2024 Kia Sorento PHEV SX Prestige FULL Review /// Just Get a Telluride?
Hello everyone welcome back to all car news and we are here today with the 2024 Kia sento plug-in hybrid and it’s one trim that you can buy it in the SX Prestige as optioned you really can’t really get that many options actually and it comes in around 50 to
$51,000 and over this past week I’ve honestly kind of struggled to kind of see where this vehicle fits in it doesn’t really have any true competitors other than within the own company of the hondai Santa Fe plug-in hybrid it’s a unique shape it’s not as big as a toide
It’s not as small as a Toyota Rav 4 and I guess you could kind of compare it to a Grand Cherokee plug-in hybrid but that doesn’t have a third row so this Kia srto plugin hybrid is kind of a unique vehicle it’s also even more unique that
It comes in one trim so you can’t really kind of customize it to your liking Will Kia keep it going forward or will they replace it I’m not too sure but and this may be a popular offering for you if you don’t want to have the full-size version
Of the kide you want a little bit more efficiency and you still need a little bit of third row space but don’t need all of that space I think that’s the best case for this vehicle otherwise I’m going to take you guys on a full tour
Over this vehicle and how it’s kind of been living with me over the past weeks so let’s go dive into that right now hey guys so what do we have under the hood here of this sarento plug-in hybrid well we have a pretty unique plug-in hybrid
Power T here it’s a 1.6 L turbocharged 4-cylinder engine paired with a 14 KW battery pack we have around a 66 KW electric motor and we have all-wheel drive here with a locking Center differential it has torque vectoring capability a lot of fun things going on here though it isn’t as powerful as
Something smaller like a Toyota Rav 4 Prime this only makes around 260 Wat 1 horsepower and around 258 lb feet of torque decent amount of power though it could be a little bit more for this larger SUV especially when you look at something like the Rav 4 Prime which is
A little bit smaller now with this battery pack electric motor and all of this electrified technology under the hood you’re EPA estimated around to get 32 Mi of all electric driving range now I think the biggest downside of this is that you can’t save your battery charge
On this vehicle there’s no button to save the battery charge Char like other plugin hybrids so when you run out of battery you’re operating in hybrid mode and I haven’t been getting the best efficiency in hybrid mode though that kind of just tells me to go right down
To the srto hybrid electric vehicle which is more suited for that particular style of driving and I think honestly may be a better choice over this plug-in hybrid okay guys we saw a quick look at the paraton of the Kento but let’s go take a quick look at the design even
Though there’s a brand new fa that just came out this one’s actually sticking around for a little bit longer while the fa with rolls out the plug and hybrid why I’m not too sure I think he is going to reveal either a new plug-in hybrid separately later on or they may kill it
Off I’m not too sure what they’re doing with that but for now we have this 2024 serrento plugin hybrid for the foreseeable future and honestly it’s not a badl looking vehicle yes the facelift is a little bit more Macho looking with the box here front end but I think the
Serrento is still a just good looking General vehicle very subtle exterior design here this isn’t one of Kia’s crazy designs that they have now up front here we can see our signature LED lighting signature up front and we have our projector beams up top over here
Which are pretty bright at night I do like that we have a nice little orange accent light and down here we actually have quad LED fog lights so we have two right here and we have two on the right hand side they look quite nice night as
Well um pretty good lighting elements on this Kia really no complaints there now the serrento plugin hybrid comes with one wheel option and one wheel option only these 19in rims and you know for a $51,000 vehicle you may expect something a little bit nicer but these are meant
For efficiency and I think they’re doing their job a little well you can see the spokes on them are a little bit chunkier to kind of help air pass over a little bit better um so you know nothing too fancy there again $51,000 vehicle this is all you’re going to be getting
Nothing too crazy back here we do get these vertically stacked LED tail lights I like the lighting elements on the inside it’s a nice Dynamic look I think um as well as the whole rear end of the sarento nothing too crazy we do have the newer kiaat on here though which is nice
That kind of brushed metal type finish and we do have a plugin hybrid badge back here to of course indicate that this is a plug-in hybrid but I do like that they don’t go above and beyond to let you know it’s a plug-in hybrid you really can’t tell apart the hybrid
Regular gas version and and the plug-in hybrid serrento which honestly I think is a good thing um I don’t need all those big hybrid badges indicating what I’m driving but again very clean restrained design nothing too crazy out here so now let’s check out one of the
