Kia EV3 vs Tesla Cybertruck

What's the difference?

It's hard to say how this will ride on Australia's roads just yet, but the packaging and drivetrain - as well as the range from what we can tell - are all good signs for the EV3. 

A relatively small city car with what seems to genuinely be about 600km of range and a spacious modern interior? 

It’s not perfect, and there are some local specifics that could prove important, but as long as the price is right, I'm feeling pretty good about this thing.

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

Weird, wild, unnecessary, arguably horrific to look at, or at least challenging, too fast, too silly, the Cybertruck is many things, but all of the bad things are obvious from a distance while you only realise just how impressive, clever and intense it is once you take it for a drive.

The drive-by-wire steering alone is a revolutionary bit of tech that will surely bleed into the wider world. 

Overall I thought I would hate it, but I walked away, head still shaking, with grudging respect approaching admiration for the Tesla Cybertruck.

Kia's new design language comes in strong here, the EV3 is bringing in EV9 vibes to a smaller shape and it pulls it off convincingly.

The sharp lines on the LEDs both at the head and tail-lights are so distinctive and so clearly related to the bigger SUV.

The geometric squared-off wheel centres are also different from anything else getting around and the side silhouette is quite cute.

It’s boxy without being aggressive, but it manages to look properly modern without sacrificing practicality by sloping the roof and eating into the interior space.

The tidy but interesting design language carries through into the interior, where some elements will look familiar to owners or drivers of current Kia models and maybe even some Hyundai EVs.

Without overdoing the attempt at sleek, futuristic vibes, the EV3’s interior blends a combination of materials to create a visually dynamic look - something that along with the large display unit and well-considered touchpoints helps distract from some of the hard, scratchy plastic around the cabin.

While the global trim options for the EV3 include some fairly bright colours, expect Kia Australia to take a more minimalist approach to make things easier on the supply side.

Is there anything interesting about a Narwhal, or a rhinoceros? It’s hard to know whether to give the Tesla Cybertruck 10 out of 10 for how interesting its design is, or zero for how offensive it is, but it would certainly get a solid 20 out of 10 for uniqueness.

Sure, in pictures it looks pretty out there, but when you stand before it in all its shiny steel it makes you laugh out loud, to the point where it has taken your breath away.

And then you start to notice all the fingerprints on it. Every time you - or any of its many admirers - touches it, you get nasty, oily stains and keeping it clean would make looking after a car painted in a matte finish look as easy as sleeping. 

So, stainless steel as a choice for constructing a car? Perhaps there’s a reason no one else has ever followed the DeLorean’s lead here, but there’s no denying it grabs your eye, and provides a certain solidity to the whole structure.

Much like a Frank Gehry building, you’re either going to love the Cybertruck and think it a work of modern art, or dismiss it as a childish man’s fantasy made real (essentially that was the design brief for this vehicle, “make Elon a toy”, and it has nailed that brief), but either way you’ll definitely have strong feelings about it.

A car, or even a pick-up truck, with no round surfaces, nor subtlety of any kind, can’t really be described as beautiful in any way. But interesting? Definitely. 

Kia says in pre-production opinion testing participants thought the car looked bigger than it is.

It's larger than a Volvo EX30 and smaller than a BYD Atto 3 - dimensions are 4300mm long, 1850mm wide and 1560mm tall - but it's inside where the space is really important. 

For a start, the 460L boot is much bigger than the EX30's (318L), and it also has a 25L frunk.

Also, because it's a dedicated EV platform, it's got a low, flat floor and its wheels sit at the corners of the car, not eating into the interior space.

It's a pretty clean, crisp space, and a combination of good light and some clever packaging make it feel closer to a mid-size SUV on the inside. 

The seats are electrically adjustable with leather and the cloth options feeling pretty nice to touch. The headrests are comfy, too.

Adjusting the seats to find comfortable positions is easy, and two adults can sit comfortably one behind the other in the EV3 without lacking knee-room.

In terms of the tech functionality, Kia leans a little further into using the touchscreens than feels necessary. Having a climate panel always accessible is good and the shortcut buttons below the main multimedia screen are useful, but menus are more distracting than they need to be at times.

