You might think that by 2024, there’d be a good selection of medium-size EV SUVs – but you’d be wrong. While there’s a gamut of them in the small-compact SUV segment, if you are looking for an electric SUV that is of medium size, pickings are slim with just six in our comparison table.
DriveLife went to the launch of the KGM Torres in March and after half a day behind the wheel of the EVX model, came away impressed. It felt refined and, well, pretty damn good.
Would that view stand after over a week in the Torres EVX, and 1,000km behind the wheel?
What We Like and Dislike About The 2024 KGM Torres EVX
| What we like | What we don’t like |
| General exterior design Features vs. price Boot space Interior design Smooth and refined Wind and road noise well-controlled Performance Headlights | Some front-end sway on hard acceleration Lane departure warning too keen Repeated take-a-break-warnings Gear selector issues No traffic sign recognition Audio reverts to radio |
What’s In The 2024 KGM Torres Range?
In New Zealand, there are 3 choices for your Torres:
- KGM Torres, front-wheel drive petrol- $49,990
- KGM Torres, four-wheel drive petrol – $54,990
- KGM Torres EVX, front-wheel drive EV – $67,990 (tested)
While we often see that the EV version of a model is around double the cost of the petrol version, it’s great that it’s ‘only’ $13K to get from the 4WD version to the EV version, although the EV does lose the 4WD side of things. If you compare the front-wheel drive Torres with the EV, there’s an $18k difference in price.
Petrol models are powered by a 1.5-litre, 4-cylinder turbo-petrol motor that manages 119kW of power and 280Nm of torque. Both models use a 6-speed automatic transmission. Fuel economy is listed at 8.6L/100km.
The EV version we are testing has a BYD Blade 73.4kWh battery pack and an electric motor that has an output of 152kW and 339Nm of torque, driving the front wheels. Energy economy is listed at 18.6kWh/100km and the WLTP range is 462km.
2024 KGM Torres Colour Range
Happily, there is no extra cost for a change of colour for your KGM Torres.
- Space Black
- Grand White
- Latte
- Platinum Grey
- Iron Silver
- Dandy Blue
- Forest Green
For a full list of specs and options available for the 2024 KGM Torres EVX head on over to KGM New Zealand’s website.
How Does The 2024 KGM Torres EVX Compare To Its Competition?
While priced below its competitors, the Torres EVX still costs more than the Model Y. But we know there are buyers out there who will not buy a Tesla – so the Torres EVX certainly comes in strong on pricing. The Model Y feels more like a hatchback than an SUV, anyway.
| Make/ Model | Battery Capacity kW-hr | Power/ Torque kW/Nm | 0-100km/h seconds | Range (WLTP), km | Boot Space, litres | Price |
| Skoda Enyaq Sportline (RWD) | 82 | 150/310 | 8.6 | 544 | 585 | $79,990 |
| Hyundai Ioniq 5 (RWD) | 58 | 125/300 | 8.5 | 384 | 527 | $79,990 |
| Ford Mustang MachE RWD | 75.7 | 198/430 | 6.1 | 440 | 519 | $79,990 |
| Kia EV6 Long Range (RWD) | 77.4 | 168/350 | 5.2 | 528 | 490 | $78,990 |
| KGM Torres EVX (FWD) | 73.4 | 152/339 | 8.1 | 462 | 703 | $67,990 |
| Tesla Model Y (RWD) | 60 | 220/420 | 6.9 | 455 | 858 | $65,990 |
Please note that DriveLife does its best to ensure the information above is correct at the time of publication, however, prices, specifications and models can change over time. Please bear that in mind when comparing models in the comparison table.
First Impressions Of The 2024 KGM Torres EVX
Finished in Latte, it’s safe to say our test Torres EVX stood apart from anything on the road. That front design with its sweeping LED daytime running lights makes this car pop out from the hordes of grey SUVs out there.
But what about those tie-down hooks on the bonnet? I’m not quite sure what KGM was going for here – maybe you are supposed to hunt a wild deer on your way home and throw it up on the bonnet, bungy it in place? It feels like KGM has added these just for the hell of it.
Side on, the view is dominated by those huge 20” rims that are one of my favourite features of the EVX.