Most interesting spaces of the sento and that’s the rear end we’re going to open up the trunk here from the key fob holding down the rear button nice big Power tailgate opens pretty quick as well though as you can see right now the third row is up and since the third row
Is up you have absolutely no cargo space back here back here we have a home charger that KIA has kindly provided with the vehicle really nice actually quite charger design we also have a um ice cleaner cuz it was a little bit snowy and gross out otherwise that is
Your entire rear cargo space with this third row up here and you can see how much it really eats into your space now with this third row down obviously you’re going to have some more space so I’m going to fold the seat down like that and fold this right hand seat down
Like that as well now you can see you have a pretty much of a decently sized trunk you can notice though you have those Captain chairs in the second row no three seats there so you’re going to really have to have that third row up if
You want to fit more people in your serral plugin hybrid as this is the only way you can get it configured and this cargo cover net here this is a little storage space here when it’s being used you can pop it up up here otherwise you
Can just put it down here to have it stored but that’s obviously because the third row was up before I put it back there so very limiting space back here and to put the seats up for the third row you really just pull these tabs up
Lock them into place and you can put the headrests up same thing with the driver side pop those up and it’s pretty easy of an operation though if you want that extra trunk space and the third row you’re going to want to go with the larger Kia tell you ride though this is
A nice interesting option to have if you don’t need that third row all the time and you want something a little bit more efficient than a tellu ride now for contacts I am 6 ft tall so let’s see if I can fit in this third row
Opening up the rear door we have a pretty wide opening it’s not quite a 90° angle but it’s definitely more than big enough now to get into the third row we press this button right here which is nice and handy the whole seat slides forward on Rails really nice I love the
Operation I I like how big this opening is it’s kind of curved to kind of let people in and oh boy guys let’s do this getting inside and we are in the third row and wow this is Tiny I’m going to pull this seat all the way back oh no
All the way back pull it back and not sure if you guys can see back here but I’m really cramped it’s really really tight back here um 6 feet tall adult not a good space to be in the seat could move a little bit further forward but then that person would be eating
Into their space here if I sat in the middle you really there isn’t a middle seat but I could fit more you can see there are only two true seats back here the same nice blue um leather material which is nice though but you really only
Want to put kids back here there’s a little bit of foot space under here really not that much whatsoever um definitely could see kids fitting in here though getting out it’s pretty easy just popping that button see Glides forward and you can exit pretty simply and let’s do so now cuz it’s getting
Really cramped back here let’s get out of the sarento third row oh that is tight I’m going to push this seat all the way back into its place quick look on these rear door panels we have the same materials we’re going to find up front so we have this blue over
Um kind of like a beige parchment style interior theme so this is blue plastic up here and we’re going to have a manual rear sun shade which is actually quite nice good for this $51,000 price tag um cheap Plastics down here I wish there was more door card storage there really
Isn’t here we just have this one kind of like cup holder spot here and that’s about it on this upper hand side we do have a really nice blend of this leather material with real stitching on here which feels very premium nice big grab handle as well as a heat of your seat
Button nice big cup holder up here and a power window switch for your automatic windows I like this little serrento kick plate down here and you can see how flat the floor is this is a fantastic feature for moving things across your floor as well as passengers really like that and
The seats themselves are pretty comfortable good amount of adjustability to kind of move this upper rest down you can move this manually as well as to get into that third row as we saw with the button hopping into the seats themselves are very comfortable actually we can
Close the door nice solid thunk from the doors and we have a lot of room back here as second row passengers lot of foot space lots of leg room um though there really isn’t too much in terms of thigh support unless I recline my seat and if there are any third row
Passengers back there they will be crushed unfortunately I can move the seat up more as you can see and then I lose my own leg space but thankfully there are cutouts in these front seats for my legs um we do have some nice big storage cubbies in the backs of the
