all the power sources are going at once, it even barks and pops on the overrun, a bit like the Porsche Panamera with which it shares the hybrid set-up, only a bit bossier, and perhaps classier.

The point of the hybrid feels like it’s mostly about performance and excitement, but it has a practical side, too, because in EV-only mode this giant Bentley can drive for up to 81km in pure, and slightly inappropriate-feeling, silence (at speeds of up to 140km/h).

Handy if you live in global cities with zero-emission zones, or if you want your neighbours to think you care about the climate.

One brilliant thing about this plug-in hybrid is it’s set up to use the engine to regen the battery, hard, in 'Sport' mode, so the more fun you have, the quicker the battery charges. So much so that, realistically, you might never need to plug it in at all (Bentley recently ran the car at a race track for two weeks and never needed to top it up via cable once).

It is an impressive, sonorous and enjoyable power plant, and you’d expect nothing less from Porsche, although Bentley says it’s done lots of work on the donor engine to make it uniquely more wonderful.

All EV4 models are front-wheel drive, with a single front-mounted motor producing 150kW and 283Nm, fed through a single-speed gearbox. That’s enough, Kia says, to knock off the sprint to 100km/h in around 7.5 seconds. The Air is the fastest, at 7.4s, while the heavier Earth and GT-Line claim 7.8s. Top speed is a claimed 170km/h.

While the top-line figures for performance hybrids like this always sound impressive, it’s hard to believe anyone will ever get near them in the real world, because the temptation to drive a car like this hard and fast, as its makers clearly intended, will mean chewing fuel in a very non-efficient way indeed.

On paper, though, where it matters in terms of being allowed to sell your giant luxury grand tourer in Europe, the Bentley Continental GT Speed produces just 29 grams of CO2 per kilometre. 

Fuel economy is a claimed 10.3 litres per 100km, which is optimistic, but still a lot lower than the equally unlikely 14L/100km figure for the old (12-cylinders and no hybrid) car. As in, neither car would ever achieve the theoretical figure, but at least the new one is clearly a lot better.

Let’s talk about range for a moment, because it's bloody impressive. Not quite the best out there, but the furthest any electric Kia has ever travelled between charges.

There are two battery options, a 58.3kWh NCM battery in the Standard Range, and a 81.4kWh unit in Long Range models. The Standard will deliver 456kms in driving range, but the Long Range ups that to 612kms, both on the WLTP cycle. 

The EV4’s 400-volt architecture does slow down charging a little, though, with DC fast charging capped at 128kW. That means going from 10 to 80 per cent in around 30 mins when using the fastest chargers. If you’re using a 50kW charger, it’s up to almost an hour and 20 minutes for the bigger battery, which is a long coffee stop.

Plugged in at home, provided you have an 11kW wallbox, it’ll take just under five and a half hours, or just over seven hours, to go from 10 per cent to fully charged, so an overnight charge no matter the battery size.

In an ideal world, one would take the Bentley Continental GT Speed for an appropriate drive from the top of Germany to the bottom of Italy or France, but instead we were asked to drive the big beast around a tight and slightly terrifying private members race track outside Tokyo called the Magarigawa Club.

Members here pay US$1 million a year for access to this circuit, carved out of several mountain tops, which features two long and fun straights attached to what feels like a hill climb circuit with a bit of Laguna Seca’s Corkscrew and a touch of Mt Panorama’s undulations.

This track, with its daunting lack of run-off, should have been an intimidating and possibly inappropriate place to try the Continental GT Speed, but it is a credit to the car’s “everyday supercar” personality that it soaked up the pressure, and pace with ease.

On our first lap we were encouraged to drive in EV mode, which was predictably a bit dull, quiet and not-quite boring, because if you went past 75 per cent of throttle, or 140km/h, the engine would kick in and things would instantly get interesting.

It was a good chance to note just how lushly comfortable the cabin and seats are, however, and just how supple the suspension can be.

