Suzuki E-Vitara vs KGM Rexton

What's the difference?

The Suzuki e Vitara is a fun, if unusual little electric car, but it does come at a price premium over many of its rivals, which includes the likes of the Kia EV3 and Hyundai Kona.

It’s great to drive, has a versatile cabin, and has a familiar feel for anyone new to electric cars. However, with low driving range, slow charging, no vehicle-to-load or single-pedal driving and comparatively high service costs, it may be a tall order.

Some will prefer that it wears a Japanese badge on its nose compared to budget alternatives, but I’m not sure Suzuki will be selling these in the kinds of volumes it needs to at this price.

The KGM Rexton Advance is a large 4WD wagon packing an adequate amount of appeal.

It’s nice to drive on the open road, it’s comfortable and it signals continued incremental progress for KGM in terms of quality and functionality.

It’s fine for light off-roading but its 4WD efficacy is lacking. While it's not in the same class as something like the Ford Everest in terms of refinement, comfort, and general quality, ultimately, a lot of its rivals represent greater value for money and all-round driveability as family vehicles.

And even though it does offer owners a chance to take their urban-focussed SUV into the bush, its price is climbing, and other rival vehicles offer a more refined overall driving experience.

The e Vitara is an odd looking car, with a super upright front and rear combining with sharp motifs across its blocky body.

It’s a departure from anything Suzuki has done before, with only echoes of the current Vitara combustion SUV at the front.

It moves Suzuki into new styling territory with the contemporary angular design feeling more similar to the Kia EV3 rather than the more curvy, contemporary designs seen on some of its more affordable Chinese competition.

The interior updates bring Suzuki into the current decade, with more screens, better software, and a more swish design compared to the increasingly dated interiors of its combustion models.

It has a more conservative approach than some newer names to the Australian market, with comparatively tame screens, the existence of actual buttons for some climate functions, and familiar switchgear, like traditional indicator stalks and a rotary-style shifter.

In fact, the shifter and some of the other buttons seem to be shared components with Toyota, because they are the same as what you might find in the bZ4X, for better or worse.

The software is basic. It features a handful of screens with little depth to the info on offer. However, it is quick to respond, and the dashboard offers a degree of customisation in its layouts. 

Even if it’s not quite the stellar software offering that you might see in a Tesla, it’s the best software Suzuki has offered and it seems to just work without being distracting, so that’s something at least.

The Rexton remains essentially unchanged from the previous generation and so it stays pleasant enough but generically inoffensive as are most other SUVs on the market.

Even for a city-focussed SUV, the body-on-frame Rexton looks low and while its 203mm of ground clearance is okay for daily driving it’s less than ideal for off-roading.

The only change to this Rexton over the previous generation? Pull-up sun blinds on the rear doors. Not a design change per se, but worth mentioning.

Does it set itself apart enough from other similar SUVs? Not really, but does that even matter to you?

There’s major pros and cons for the e Vitara on the practicality front. In some ways it’s a smart and pragmatic cabin, in other ways it leaves a lot to be desired.

Up front the seats are an easy win. Nicely bolstered with good padding, they’re surprisingly comfortable on a long drive despite a high seat base and interesting material choices.

Ergonomically, I felt as though the seating position was a bit high. It feels like an ‘early’ EV in that sense, with the batteries clearly taking up floor space. For shorter people, this will be a good thing, with the car offering a commanding view of the road, but it doesn't feel quite right for me.

The cabin offers ease of access to all the key controls, with physical toggles for the climate unit and a dial for volume. There are some buttons on the steering wheel for adjusting the digital instruments and key cruise functions, but no paddle shifters for controlling regenerative braking.

The centre console is the biggest design blunder. The raised bridge piece is almost entirely gloss plastic, which is impossible to keep clean and will scratch over time. The controls are also chunky, taking up a lot of real estate in this essential location. They could easily have been compressed down to a smaller area with more storage on offer instead.

The padded armrest is too low and too far back. It could have had adjustable height and reach where it sits, and could have offered more storage underneath as well.

To the e Vitara’s credit, there’s a set of two very nice cupholders up front, but using them with a bottle will block access to the physical climate controls and limit access to the wireless charger.

There’s also a tray beneath that houses the 12v, USB-A and USB-C ports, but it’s a bit too height-limited for larger items like handbags. It's finished in a scratchy plastic so loose objects slide around. There are large bottle holders with dividers in each of the front doors.