At the rear, it’s a mixed bag. We’ve been told that the car’s taillights are designed with the Ford Explorer in mind. Those taillights, along with that bulbous paneling on the tailgate, don’t quite gel with me, with the tapering in at the lower part of the bumper feeling out of proportion. One bonus at the rear is that the Torres does have a rear-window wiper. We’re seeing more and more SUVs without one, and that’s a worry. All for the sake of design, but safety-wise it sucks when there isn’t one.
For me, overall there’s no cohesiveness; it’s got different elements that alone look ok, but on a single model don’t flow as well as they could. But I could still live with the car’s look, especially when finished in Latte; I got a lot of looks and questions about the Torres during my time with it.
What’s The Interior Like In The 2024 KGM Torres EVX?
If the outside design of the Torres doesn’t flow for me, it’s the opposite on the inside. It’s almost a thing of beauty and class, with some great thought put into usability and design. Similarly to a Mazda CX-5, the Torres’ doors open nice and wide, allowing for easy access.
Part of the upmarket feeling of the Torres EVX is bronze accents in the cabin; there is a bronze panel running across the entire dashboard, and even the centre console is mostly finished in a bronze colour. It looks superb. There’s also bronze-coloured contrasting stitching on the seats, doors, dash, console and steering wheel – again, adding to the feeling of driving something quite upmarket. There is ambient lighting in the Torres and while we often see this in cars and on door cards, in the Torres that ambient lighting on the doors is set inside a silver strip. You can’t see it normally, but at night it looks excellent. Geeky, yes, but also cool.
Front seat passengers are treated to 3-stage heated seats, and the driver gets a single-stage heated steering wheel. There are also two USB-C ports in front as well as a 12-volt socket at the front of the centre console. The rear of the centre console contains a medium-sized cubby and there’s a storage shelf above the USB ports; this shelf has no lip, so things tend to fall off it so I’m not sure what KGM intended for people to store here. The lower section of the centre console is all open, allowing you to store more stuff.
Qi wireless phone charging is delivered by an upright charger, in the front of the centre console cubby. It looks a little strange having your phone standing upright to charge, but it quickly becomes second nature to slam it in there when you get in the car.
In the rear, there’s plenty of headroom and legroom, and a nice touch for your rear-seat passengers is the two-stage seat heating (for the outer seats only, of course). There are also some air vents back there, and two more USB-C ports for charging devices. The rear of the front seats are designed to hold tablets and perhaps a phone, so your passengers don’t have to hold on to them while watching a movie, or more likely, TikTok. Like some Hyundai models, the front passenger seat has controls on the centre-side of it to allow your rear seat passengers to move the front passenger seat forward/backward, or adjust the backrest angle. I’m not sure if this is a Korean-specific thing, but I can imagine some kids having fun playing with that front seat, while someone is in it. Handy, but use with caution.
Since the Torres is also available with a petrol engine and all-wheel drive, that means the EV model also carries a hump in the rear floor. Not the end of the world, but we’re getting more used to flat floors in EVs and that adds that extra sense of space to a car, as well as actual space.
The boot in the Torres EVX is bordering on huge, at 703 litres with the seats upright. The car also has a low loading height, adding to its usability. Under that floor is yet more storage, and this includes a free Vehicle-to-Load (V2L) adaptor, allowing you to plug in household devices up to a maximum draw of 3,500 watts – enough to run a hair dryer, and then some more. Under the floor is a tyre pump, and a tyre repair kit. The Torres EVX does not carry a spare wheel.
In the boot, there are some very handy and quite deep side pockets, as well as a 12-volt socket for pumping up air beds and the like. In the tailgate area, I found a remote tailgate closing button; I’m not certain of the expected use of this, since there is the normal button on the tailgate itself to close it. The Torres EVX does not have a front trunk (frunk).
You can open the electric tailgate via the keyfob, or the button on the door. You can also open it via the infotainment system, but that does mean sliding out the AC control panel on the screen and then holding down the tailgate button. It would have been nice to have a physical tailgate open/close button somewhere on the dash.
What’s The 2024 KGM Torres EVX Like To Drive?