Storage in the cabin is above the standard for a small SUV: you get the aforementioned quasi-desk that pulls out from under the central armrest, cupholders and bottle storage isn't in the way and even the phone charging pad is roomy.

Behind my own seating position, I've got a nice amount of knee and headroom at 178cm tall, the backrest has a wide adjustable range and there's a standard fold-down armrest with cupholders, too. The rear seat is also where access to the interior V2L socket is.

While the front and rear seats feel plenty spacious, that odd peaked baseball cap roof is a bit challenging in terms of headroom, and I smashed my noggin into it a few times trying to reach into the back seat for more Oreos and Mountain Dew. 

You can pop up the bench seat in the back to create even more space for storage, or to provide a flat floor to sleep on.

You can also lie an American sized pizza box on the vast swathe of dash between you and the wildly angled windscreen, there’s plenty more storage on the floor between you and the passenger and then more storage bins at your hip, as well. A wireless phone charger sits twinned with the spot where you park your Tesla card key.

It’s a practical, semi-rugged feeling space, but with the usual kind of Tesla less is more feeling, except when it comes to the screen, which is stupidly large and requires far too much input when you’re driving to be safe. And there’s still no speedometer where you need one, in front of your eyes, and no head-up display, despite Tesla’s love of other jet-fighter tech, like drive-by-wire steering.

How does one define value when it comes to the vehicular equivalent of a cockroach, one that seems capable of surviving the apocalypse with it indestructible (but possibly slightly rusty in appearance) stainless-steel exterior, HEPA filters (will protect you from pollution, pollen and “industrial fallout”) and (almost, kind of) bowling-ball proof super-strong windows (it can allegedly survive the impact of a baseball at 112km/h - handy if someone is trying to kill you with a baseball)?

And what price can you put on the kind of attention driving a Cybertruck gets you? Perhaps only a Bugatti or a Pagani could match the level of wide-eyed, slack-jawed excitement you see from other people when you drive this thing around. 

Then there’s the fact that it accelerates like an actual rocket, is allegedly so cosseted in the cabin that it’s “as quiet as outer space” (this is a comparison test I am up for, if Elon’s Space X would like to arrange it), and can tow “an average African elephant”, or 4,990kg, and has a 1134kg capacity in that vast rear tray, covered by a standard, automatic tonneau cover that’s so tough you can stand on it.

In that rear tray you’ll find a bottle opener, and some storage tubs with drainage holes to keep your beer cold or your fish frozen. You could sleep in there, on the composite bed, which is tough you don’t need a liner, but why would you when you can sleep in the truck - the dash is so large you could comfortably lie under the windscreen to sun yourself - using 'Sleep Mode', which runs the air con all night from its giant battery to keep it at your set temperature.

Speaking of your battery, you can also charge things with it using the integrated power outlets, and that includes the ability to charge another Tesla, or to re-zap your Tesla Powerwall at home and run your house during a blackout. Or the Apocalypse.

Tesla has put a price on all this, of course, and in America it ranges from US$81,895 to US$101,985. Frankly, that seems like quite good value when you add it all up, or at least it would if the Cybertruck really could tow five tonnes further than the end of the street, and if range - surely something of an issue for an outdoorsy vehicle like this - really could be guaranteed at 547km.

If and when it gets to Australia, of course, its value will need to be reassessed on what is sure to be a much, much larger number.

At launch, the EV3 will come in a single-motor, front-wheel drive layout with a power output of 150kW and 283Nm of torque.

A standard-range 58.3kWh and a long-range 81.4kWh version will make up two battery choices, but later an all-wheel drive GT-Line variant is set to show up with more power.

Power outputs for future variants remain unconfirmed by Kia, so we’ll wait until a local confirmation comes along in regards to Australian line-up and outputs.

Yes, I’m giving it 10. Because how could you want for more than a torque figure of 13959Nm, and a Ferrari-humbling 630kW of power to boot?