The rear seat continues with the nice seat trim and offers quite an impressive amount of legroom in its default position. The floor is flat, too, so the centre position is useful enough in terms of space to put your feet. Each door has a bottle holder and there’s a pocket on the back of the passenger seat. The centre seat folds down to make for a padded armrest with two cupholders.

However, there are no power outlets for rear passengers, nor are there adjustable air vents. The headliner and window tint back there is also dark, making the space feel claustrophobic, and the high seat bases combine with a tight roofline (blame the sunroof) to make for a space I only just fit into, despite ample leg room. 

The boot also feels small, but the e Vitara has a trick up its sleeve. With just 238 litres in its default configuration, it’s a small but oblong cargo area, but it swallowed our small and large CarsGuide travel cases. The second seating row is on rails and can move forward to nearly double the available volume. In this position, which would only leave enough space for small children or pets, the boot can absorb the whole three-piece luggage set with space to spare.

There’s a small amount of additional storage under the floor, good for charging cables, although there’s no spare wheel, only a tyre repair kit.

A lack of full-size power outlet or vehicle-to-load discharge system is a notable omission for an electric vehicle in 2026. There’s also no frunk, with the entire under-bonnet area taken up by high-voltage and battery cooling gear.

This Korean SUV has a nice but unspectacular interior, although it does have a low-key premium look and feel about it and the cabin is comfortable.

It has a familiar ease of functionality and there’s a family-friendly mix of durable plastic and soft-touch surfaces throughout the cabin.

The 2026 KGM Rexton range is a seven-seat 4WD wagon in a two-, three- (second row) and two-seat (third row) 50/50 configuration.

The leather-look seats are comfortable enough and the front seats are heated, ventilated and power-adjustable; the second-row outer seats are also heated.

The multimedia system with its 12.3-inch screen is okay to use, but I had no luck getting Apple CarPlay paired to my not-so-smart phone. And, believe it or not, that hasn’t happened to me for a long time. Note: other people were able to pair their phones to this Rexton with no problems during my week of testing.

Otherwise, functionality, storage and charge points around the cabin are satisfactory, including two USB-C ports up front (centre console) and a 12V power outlet.

The second-row seats – a 60/40 configuration, which folds, reclines and tumbles – are supportive without being overly so.

In the second row, as mentioned earlier, the only changes evident to this Rexton over the previous generation are the pull-up sun blinds on the rear doors.

There’s actually a decent amount of space for passengers in the third row here, but an adult still wouldn’t love to spend too much time back there.

The rear cargo area space of the 2026 KGM Rexton range is listed as 236 litres (with all three rows of seats in use), 641 litres (with third row stowed away), and 1806 litres (with second and third row stowed away).

There’s a 12V power outlet in the cargo area.

This new Rexton offers reasonable practicality but rivals such as the Mahindra Scorpio and LDV D90 offer just as much, sometimes more, all-round family suitability but for $5000-$10,000 less, depending on the variant.

The KGM Rexton is available in four variants: ELX, Advance, Ultimate – and the Ultimate with the optional Rexton Sport Pack.

The Advance as standard has recommended drive-away pricing of $58,200 (correct at the time of writing and includes $700 Marble Grey metallic paint). But our test vehicle also has a $1842 tow bar fitted, and a $665 electronic brake controller fitted, pushing its as-tested price to $60,707.

Standard features in the Advance include C-type design LED daytime running lights, a 12.3-inch touchscreen multimedia system (with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto), a 12.3-inch digital LCD instrument cluster, leather-accented heated and ventilated, power-adjustable front seats, ambient interior mood lighting, walk-away automatic door locking, a power tailgate, 18-inch 'diamond cut' alloy wheels and a suite of driver-assist tech including a tyre pressure monitoring system, but it misses out on the higher grades’ 360-degree surround view monitor.

The only change to this Rexton over the previous version? Pull-up sun blinds on the rear doors.

This new Rexton has plenty going for it, in terms of standard features, but rivals such as the GWM Tank 300, Mahindra Scorpio and LDV D90 offer just as much onboard but for $5000-$10,000 less, depending on the variant.

Exterior paint choices include Grand White, Marble Grey (metallic paint), Pearl White (metallic paint), and Space Black (metallic paint). Metallic paint is available for $700 on all grades, but is included in the price of the Sport Pack.