I enjoyed my time in the Torres EVX during the launch but as always, that’s just a day. What’s it like to spend over a week and 1,000km behind the wheel? That’s the real test. Part of our testing would include a 600km round trip to Hawera to work on our project car, adding to the general total use of this mid-sized SUV; what’s it like to live with as a commuter, and on a weekend getaway?
Pretty damn good, actually. From the outset, the Torres EVX impresses with civility and overall smoothness that you wouldn’t expect. That was my main takeaway from this car after 1,000km – it’s smooth, quiet, and refined.
It’s easy (put simply) to put an electric motor into a car and call it good; yes, it will by default be quieter, but that doesn’t address things like road noise, tyre noise, and wind noise. The Torres EVX has these well-controlled, although coarse-chip seal will get a bit of tyre noise happening – but this is the case for the majority of cars. There’s a tiny bit of wind noise from the top of the A-pillar, but it’s mainly noticeable as most other noises are non-existent.
The car rides well too, mostly very smooth and well-damped.
During my commuting time with the Torres EVX, it proved itself for ease of daily driving, with visibility mostly very good, bordering on excellent – except for that large blank panel on the C-pillar. It has a good turning circle too, at 10.8 metres.
Acceleration is excellent for a midsize SUV, even in Eco mode. The Torres will remember you left the car in Eco mode and defaults to that every time you start the car (until you change it), but it doesn’t remember Sport mode. Still, Eco mode is perfect for everyday use, with only slightly subdued acceleration over Normal drive mode. Sport mode obviously gives you more oomph, and the car’s gauges will turn red to let you know you are in Sport mode. You can spin the front wheels just about any time you want; with 339Nm of torque, it’s easily done. For example, turning onto a motorway onramp and planting the accelerator just a little too hard will get the inside front wheel spinning all too easily.
At the end of my week with the Torres, we hit the road to Hawera, a 300km stint. This is the time to really find out what is frustrating on a car, or not. And yes, the Torres has some quirks, so it’s not the perfect EV SUV. For example, the infotainment system is generally excellent, with great resolution and that widescreen effect impressing any passengers I had. But sometimes I had to press on a button more than once on the screen to get it to work.
The car’s AC controls are all via the screen too, so there are no physical buttons do adjust any aircon settings, including demisting the front or rear window. But KGM has put these on a slide-out panel on the infotainment screen, so you can turn on the seat heating or cooling, the steering wheel heating and also from that screen, you can open or close the tailgate. Weirdly, if you use the steering wheel heater and then get out of the car, the Torres EVX remembers this the next time you start it, and turns it back on. Nice! But it doesn’t remember that you had the seat heater on.
There is also a full aircon screen in the infotainment system but it doesn’t add much extra functionality over the slide-out panel.
Along with the slide-out panel for AC controls, you can pull down on the screen to reveal some other quick links or shortcuts, to items like changing the drive mode, turning on or off brake auto-hold, hill descent control, 360-degree camera access, or turn on/off traction control. Like we are seeing in many Chinese-built cars lately, there are a ton of menus in the infotainment system, with many, many options around every aspect of the car. Most people won’t touch these, but it’s really handy being able to fine tune the Torres EVX for your driving style or comfort.
Like the Haval H6 and Jolion we recently tested, the lane departure warning is too keen and either warns you too early or moves the steering over too early – you can pick if you want it active or passive, so at least that’s a nice option to have.
The steering in the car is far too light and has almost no feel to it at all. This really shows up when you accelerate hard, as the front of the car has a tendency to lift and remove weight from the front wheels. Add in already too-light steering, and you need to either back off the accelerator pedal or wait for the front to drop. This can feel a bit disconcerting when you go to pass someone in Sport mode and nail the accelerator; the front will lift and sway slightly, meaning you do need to be fully focused on your driving. It’s not alarming or dangerous, but something to be aware of.
On the EV side of driving the Torres EVX, it’s pretty simple. The car does have paddles for brake regeneration (regen) with 4 levels, 0 to 4. Level 0 is coasting, and regen increases as you go higher. Level 4 is not quite one-pedal driving, but it’s not far from it.
