KIA EV6 2022 – Road trip report: Switzerland to Italy

Roger J Zamofing drove from Schwanden to Lake Maggiore in his KIA EV6 AWD 77.4kWh 2022.

Introducing your road trip

On August 1st, in very hot weather, we went from Schwanden in Switzerland, over the Alps and through the San Bernardino tunnel to Cannobio at Lago Maggiore with an average speed of approx. 50 miles per hour.

Planning & preparation

The initial distance of the trip was approx. 150 miles, so with the EV6 easily achieving 310 miles range there was no need for any planning. We are what we call ’10 seconds chargers’ and don’t care as much about HPC. But we could easily do 240 kWh with our 800 volts system and only today a Porsche Taycan or the Lotus would be faster. We only choose hotels with 11 kWh chargers and a safe garage to park the car overnight and charge the EV6 at home at the lowest possible cost.

Charging

As we said, charging for our usual daily journeys isn’t an issue but we could HPC when available. To date, it’s a pity that only Tesla has chargers are always serviceable at full power.

Did you encounter any great driving roads on your road trip? If so, where were they and why were they great?

Well, the fantastic scenery started in our homeland mountains of Glarus and alongside Walensee. Then the highway takes you through the very beautiful area of Grisons with the ancient city of Chur, which is the oldest city in Switzerland dating back some 13,000 years. Then we travelled up to Thusis and the San Bernadino mountain pass with spectacular sights and then took the road down to Belinzona and Ascona in southern Switzerland. The area has very different vegetation to Italy and Cannobio with tropical plants etc.

KIA EV6 2022 - Road trip report: Switzerland to Italy — Cannobio

The KIA EV6

After 54 years of mostly German (premium) cars, the KIA EV6 is simply outstanding. After trying the Jaguar I-PACE, the Mercedes-Benz EQE & the new BMW i4, I would always now consider the Korean brand in future. It’s very quiet, has so much room for our dog and with such great performance. Only a Tesla can come close to it in our opinion.

Road trip conclusion

The road trip was a great success! We outperformed WLTP range considerably and it’s remarkable how the drivetrain handles bad roads, it’s always so quiet in the car. This is what we like to get from a performance GT limousine but at such a good price compared to other 333 PS and 608 Nm sports cars on the market.