Seats which actually feel quite nice USB ports on the backs of the seats though they are a which is a little bit disappointing in this USBC day and age we are in now and we do have a 12vt socket down here a 115 volt AC plug right here it’s interesting not 120 and
We do have another usba a port down here we have a climate vents back here but no way to control your climate controls back here whatsoever so that’s a little bit disappointing a b like to see a separate climate control for the rear end but again upgrade to the tellart if
You do want that and there is an absolutely massive panoramic glass roof that really makes this entire cabin super spacious open Airy and decent amount of head room I have about wow if I kind of sit in the center I have about this much of head room if I sit a little
Bit towards the roof line I have about this much of head room so still pretty good Headroom all around opening up the door not the most satisfying sounds but it’s not too bad same treatment on the door panels as well with a blue um plastic as well the stitching obviously
More controls up here and we do get memory seats for the driver a nice amount of adjustment on the seats though I have to say they’re pretty comfortable we have thigh support right here with these little buttons we also have four-way lumbar support as well and a nice amount of just general
Adjustability the seats themselves are in this blue leather which is quite nice looking you can also get this interior on the toride as well which I had over in the spring they are perforated and heated and ventilated which is quite quite nice up front we can see this
Again continuation of this kind of white over blue interior theme this blue is everywhere on the entire steer whe we can see right here we have blue with that white leather wrapped around again on the center console the blue really nice looking material as well as up on
The dash nice textured material here as well as some stitching and blue material on the dash as well and we have Kia’s kind of older style screen layout here so we have a fully digit digital instrument cluster in this canopy Style with a sep ated um infotainment system
Right here that’s kind of in this floating tablet style here newer serento models are going to have a fully integrated one piece kind of display here so this is the last chance to kind of get this separated kind of cockpit style display on your kir sarento steering wheel design is pretty nice it
Feels very similar to what I just got out of in the teide over the spring same kind of interior material feeli wise center console wise this is where it kind of falls apart we are covered in this black glossy plastic and it’s not a nice kind of gloss glossy black plastic
Not that there is a never nice kind of glossy black plastic this um cover here just doesn’t feel up to par feels a little bit cheap especially when to open it you have to push it in really hard it just doesn’t feel um very nice though it
Does reveal a wireless charging mat and one of the more disappointing things about these this generation of Kia um is that you have wired carplay and Android auto so I have to use this USB a port not even see with three usba a ports and
I have to use this Center one to use apple cardplay which personally to me renders this wireless charging PL completely useless if you do like to use Apple cardplay or Android auto we also have two additional usba ports like I said um for charging a little bit of
Storage space down there which you know is okay center console wise we have two cup holders decently sized little storage cubby here a little storage cubby here and we have a decently sized center console actually with this removable tray here good amount of space as well but no outlets in there
Whatsoever um so you’re going to have to rely on this upper storage space for your Outlets we do have three-way heated and ventilated seats which is very nice they actually get quite cold I like this control from here um they are physical controls as well so you don’t have to
Bury through the infotainment system to find your heated seats we also have a physical button for our heated steering wheel down here as well as an auto hold button Hill descent control parking sensors 360 deew degree view camera as well as our drive mode selector here we
Can see our lock button for our all-wheel drive system to kind of lock it into place evenly distribute the torque amongst all four wheels and low speed low traction situations which is nice electronic parking brake and let’s just take a look at these cameras up here which will show up in your Center
Display pretty decent looking cameras now they don’t always show up on each end so if I’m in drive it will show up on our Drive camera we’ll put up a front camera so you can see the front camera will appear here and see your kind of
Front split view as well as well as just a top down front view but if we go into reverse we’re going to see a reversing camera with trajectory which is nice and you do of course have the parking sensors which actually show up in your digital cluster not in the entertainment