The Cybertruck is the perfect example of Elon Musk’s approach to what we’ll call science, or Twitter, or X. If it can be done, just do it, don’t ask whether it’s a good idea, or batshit insane.

So because he could fit a vast 123kWh battery and two crazy powerful motors to this pick up monster, and that could provide enough grunt to send three tonnes of mass to 100km/h in 2.8 seconds, they did. 

Is it wise? Probably not. Is it wild and almost, somehow, strangely admirable? Yep.

While Kia says the maximum driving range under WLTP testing should be about 600km, its standard range 58.3kWh battery doesn’t yet have a confirmed claim.

A proper power consumption figure also hasn’t been confirmed, but during the launch the EV3’s anticipated range even after quite some driving suggested a 600km run on one charge is reasonable.

Kia Australia hasn’t confirmed charging speeds, but specs from the UK suggest the smaller battery can charge up to 102kW on DC charging, while the long-range battery maxes out at 128kW. 

The EV3 uses a 400V architecture instead of the 800-volt used by larger Kia EV models, thus its slower charge rate. Both should charge in around 31 minutes from 10-80 per cent, Kia says.

Tesla claims a range of 547km between charges and that even when towing something of “reasonable size” (a smaller Tesla perhaps) it will still get 400km. I, for one, very much doubt that.

Tesla also claims you can recover up to 235km of range with just 15 minutes of Tesla Supercharging, while a charge from 10 to 80 per cent on that same Supercharger would take 44 minutes. On a 110V American plug it would take 110 hours, or 4.5 days, to fully charge from zero to 100 per cent.

This is where the Kia’s home advantage really comes in. The little EV3 feels like it was designed especially for Seoul, and while that means it should fit in just fine in city and metro areas in Australia, a day driving the car in its domestic habitat doesn’t give us the full picture.

But going on what was learned behind the wheel in South Korea, the small SUV is a pretty impressive thing.

Its 150kW, front-drive motor feels like the sweet spot for city driving - it’s never lacking power but can be easily applied smoothly.

Kia’s new 'i-Pedal 3.0' should feel relatively familiar to experienced EV drivers, too, with the paddles on the wheel able to adjust regenerative braking or enable one-pedal driving.

This seemingly helped plenty with maintaining a decent available driving range. Kia’s claim of 600km on a single charge in the long-range variant seems realistic.

In terms of steering and manoeuvrability, the EV3 managed some tight underground parking, narrow laneways and busy car parks on test. While steering feels light and manageable, it's also well weighted for smooth inputs at highway speeds.

Its ride and suspension in both urban and highway environments is comfortable and compliant, though Seoul’s smooth roads and the lack of fast cornering on the test route mean a proper dynamic assessment will have to come later when the car lands in Australia.

By that point, Kia Australia’s Ride and Handling Chief Engineer Graeme Gambold will have been able to adjust the car to suit local conditions, so some small issues with tyre noise at highway speeds may no longer be the case by then.

The EV3’s active safety and automatic cruise control tuning kept the little SUV well on-track and managed other cars, braking and lane-keeping smoothly - especially for a city with the hectic traffic we saw on test.

Never did the EV3’s systems do anything unexpected when in use, which gets a big tick at a time when some brands are still struggling to properly calibrate even the right braking distance and intensity for semi-autonomous driving.

It’s fair to say the Tesla Cybertruck is an intimidating prospect in the metal. It towers over you and seems to stretch into forever, because it does, at 5.68m long (too long to fit in a standard Australian parking space). 

It’s also a full 2.0m wide, 1.8m tall and weighs 3.1 tonnes, but along with its size comes the fact that it just doesn’t look… right. There’s not a round surface on it but there are plenty you could cut yourself with, or lose a finger in.

It’s no less weird inside, as the giant A-pillars, vast dash, crazy yoke steering device and graphically lovely screen confront you, making it feel like you might be on the Starship Troopers ride at Universal Studios rather than in an LA car park.

Then, while you’re getting used to this and having a good laugh at the Easter egg on the touch screen (smash the windows on the graphic of the car with your finger and you hear the sound of Elon freaking out at the infamous failure demonstration of its unbreakable glass), you’re warned that it is going to be almost as weird to drive as it looks.