The e Vitara Ultra impresses when it comes to its drive hardware. With 135kW/307Nm it’s punchy for a small SUV, with the 0-100km/h sprint time officially measured at 7.4 seconds.

It feels faster to get to 60 though, with a big surge of torque instantly available. This Ultra grade features a dual-motor all-wheel-drive set-up, and even has specific traction settings for off-road scenarios, making it theoretically more capable than some of its rivals.

The entire KGM Rexton line-up has a 2.2-litre four-cylinder turbo-diesel engine producing 148kW of power and 441Nm of torque.

It has an eight-speed automatic transmission, part-time 4x4 with high and low range, and an auto-locking rear differential.

This is a sluggish combination and not a particularly efficient powertrain, but it does the job, albeit in a lacklustre fashion.

Drive modes include Normal, Sport and Winter modes.

This all-wheel-drive set-up comes at a significant cost. The e Vitara Ultra has a WLTP driving range of 395km and an official energy consumption of 16.5kWh/100km. Far from the 500km-plus range of some of its rivals.

But the story gets worse. While I tend to pull close to if not occasionally more than the official driving range from Hyundai and Kia models, the e Vitara fell well short of its quoted range in my testing.

While not a scientific test by any means, I drove it in regular city driving conditions with some freeway jaunts. The projected range my car was indicating on the dash was just 295km.

While the Toyota bZ4X is fairly notorious for keeping a huge emergency range reserve which impacts its overall driving range, 100km less than the claim is simply not acceptable.

It also overshot its energy consumption significantly, with the car indicating 17.9kWh/100km, which I would expect from an EV a full size bracket above this.

Compounding these issues is the sub-par charging speed. 70kW was once okay for a 61kWh battery, but is now behind the pace, with most rivals quoting 100kW of peak DC charging speed or significantly more.

As such it takes about 45 minutes to charge the e Vitara Ultra from 10-80 per cent, which is well behind the 20-30 minutes of many of its rivals. At least the AC charging speed is an acceptable 11kW.

Official fuel consumption for the Rexton is listed as 8.7L/100km.

On this test, I recorded 10.6L/100km, but I have done a chunk of high and low-range, four-wheel driving.

The Rexton has a 70-litre fuel tank. So going by that on-test fuel figure from a full tank, you could reasonably expect a driving range of about 660km.

But remember, I'm travelling with just me and some vehicle recovery gear. You'll be traveling with your kids, your mates, your pets, your camping gear, your sporting gear, all that sort of stuff. And that extra weight will have an impact on the vehicle's fuel consumption, so just keep that in mind.

For all its flaws, the e Vitara is a nice car to drive. Unlike many of its rivals, the driving ergonomics and switchgear feel instantly familiar in this small SUV. You’re not met with an array of weird touch-based systems, strangely placed screens, or even annoying indicator stalks as you are in so many of this car’s rivals from newer brands.

It’s refreshingly straightforward when you hit the road, with more traditional assisted steering, standard pedal feel and nicely blended or near-single-pedal regenerative braking, depending on how you set it.

The e Vitara in Ultra trim with its dual-motor system is also alarmingly rapid, at least to the 60km/h mark, with its raised body lurching forward with some urgency when you stomp on the accelerator.

It’s not like any Suzuki you’ve driven before, that’s for sure.

Despite this impressive sprint ability, things are kept under control with smart traction software and halfway decent tyres keeping things civilised. There’s no violent torque-steer trying to rip the steering wheel out of your hands, or pure tyre torture you get from some EVs in this class.

The ride is comfortable, too. It's not as harsh as the likes of the Tesla Model Y, for example, but it’s also not too spongy like many China-sourced rivals.

Day-to-day it absorbs harsher road imperfections in its stride, and handles cornering with surprising grace, despite what feels like a tall ride height. Its biggest ride flaw is long undulations in the road, which give the car an unsettling floating feeling at certain cadences, as the weight of the battery starts to pendulum.

For the most part though, the e Vitara is refreshingly straightforward and feels familiar to drive, which should keep fans of the brand and those looking for a more traditional Japanese car drive experience pleased.

The Rexton is 4850mm long (with a 2865mm wheelbase), 1960mm wide and 1825mm high with a listed kerb weight of 2136kg.