System and here we can find our gear selector here which is a rotary style dial right in front of this sento text here and this is actually metal it’s the only piece of metal I’ve been able to find on the vehicle feels quite nice coold to the touch and it definitely is
Metal just from hearing it rubbery on my nail right there so I guess that’s a nice touch to kind of Select gears so I would prefer an actual shifter not this little Roto Dell I’m not the biggest fan of those but that’s up to personal preference um I do like how they
Separated the climate controls they’re fairly simple to use as well you have automatic here quickly turn it off and these are actually touch buttons not necessarily these hard buttons here so it’s an interesting blend I like again how it’s separated from the infotainment screen but I I like how they fix this in
The face of the model it’s kind of a slim panel this is a little bit clunky to use sometimes but it is easier than burying it in menus in the screen you can go into your plugin hybrid settings so here you can see your power distribution so you have your battery
Your engine as well as your electric motor so you can see your EV range which is zero right now um and you can click on these tiles for a little more information how long it will take to charge this one’s given 4 hours and 15 minutes on level two which is just
Honestly unacceptable even a plugin hybrid personally um that one will find you Chargers you can slie this over here to kind of have a split screen view with some other stuff even music if you’re in apple carplay which is kind of nice and it’s it’s generally there’s a lot of
Stuff in this Entertainment System it takes some time to get used to especially with this blend of these side touch buttons as well as physical buttons it’s nice to have it but they kind of got away with all this on the facelift model anyway so if you want a
Cleaner look I would definitely go check out one of those and that’s a pretty nice General overview of this interior it’s a nice space it looks nice you have a lot of Technology but it just doesn’t feel like it’s hitting that $51,000 price tag let’s go take this thing on a
Drive though to see how it handles in that department so how is this kiao been like to drive over this past week well it’s been interesting I’m going to start off with the power train because I think that’s one of the main features of this vehicle is this plugin hybrid powertrain now the
Issue with this whole hybrid system is that it’s a very slow charging system and yeah that’s kind of the point right you know you want to just plug it in at home overnight plug it in at work it’s a plug in hybrid you’re not supposed to be
Fast charging it and all that stuff well the issue that I have here is that you don’t have any mode whatsoever in the vehicle to save the battery charge you have to either put it in hybrid or EV mode or automatic mode and that’s kind
Of how you can run this vehicle now I’ve unfortunately been driving it mostly in hybrid electric mode because the battery has been flat so much I don’t really have a space to be able to charge it so this vehicle just doesn’t make any sense for me personally and well other plugin
Hybrids just don’t operate like this vehicle does either other plugin hybrids allow you to save the battery while you’re driving so you can kind of just hold that battery state of charge if you want to use it at a different date and the other issue here is with the
Charging speeds I don’t know what Kia was thinking and even for a plug-in hybrid it’s very slow that this has a really slow battery charge charging rate it can only charge around around 3.6 to 3.5 kilow of speed and I’ve seen this on multiple level two Chargers it hasn’t
Gone any higher than that I’m not sure why I think pretty sure the neurop plugin hybrid can charge faster than this um this is a big vehicle it’s a decent Siz battery P nothing too big but I’m just not sure why it’s charging so slow and you’re like again yes it’s a
Level two charger you know you’re going to be plugging in a night at something but other plug and hybrids charge a lot quicker than this does and again I’m not sure why they went with such a slow charging speed and that kind of turns
Into a time of even on like a level two charger of around 4 hours to fully charge this battery and even in like an hour or 2 hours of charging time you’re not going to be getting a lot of just electric driving miles in this vehicle
And that’s a little bit unusual to me I’ve driven quite a few plugin hybrids to CR and I’ve never actually had this issues before um so that’s something you may want to consider if you’re looking at this vehicle now if you can hear it’s not the smoothest power Trin on the planet and
Let’s say you’re kind of cruising around an even mode you kind of step on it the power comes on and you’re in hybrid mode there’s a little bit of roughness with that um powertrain kind of switch going on there there’s a little bit of vibration and hesitation the engine
