Test Drive with Nik Miles – 2023 Kia Sportage Hybrid

Join Nik Miles as he goes over the ins and outs of the new 2023 Kia Sportage Hybrid. Nik takes us on a test drive, tells us about all the newest upgrades and how the car feels while driving, and gives us an honest review of the vehicle.

After the video, make sure to check out our selection of Kia Sportage Hybrids at our dealership in Vancouver.

https://www.dickhannahkia.com/sportage-hybrid-2023/

I’m Nik Miles at Dick Hannah Kia with the 2023 Kia Sportage Hybrid. And Kia knew they had to do something very different from the competition with the 2023 Kia Sportage Hybrid. Well just take a look. It looks very different. It performs very differently and while I’ve been driving this around, I’ve been getting 35 miles a gallon. We’re going to put it on the road. We’re going to take a look at the exterior and we’re going to take a look at the interior. So, let’s get started.

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So, just over 220 horsepower in this vehicle with a 44-kilowatt-hour battery. There’s actually a lot of power and an exciting drive. And as I said before I’m getting around 35 miles a gallon in this Kia Sportage Hybrid which is excellent for this size of SUV. And you want to put your foot down it actually maneuvers very well. Now Kia has done a great job in the past in being a challenger brand. I think they’ve challenged their way all the way to the top of being one of the best brands on the market today.

And now they’re putting in items that you would normally see in a luxury vehicle. You’re seeing high performance out of their vehicles. Look at things like the Stinger. You get a lot of performance. Look at the seats. I mean how often do you see things like red leather inside family vehicles or red materials? You have a lot of texture and a lot of great materials inside these vehicles. And you’re also seeing tech.

And driving is no different to how Kia is challenging our perception of how companies have put driving forward. They are changing our whole idea of driving dynamics of vehicles in the family segment. This vehicle is a great drive, very dynamic, and very sporty. I’m finding it very easy to maneuver this vehicle at speed to lane change. It’s dynamic with all of the things it has to offer; with its drive modes, everything from Eco, Sport, Smart, and Snow. Often vehicles have not offered driving modes in this class of vehicle, but now they’re becoming accepted as standard in the class of vehicle.

Another thing that we should talk about is tech. Now when you have the screens, 12.3-inch screens are jaw-dropping. It does have a standard eight, and I want to stop for a second and point these screens out to you. 12.3 inches of screens are amazing, and they are touch screens and a gauge cluster. Now, look at the beautiful graphics, easy to swipe through, and choose what you want. The map is very, very clean and very easy to use and look at. You can see all the graphics are so clean. You have things like this fireplace. You can choose all the split screen options at the same time as you have so many options for different things in this vehicle.

You have your comfort settings, you have all of your different accouterments that come with this vehicle, your USBs, your wireless charging, your Apple Carplay, your Android Auto, your heated seats, your cooled seats, your heated steering wheels, your hill descent control, your hill hold, your sonar, your cameras even.

And look at the quality of these cameras in this vehicle. I mean that’s absolutely outstanding. And then your gauge cluster on the other side, completely digital. It’s absolutely crisp and clean with so much information including the fact that you get a lot of information that you wouldn’t normally get in a vehicle of this class. I’m absolutely stunned at the amount of information that Kia gives you in this vehicle. And we don’t start to talk about things like the audio, the phone projection, the voice memo, the valet mode, the quiet mode, the Kia Connect, all of those types of things that go into this vehicle.

And then if you put the signal on you can actually see the camera is activated. It has so much tech in it. Plus, here now have all of those great safety features; lane keeping, they have emergency braking with forward collision alert, they have all of those things that we sort of come to take for granted in our modern vehicles, that we sort of ignore them just being there. So again, we have started to accept all of these things as a sort of standard equipment in all of our modern vehicles. I’m absolutely blown away by how much stuff is now in these modern vehicles. This Kia is absolutely top-notch with the amount of stuff that it actually offers.

Taking a look at the outside of the 2023 Kia Sportage of course it got a big makeover this year and the designs changed quite significantly. It’s a good-looking SUV. Now the front end is the biggest change, and you can see this boomerang-style around the headlight. It’s a significantly good-looking vehicle and a lot more masculine than it has been in years gone by. So, the front grille here at the front, that’s very good-looking and is quite complex, but not super complicated.

Now, there is a lot to this front grille, a big piece of silver that goes across the front here, then this dark piano black piece, the body-colored piece, more piano black, silver at the bottom, and then more piano black. So, you can see contrasting colors and contrasting pieces.

Now, this is a hybrid so even though it does have an electric engine it actually also has a gas engine as well, so it does need ventilation in the front. So, this grille does actually function. Now, coming around the side here, you can see, a nice cut fender, a lot of piano black here at the top of the wheel, and this is where this particular model the SX gets really cool looking. Apart from this beautiful matte-colored, silver-gray color, it actually has matching wheels as well. And just like a luxury vehicle, it has the Kia logo right in the middle of the wheel. That shows they put a lot of thought and effort into the vehicle.

Now, it has the turn signal in the middle of the mirror, matte-black monochromatic to go with the rest of the vehicle. Here, piano black around the surround of the windows, with a piece of cladding along the bottom, two-color, it has the piano black with a piece of silver all the way down, and monochromatic door handles with single-touch entry and exit. Coming down, a lot of body material here. It has a nice hip line piece here running to give it that sort of barrel shape. But a cut inward here, about the top of my rib cage here.

Coming down the side here is your gas input, again body cladding around the back wheels, same color wheels at the back, and the real light star here with a piece of arrow about a third, two thirds, in to the wheel and then the bumper coming up, a nice cut up here, aero lights, the spoiler here, which actually hides the windshield wiper, and then a nice piece of a flip-out here of the lights and the spoiler, and the lights go all the way across the back. The bumper comes up high. The only place there is any actual badging that denotes this is a hybrid HEV is on the right side of the back here.

Single-touch automatic trunk opening here at the back opens to 39 plus cubic feet of space in the back, it’s about 74 if you put those rear seats down. It’s a 40/60 split here, it has a 12-volt 180-watt cigarette-style lighter in the back here on one side. And on both sides, you can actually pull these levers and the seats will automatically go down. You get 74 plus cubic feet of space and that allows you to get all your gear in for that weekend adventure, for that weekend trip, in your brand new 2023 Kia Sportage Hybrid.

There’s loads of room in the back seat here. Apart from the fact that there are over 39 inches to the front seat, which is almost walking distance for somebody of my height, you’ll find two USB ports in the side of the front seats, some hooks for either a backpack or a coat, map book holders in the back of the front seats. Also, there is a little piece of plastic here on the back of the headrest, which is usually used for either a backpack or you can actually put an iPad or a cell phone in there so you can watch movies in the back seat, cup holders in the fold down third seat armrest, and you’ll also find a lot of convenient things in the back here, like a little pocket in the side door which can be used for a drink holder.

Well, if you like the 2023 Kia Sportage Hybrid and you’d like to put one in your driveway there are three ways to get hold of Dick Hannah Kia. First of all, you can pick up the phone and give them a call, you can come down to Dick Hannah Kia in Vancouver, or you can surf them on the web. Each one of those ways will get you in touch with them and they can get you into one for a test drive to put one in your driveway.