The Bentley’s “secret weapon”, according to its engineers, is a new twin-valve damper the allows the chassis to behave like a sports car when you want it to - probably about 3.0 per cent of the time for actual owners - and an absolute luxury pleasure palace for cruising around the rest of the time.

The split personality thing really is on offer with this car, as we found out once we engaged the Sport setting.

The Speed’s all-wheel drive, all-wheel steering, torque vectoring and electronic LSD were all on display over the later laps, in which we were allowed to blast past 200km/h and find out just how good the brakes are at pulling up 2.5 tonnes of high-speed luxo-barge.

You do your steering via a lovely wheel with a leather front and Alcantara wheel, and it feels effortless, even in full track attack mode. A bit more feedback might be nice, but I guess Bentley owners have other cars for that kind of thing.

Aside from the rushing, roaring speed, what is most impressive is how little body roll there is from the Continental. It feels planted, poised, happy to change direction and is rarely upset or flustered, despite some squeals of complaints from the tyres. 

Getting too wide on to the ripple strips caused a shudder and a skip sideways now and then, but perhaps I shouldn’t have been so far off the racing line.

Overall, the Continental GT delivers on its name, with Speed, and lots of it, all delivered in a properly swanky environment.

I learned something new and exciting (well, to me, at least. You might be very bored) from Kia's ride and handling guru on this launch. And that is that the tuning frequency for common city road imperfections, like bridge expanders, is actually the same as for the bigger, bouncier undulations you get on country roads. And so you can tune to prioritise one or the other, not both.

In real terms, it means a car that feels custom-built for the city, gliding over urban roads with mega comfort (which is exactly what the EV4 does), feels slightly less at home out of town, where there is more obvious movement in the cabin.

Bored yet? Ok, the point is that, while never uncomfortable, the EV4 feels right at home in the city, which is where it's expected to spend most of its time, but weirdly firmer on longer adventures. 

This really is easy, city EV motoring, done well. There's no alienating floatiness to the ride, no lifeless lightness to the steering, it's comfortable, quiet and – despite no headline-grabbing power figures – more than potent enough to get you up and moving.

There's nice weight to the steering, and though the front tyres gave up their grip a couple of times when pushed with some steering lock on, there isn't much in the way of aggressive body roll, and it all feels pretty confidence inspiring. 

The power is most effective from around 10km/h to 80km/h, before the urgency starts to fall away – it's slower to respond at freeway speeds – but that too just leans into its city credentials.

There's really not much to complain about here. It feels well sorted, and quite fun to drive. There is nothing that really stands out as spectacular about the drive experience, but nor is there anything to complain about. It's just really solid motoring, which isn't always guaranteed these days.

There’s no ANCAP rating on the EV4 yet, but the brand says it's confident it will adopt the five-star scores issued in Europe. All models get seven airbags, like active cruise control, AEB autonomous emergency braking (meaning it will anchor up if it senses an accident), front and rear parking sensors, an active blind spot monitor that will take evasive action if it senses a collision, and lots, lots more.

Only the GT-Line switches up the standard safety kit offered on the other two grades, adding a surround-view monitor, a camera that shows what’s happening in your blind spot, powered child locks and a reverse parking aid that will brake for you if it thinks you're going to hit something.

The Bentley Continental GT Speed comes with a five-year, all-inclusive servicing plan as standard.

That sounds good, but stunningly, Bentley still only offers a three-year manufacturer warranty, albeit one with no mileage limitations. That's way below industry standard these days.

The battery that forms part of the hybrid system is, however, warrantied for eight years, or 160,000km.

Kia ownership proposition is simple, and pretty strong. You get a seven-year warranty no matter how far you travel, an eight-year warranty for the high-voltage systems, again no matter how far you travel, and capped-price servicing. Pre-paying your service costs will set you back $688 for three years, just over $1300 for five years, or just under $2000 for seven years.