Isn’t the best sounding thing either even in sport mode here a little strange and when you let off the gas pedal it honestly accelerates a little bit more it’s a little unsettling sometimes it’s happened to be in every single drive mode I think it’s just how
Um the electric motor and gas motor are kind of tuned together to keep working but it’s a little bit unusual especially something to get used to you don’t have anything else in here like adjustable regen and stuff so it’s kind of stuck how it is again very interesting vehicle especially for the price
Tag honestly if you are looking at something like this I would step down to the sarento hybrid electric vehicle just a pure hybrid um with it also has a turbocharged gas engine with it I honestly think that’s going to be a better buy than this serrento plugin
Hybrid just cuz it’s going to be more practical I think on a daily usage and if you really want a true plugin hybrid I honestly would go with the competitor just cuz I think the plug-in hybrid powertrains a little bit more refined specifically from stuff from
Toyota if you can get your hands on them I know they’re a little bit difficult to get for their plug-in hybrid slow in Lexus but I just think you might get a little better of experience even a Mazda cx90 plug-in hybrid a little bit of a larger vehicle though I think that
Powertrain and the driving Dynamics or Galaxy’s better than this I would best Akin this to a kind of like a forward Edge or a Lincoln Nautilus and it’s a driving Dynamics it’s nothing sporty whatsoever has light but just generally direct steering it feels like the tell yourid steering which a little bit loose
There’s nothing really going on off center whatsoever but if you’re going to be driving this thing very softly and babying it around it’s going to be a very comfortable vehicle for you but if you any any kind of kind of dynamic or 4 driving it’s going to feel terrible um
The suspension generally over the highways is very soft and I think pretty compliant squishy nothing too nice though and around town there’s definitely some really hard Jitters in the bumps in the suspension that I really wasn’t expecting I didn’t like too much you have a lot of safety Fe
Features obviously you have these nice cool cameras here when you put your turn indicators on but of course you also have blind spot linky assist hyai is fantastic hyai and Kia is um fantastic highway driving assist is featured on this vehicle which are our steering assist here look how easy that is it’s
Already on and you saw these gauges change when I changed the drive mode there’s also this really cool calm gauge that unfortunately I have to cycle through like six different menus to get to we’re still not there yet and there we go this is really cool like calm
Gauge of these different themes here you can use I honestly left it in this most of the time CU it’s soothing why wired Apple carplay and Android auto only there’s no Wireless in this particular version I think they’re fixing that for the facelift it’s just a unique kind of
Unicorn of a vehicle that doesn’t have a lot of competitors um it does achieve good fuel economy but like I said I I think it would do great on fuel economy save some money and even go with the hybrid versus this plugin hybrid may be the better choice for you anyways guys
That has been my week with the Kia serrento plug-in hybrid stuck in some traffic now so we’ll just turn on our highway driving assist we’ll let it do all the heavy lifting for us here again thank you guys for joining me on allar news and as always stay tuned for more coming soon
Cheers
The Kia Sorento is one of the brand’s volume sellers….but the PHEV version may be a bit too expensive and unusual for its own good coming only in SX-Prestige trim and starting at $51,185. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
🏁 @Alllcarnews Spec Sheet:
-1.6L Turbo 4 cylinder & 66kW electric motor -261HP and 258 lb-ft of torque
-AWD, 6-speed auto
-EPA 32 miles on EV mode
The issue? It takes too long to charge even for a LVL 2 only PHEV. It can fully charge its 13.8kWh battery in about 3.5-4.5 hours (LVL2), accepting only around 3.5-3.7kW speeds. A Tonale PHEV only takes around 2-2.5hrs for example. 🏁
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Highs:
-a 12.3in digital cluster, 360 camera,16 different driver safety features, ventilated seats, and a cool blue leather.
-Easy to get in and out of the third row
Lows:
-No mode to preserve EV battery charge and slow charging is a major miss.
-Third row is tight for most adults and renders cargo space useless.
-Smaller PHEV’s like a RAV4 Prime offer more power and a better chassis control.
-The interior physical/capacity button mix is messy, infotainment was laggy, and no wireless CarPlay is not 2024 $51k level.
The Sorento PHEV is an oddball with no true competition, save for the platform mate Santa Fe PHEV. All Kia needs now is a hybrid/PHEV Telluride, though if you don’t need the extra space, a Sorento Hybrid is a better buy.
Index:
0:00-1:33 Intro
1:33-2:38 Powertrain and Specs
2:38-5:00 Exterior Tour
5:00-6:43 Cargo Room
6:43-8:00 Third Row
8:00-10:24 Second Row
10:24-15:56 Interior Tour
15:56-22:11 POV Drive
#kia #Sorento #phev
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