Kia Ev3 vs Cavan C1

What's the difference?

The GT-Line is relatively expensive, yes. The Air Standard Range isn’t groundbreaking even at under $50,000, no. But the sweet spot in the EV3 line-up is being able to pay $53,315 for the Air Long Range and come away with a roomy small SUV that can realistically cover almost 600km in the real world.

And it does everything properly, no big red flags or dealbreakers.

Its steering weight at speed on winding roads being the biggest complaint isn’t the end of the world for how otherwise comfortable the EV3 feels on-road.

Put it this way - I recently spent a few days in a Mini Aceman, a five-door electric SUV not too far from the EV3 in size. It is about as fast, and costs a little more, but it doesn’t have a lot more to offer in terms of features and it’s nowhere near as good on range with about 400km to its longer-ranged versions.

The EV3 might still have a bit of ‘sensible’ about it compared to some other electric small SUVS, but when it looks this cute and can get you an extra round trip out of the city compared to ‘Euro’ brands at the same price, it’s hard not to be impressed.

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

The deliberately simplistic styling, sometimes weird cabin ergonomics and slavish devotion to pulling dollars from the end result make us wonder if the Cavan C1 doesn’t represent some kind of a revival of the white-versus-blue-collar occupational class system.

Socio-economic aspects aside, this would be okay if the C1 did everything as well as its peers. But it doesn’t. It does, however, get enough things right and enough things covered off adequately to be a viable tool for a business in the last-mile delivery industry or some other version of the courier game.

But it won’t be as easy to use as some offerings, nor will it be as comfortable over an eight-hour shift. And the way the driver-assistance features are calibrated means the Cavan will very possibly start to wear thin by about morning-tea time. This may bother its operators somewhat. But some fleet managers and CFOs? Not a bit. Which is where the return to that us-and-them thing comes into it.

A metaphor for the planet right now? Perhaps.