Sibling Drag Race Fight! Kia EV6 Wind AWD vs. EV6 GT

One of our favorite things about the Kia EV6 is how quickly it accelerates. Our 320-hp long-term EV6 Wind AWD, for example, runs from 0 to 60 mph in 4.4 seconds, and the super-duper 576-horsepower EV6 GT will cut that time to 3.2 seconds before crossing the quarter mile in just 11.4 seconds. There is, however, a bit of a caveat to achieve the EV6 GT's blistering acceleration times: Its battery's state of charge should be at or above 70 percent, according to Kia. We initially didn't think much of this since we typically charge electric vehicles to about 95 percent state of charge (SOC) before performing any instrumented testing. But what happens when the EV6 GT's battery starts to run low on juice? Does an 11.4-second car suddenly become a 20-second car? At what point is the high-po EV6 GT as slow as our pedestrian EV6 Wind commuter? Time to find out.

Our long-term EV6 Wind AWD doesn't carry the 70 percent SOC stipulation of the EV6 GT, but we decided to throw it into the experiment anyway to find out what, if any, performance degradation to expect at lower battery states of charge. Both cars are equipped with the same 77.4-kWh battery pack, but the EV6 Wind AWD has far fewer horses to feed, so we expected it to do relatively well.

Our test was simple: knock out a handful of timed quarter-mile runs with the battery charged, then run down the battery's SOC by about 10 percent from where it started, then repeat. We didn't run any tests below 10 percent SOC, which is about when the EV6 started throwing low battery alerts and drastically cut power to preserve energy. Here are the results:

In the end, it was obvious this experiment was far from a torture test for both EV6 variants. The EV6 GT, which was essentially unfazed well below its 70 percent SOC "slow zone." Neither electric SUV started to feel noticeably slower until its batteries dipped under 30 percent SOC, but the slowdown was less dramatic with the EV6 Wind AWD. Interestingly, at no point was our EV6 Wind quicker than the GT, even when the latter vehicle had less than 20 percent charge. Kia wasn't forthcoming when asked what it would take to see a dramatic drop in performance for the EV6 GT. Perhaps a long day of hot laps on a track during a warm day? Sounds like torture. But we'll do what it takes in the name of testing.