With a turning circle of 11m, the Rexton is quite nimble around town.

On road, it’s okay. It's reasonably quiet and comfortable, and though it’s not particularly dynamic – the engine and auto make for a sluggish pairing – the Rexton is sufficiently driveable all round.

Its suspension – double wishbones and coil springs at the front, independent multi-link and coil springs at the rear – is firm, mostly controlled, but ride becomes jittery on irregular sealed surfaces and that characteristic is only amplified on even mildly corrugated dirt tracks.

And it’s in the dirt where the Rexton’s limitations are quickly exposed.

The Rexton is best considered a light-duty four-wheel drive: it is quite low; its stock tyres – Nexen NPriz RH7 (255/60R18 108H) – though marketed as “all season” aren't well suited for four-wheel driving. And the Rexton’s 4WD mechanicals and off-road traction control feel dated in operation, they just don't feel as effective as they should in a very competitive SUV market.

It doesn't have a lot of ground clearance or wheel travel and its shallow off-road angles – approach (20.5 degrees), departure (20.5) and ramp over (20) – are best suited to light-duty off-roading (i.e. well-maintained tracks in national parks in dry weather).

There's a decent spread of revs here, but there's not a lot to work with in terms of how effective the Rexton is as an off-road package so if you are here for a hardcore 4WD review with tyres-ripping-the-dirt action you're in the wrong place, because the Rexton just isn't up to that. And that's perfectly fine because people won't be using it for that purpose.

Having said that, the Rexton does reasonably well with what it has on board: there’s a decent amount of torque across a spread of revs; steering has a direct feel and nice liveliness to it; throttle response is quite sharp; and there is plenty of visibility forward over the bonnet.

Its auto rear diff lock is clunky in operation, disengaging abruptly, sometimes when you’re not even up, over or through the particular off-road challenge you’re tackling. I’ve noted similar issues with the Mahindra Scorpio in the past.

But driven with careful consideration the Rexton may do – at a stretch – the type of terrain you might not think it would be capable of.

And a decent set of all-terrain tyres would also help the Rexton, but it is what it is: a light-duty, four-wheel drive.

If you're thinking of using your family go-mobile as a touring vehicle, it’s worth noting the payload is 824kg, gross vehicle mass is 2960kg and gross combined mass is 6460kg.

Towing capacity is 750kg (unbraked) and 3500kg (braked).

The GWM Tank 300, Mahindra Scorpio and LDV D90 have similarly old-school type powertrains and 4WD set-ups, but the Tank is more comfortably capable off-road and yields a better general driveability than the Rexton and those others.

The Rexton does not have an ANCAP rating because it has not been officially tested.

As standard, it has nine airbags, auto emergency braking (AEB), adaptive cruise control, forward collision warning, lane keeping assist, blind spot warning, lane change-collision warning, rear cross-traffic warning, trailer sway control, driver attention alert, front vehicle start alert and more.

Though it doesn’t have an ANCAP rating, the Rexton holds its own in terms of driver-assist tech against rivals such as GWM Tank 300, Mahindra Scorpio and LDV D90.

Suzuki offers a five-year, unlimited kilometre warranty, which is outpaced by all of its rivals from China and most of its rivals from Japan.

The e Vitara needs to see a workshop once every 12 months or 20,000km and comes with five years of roadside assistance to match the warranty.

The brand’s genuine service program covers five years or 100,000km, with costs for this Ultra variant varying between $289 and $799 per visit, coming in at a surprisingly expensive yearly average of $503. There are combustion cars with more moving parts that are cheaper to run.

An average fast DC charge session (10-80 per cent at 60c per kWh) will cost around $21.60, while an off-peak at-home charge (at 16c per kWh) of the same amount will cost $5.76.

The MY26 Rexton range is covered by a seven-year/unlimited kilometre new-vehicle warranty, and five years of roadside assistance.

A service is required every 12 months or 15,000km, whichever occurs soonest with cost per service either $418 or $522.

KGM Australia has more than 50 dealerships across the country with a decent spread across metro and regional areas. Rextons can be serviced at those dealers or at approved workshops.

The Rexton offers a competitive warranty when pitched against the likes of the GWM Tank 300 (seven-year/unlimited kilometre), Mahindra Scorpio (seven-year/150,000 km) and LDV D90 (seven-year/200,000km warranty).