Citroen C3 Aircross vs Kia Ev4

What's the difference?

It's a good car, no question. Individuality is key to Citroen's brand appeal and you get that, too. A comfortable cabin, plush ride and hot damn, it's way too expensive, which is a crying shame. You could argue - as Citroen's product planners probably have - that it doesn't help to offer one in the mid-$20K mark because it won't make much money because so few people will buy it. Drop it at a premium, only lose a few opportunistic buyers but make more money per unit with committed fans? Why not, I guess?

Like most French cars, I'm glad it exists for weird French car fans like me to consider.

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.

As you might imagine, it's an individual design. Lots of Cactus cues, like the roof rails, bluff front end and stacked headlights Hyundai, uh, appropriated for the Kona. Curiously, no 'airbumps' along the side despite the C3 hatch having them...

The 17-inch wheels somehow look tiddly given the airspace over the wheels and I can report that black is not really this car's colour, even with the contrasting white roof and weird Mazda 121 Shades special edition venetian blind treatment on the quarter window. Bit of an '80s throwback there for you.

Lots more Cactus inside though, starting with the brilliant front seats, squared-off steering wheel and funky air vents. The little tray on top of the glove box is good, but it isn't rubber-lined, so that's annoying.

The Top Gun handbrake is hilarious but apart from the texturing of the fabric on the seats, it's a tad dark below the windowline. 

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.

Even for a little car, the Aircross could do better. The lack of a proper cupholder provision for the car - a solitary spot at the rear of the centre console - is mildly baffling until you remember that this car is from France. The French hate a cupholder but, obviously, you can fit wine bottles in the doors.

It's worth repeating just how comfortable and supportive the front seats are on any given journey. Broad but supportive and somehow perfectly sprung, I would cheerfully rip out most other front seats and replace them with these.

The rear seats are less of these things and anyone who forces anyone to use the middle seat should be ashamed of themselves. The headroom is good back there, though.

The boot is a big one for the size of the car, swallowing 410 litres and expanding to 1289 litres with both rear seat sections folded.

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).

One of the great engines in mass-produced road cars today has found its way under the bonnet of the Aircross. Peugeot-Citroen's 1.2-litre three-cylinder turbo is a cracking engine, serving up 81kW/205Nm through a six-speed Aisin-sourced auto to the front wheels.

While the 11.8-second dash to 100km/h is, uh, leisurely, the torque figure means that on the move it's not as sluggish as that number or its 1200kg kerb weight would suggest.

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.

Citroen claims a handy 6.6L/100km on the combined cycle and my week with the fizzy Frenchie included a trip over the hills and far away as well as a lot of suburban running. 

The digital display on the dashboard read 7.3L/100km, which isn't bad going without stop-start. It does require 95 RON premium fuel, though.

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.

French cars have a very specific audience in this country, which includes weirdos like me. I've owned Peugeots and Renaults and loved every second of it.

Top of my list after my darling baby boy wrote off our family car (which was bought for him to drive), the Cactus was close to the top of the list. This fandom isn't blind, though - I know what I'm getting myself into having to dispassionately assess their faults and foibles as well as their triumphs and tangible benefits.

If I'm being honest - and it's just you and I here - I didn't think I'd like the C3 Aircross, there was just something about its SUV pretensions. I can't say the looks grabbed me and the inexplicable exclusion of the airbumps made me irrationally cross.

But once you slip behind that square-ish wheel into the comfortable embrace of those excellent seats, you forget the aesthetics (which did grow on me, even in black). 

The 1.2 turbo is, as ever, eager to please and well-matched to the six-speed auto. The two work well together to get you moving, although the engine is the noisiest installation I can remember. In the Peugeot 308, it's virtually silent.

On the move, the lovely ride also impresses, soaking up the bumps (except those aggressive rubber speed humps in shopping centre car parks) while keeping body roll to an acceptable minimum.

It's perfectly fine in the suburbs, even with its limited power. Breaking into traffic can be a bit of a moment, but there are slower cars about.

Where the Aircross is really good is out on the freeway. It's quiet for such a small car and that torque figure makes joining the M4 freeway (west out of Sydney) fine, and it cheerfully kept up on the climb up the Blue Mountains and the brakes and transmission were great down the other side.

Citroen is unashamedly about comfort over handling, but the trade-off for the comfort is pretty good in that it still handles despite a plush ride and being up on stilts.

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.

Citroen offers a class-competitive five-year/unlimited kilometre warranty with a five year service plan if you want to pre-pay.

That plan costs a stiff $2727 for your five visits (or every 12 months/15,000km). That's nearly three times what you'll pay for a C-HR or about $400 more than a Mazda CX-3.

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.