One of the annoying things I found on my weekend away – and also in daily driving – is the ‘take a break’ warning. It can pop up on the dashboard after only fifteen minutes of driving, and start beeping at the driver to have a coffee. The message goes away in the end but then keeps coming back, over and over. I found no way to turn this option off in the menu system, and it was a little annoying. My brain did manage to ignore it in the end, but it repeated this behaviour over and over during my time driving the Torres EVX. Perhaps KGM has shares with Robert Harris or something, I have no idea.
I guess if I’m being honest, there was one other aspect of the Torres EVX that could be a tiny bit frustrating; the gear selector toggle. We see this on the majority of test cars now, and that’s fine – I can handle using it easily. But on our test car I’d sometimes have to double-tap the toggle to get it into Drive, or Reverse. Normally this happened at the worst of times, like when parallel parking and cars backed up waiting for me. A small glitch that will hopefully get sorted out in an update.
On my way to Hawera, it actually got surprisingly warm, so I tested out the 3-stage ventilated front seats. They work a treat, blowing cold onto your back and also up under your butt. It’s a nice way to travel on a hot day.
On the return trip from Hawera, I pulled into the 300kW hypercharger at Bulls and thankfully it was available. With 8% battery charge left (around 60km), the car charged at its max rate of 120kW. It stayed at that rate for 20 minutes, giving me 225km of range, more than enough to get home. This was a better result than the BYD Seal Performance I charged up at the same place weeks ago; the Seal tapered off to 42kW at 28% charged.
More observations on my return home; the Torres EVX does not have traffic sign recognition, something we’ve taken for granted on almost all new cars in 2024. There’s no SatNav either, but you can of course use your iPhone or Android phone, since the Torres EVX has both Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. If you listen to music in your car via Bluetooth, for some reason you can’t browse tracks or playlists using the car’s built-in media player. You can of course do this via Apple CarPlay, but you’ll need to plug in a USB cable, as the Torres EVX does not do wireless CarPlay or wireless Android Auto.
I’m going to have one last moan about the Torres; before I do, honestly, I very much enjoyed my time in this model and it would be on my ‘must drive’ list if I was looking for a midsize EV SUV. The moan is that the car’s audio reverts to the radio every time you start it. We saw this issue disappear for a few years, but now we are seeing it rear its ugly head – and not just on the Torres. I realise it’s a small thing, but as soon as you turn the Torres on, the radio will come on, if you were last listening to Bluetooth audio. No one likes this ‘feature’ and I hope it goes away soon, and never comes back.
Darkness fell on my trip home so I can report that the LED headlights on the Torres are very good, with a wide spread and excellent depth. No complaints there.
I kept using the Torres EVX after my weekend away and at one point, charged it to 100%, where the car showed I had 405km of range. With general commuting duties, I managed to get 343km out of this car before it needed to be plugged in again. This did include some wet-weather driving, and that will always use more battery than dry weather. While KGM suggests the Torres EVX should return 18.6Wh/100km, I managed to achieve 20.5kWh/100km over my 1,000km of driving. For the weight of the car and what it is, that’s pretty much exactly what I’d expect it to do in the real world,
2024 KGM Torres EVX – Specifications
| Vehicle Type | Mid-size, front-wheel drive EV SUV |
| Starting Price | $67,990 |
| Price as Tested | $67,990 |
| Engine | Single electric |
| Power, Torque kW/Nm | 152/339 |
| Transmission | – |
| Spare Wheel | None – tyre pump and tyre repair kit |
| Kerb Weight, Kg | 1,915 |
| Length x Width x Height mm | 4715x1850x1720 |
| Boot Space / Cargo Capacity, Litres (seats up/seats down) | 703/1,662 |
| Energy Economy, kWh/100km | Advertised Spec – Combined – 18.6 Real-World Test – Combined – 20.5 Low Usage: 6-10 / Medium Usage 11-19 / High Usage 19+ |
| Towing Capacity Kg, unbraked/braked | 500/1,500 |
| Turning circle metres | 10.8 Small: 6-10m / Medium 10-12m / Large 12m+ |
| Warranty | 5 Years, 150,000km |
| Safety information | ANCAP Rating – not tested Rightcar.govt.nz – 5 Stars – KGMNZ |
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