My dad is in his early 70s, retired, and has been watching me review EVs for a while now. After test driving almost a dozen electric cars he finally decided to buy one.
In this video, we drove together to pick up his new Kia EV3 Air Long Range, and on the way I got him to walk through every car he seriously considered and exactly why he said no to each one.
He came into this with a clear set of priorities. Reliability, comfort, and value. Not performance, not tech features.
He is on a fixed retirement income, so every dollar matters. He also has a specific way he wants to use the car. He and mum do regular long trips out of Sydney, places like Orange, Narooma, Merimbula, Forster, Tuncurry, and up to Coffs Harbour.
His goal is to charge at home and get to the destination without needing to stop and charge on the way. That meant range was his number one filter.
He has a 10 kilowatt solar system and 25 kilowatts of home batteries. When he charges at home, it costs him basically nothing. That changes the maths on running costs completely, but only if the car has enough range to take full advantage of it.
So here is what he looked at and why each one got ruled out.
Tesla was too expensive, too big, and too dependent on the touchscreen for basic controls. He knows how to use an EV, but he does not want to navigate a screen just to adjust the air conditioning.
He looked at two BYDs, the Dolphin and the Seal. The range did not meet his threshold, and neither had one-pedal driving. That one came up a lot. He genuinely likes regenerative braking and wants it available when he needs it.
The Geely EX5 was a similar story. Shorter range, no one-pedal driving, and he just did not connect with the car.
He looked at the VW ID.4 and the Skoda Enyaq. He actually saw the Enyaq at the Sydney Motor Show and thought it was impressive. But the dealer network is thin, the pricing is not competitive, and again, no one-pedal driving.
The Hyundai Kona Electric came closest. He has driven one and said it would have been his second choice. It has one-pedal driving, it is well priced, and it is a genuinely good car. The sticking point was range. It sits about 100 kilometres behind the Kia EV3 Air Long Range, and on the longer trips he does, that gap is real.
The Kia EV3 Air Long Range has a WLTP range of over 600 kilometres. We had actually driven it together the year before on a trip to Coonabarabran and back, so he already knew how it handled distance.
On price, when the Kia EV3 Air Long Range launched in Australia in early 2025 it was just under $57,000 drive away. There were some clearance deals later in the year, but the best available was around $53,000.
For 2026 Kia repriced several of their electric cars, and the EV3 Air Long Range came down to $52,990 drive away, with no extra dealer delivery fees on top.
We then negotiated an additional $3,000 contribution through a purchasing deal Kia had running at the time. The final price dad paid was just under $50,000 drive away.
The colour is white, which helped with the negotiation since it is not one of the premium metallic finishes. It also happens to be practical. White cars heat up less in the Australian summer, which is not a small thing.
The Kia EV3 Air Long Range also came with floor mats, 240V charger cable and a V2L adapter as part of the deal.
We talked through what V2L actually means in practice. There is an external socket via the adapter and a 240 volt socket built into the cabin. That means you can run a kettle on a road trip, charge a laptop, or in a more serious situation, like after a cyclone, you can run a fridge and a microwave at home using the car as a power source. Several EV owners in Queensland did exactly that after recent extreme weather. This car has three kilowatts of V2L capacity, which is more than some competitors offer.
This is a practical, considered purchase by someone who thought it through carefully and was not in a rush.
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