This is, in part, due to the Cybertruck’s unique drive-by-wire steering - a technology previously popular only with jet fighters and other planes - which allows it to have a yoke instead of a steering wheel without being annoying, because your hands will never cross over and be left grasping air.

Yes, the Infiniti Q50 debuted with 'steer-by-wire' a decade ago, but featured a full mechanical system as a fail-safe back-up. No mechanical safety net here.

The Cybertruck has less than one full turn lock-to-lock, and it has not just passive but aggressive rear wheel steering, allowing the back wheels to turn the opposite direction to the front ones at parking speeds, quite radically, which, once you’re used to it, makes it much easier to park than seems possible. 

It also makes this Tesla incredibly sharp and direct and means that, for the first few minutes of driving it you will turn the wheel, sorry, yoke, far more than necessary.

Once you get used to it, however, it is fabulous, as long as you don’t think about what would happen if the software that’s the only thing connecting you to the wheels - rather than actual moving parts - failed. 

The steering makes the Cybertruck shrink around you to the point where you forget, at times, just how big it is. Combined with the low centre of gravity and the bank vault solidity of the chassis, it also makes it turn-in and handle like a much smaller sports car (and it has a turning circle that defies belief, one that’s sharper than some sedans).

Speaking of sports cars, most of them won’t keep up with the Cybertruck if there’s someone brave in its driving seat. Indeed, you’d need a proper hypercar to match its constant, surging torque (no, I don’t believe it can really have 13,000-plus Newtons, but it’s a lot), and its purely outrageous, surging speed.

Tesla has a habit of calculating torque at the wheels, not the motor(s) and gearing reductions increase torque markedly. 

Yes, I do believe it would do 0 to 100km/h in three seconds, maybe slightly less, but I’m also equally sure it’s not a great idea to try (I'm also very grateful I didn't experience the problems with the throttle sticking open on some examples that recently saw every Cybertruck recalled).

The problem is that 3.0-tonne weight figure, and all that mass. It feels beyond weird to move something this big, that fast, and it quickly makes you pause for a chilling thought about whether it’s all going to be able to stop again. It does, or it did for me, but boy, it puts the wind up you every time you try.

Overall, though, it’s hard to overstate just how surprisingly good, and yes, at times even fun, the Cybertruck is to drive.

Oh, and for the trainspotters out there, claimed efficiency is 22.4kWh per 100km, but we actually saw 27kWh during our two days of test drives. Our second Cybertruck was also making some distinctly weird metallic clanking noises from underneath, particularly when we switched between forward and reverse.

It might be worth waiting for the second generation of this thing before buying one, but that won’t be an issue for Australian fans, anyway.

As far as its off-road abilities, we managed to find a bit of beach in a car park and pointed the Cybertruck at it. After an initial fearful moment of being sure we were going to sink, we just put the foot down and let all that torque power us out of trouble. It felt effortless.

Some unkind experts have referred to the Cybertruck as a “death machine” and a “guideless missile”, pointing out that putting a stainless steel body on top of a big old battery is inherently problematic. As is the lack of crumple zones.

Making all this very pointy metal move as fast as a McLaren supercar has also raised some questions about sanity.

Then there was the recent recall of every Cybertruck built so far:

"Cybertruck owners reported that their vehicles were at risk of getting stuck driving at full speed due to a loose accelerator pedal. Video showed the pedal itself falling off and the piece beneath wedging itself into the car’s interior, which would force the vehicle into maximum acceleration. One driver was able to save himself from a crash by holding down the brake pedal."

Elon Musk, has claimed, however, that the Cybertruck, is “much safer per mile” than its competitors. 

Australia has different pedestrian safety regulations to the US and while some have posited that the Cybertruck will pass, pointing to the fact that you can buy an even bigger Ram truck here, others are not so sure.

The Tesla Cybertruck does have six airbags, and a suite of active safety features as part of its 'Autopilot' system, but it does not yet have 'Full Self Driving'.