This first model from a revived familiar brand delivers intriguing energy and welcome boldness in a big box presentation, but is it edgy enough?

How much: $66,990

Powertrain: Single motor front-drive 152kW/339Nm, single speed gearbox.

How big: 4715mm long, 1890mm wide, 1725mm high, 2680mm wheelbase.

We like: Distinctive looks; roomy cabin; handily-priced.

Not so much: No safety score; hugely over-zealous driver monitoring; curiously low charging speed.

HOOK an electric car with a battery of industry-leading design to a hyper charger and … and, erm, when a rush was expected, why it would only replenish at a relative trickle?

What caused this KGM Torres EVX, with a BYD Blade battery cited with 110-120kW replenishment uptake, to frustrate by effecting a 48kW peak draw when wed to a 300kW charger has the brand as perplexed as I was. Maybe the one I drove was having a bad day.

So there was that. Irritating driver aides are an unavoidable of modern car design. You can blame international safety regulations, makers feel compelled to toe the line in order to earn a full complement of ANCAP stars. With Torres, a ‘take a rest’ message that pops up with a coffee cup icon on the dashboard is a front for the driver attention monitor and very little prompting is required to activate it. On this test, I felt I had only to blink and - ding dong - there it went. Over a five hour run, it involved so often I wondered if it had a caffeine addiction or was in the pay of Big Coffee.

You’ll wonder why I didn’t just go into the menus and find a way to quell it. Answer: I did … and I couldn’t: The handbook has many answers - it even addresses need to take care so as ‘not to have part of your body caught when using the power window’ - but there’s nothing at all to show if the monitoring can be deactivated. For good reason, as it turns out. In subsequent discussion, KGM NZ acknowledged user intervention isn’t an option - it’s a factory hard setting.

The distributor says it doesn’t like this any more than I did. They’ve expressed desire to permanently disable this feature. That aim might well have now been achieved; a colleague who has driven an EVX since reckons he never once saw the warning, so maybe they’ve worked out to pull a vital plug.

I’m not sure it needs such drastic resolution. Monitoring for inattention can be useful important and, on on top of that, independent crash testing regimes demand it. 

Torres has yet to undergo any NCAP assessment, though surely it’ll be put through its paces by the one that means most to us, the Australasian New Car Assessment Programme, once it goes on sale in Australia, which will be soon. Electric interventions have become important with ANCAP/NCAP, so while it also has  a lane-departure warning system, adaptive cruise control and a system that lets you know when the car in front of you has moved off, it’s probably best to have the Big Brother driver-surveying spyware feature as well. Just not as it presently operates.

All this matters all the more because, outwardly, KGM is a ‘new’ car brand and Torres is its first product. Even if, strictly speaking, neither is true. 

KMG is more correctly a rebranding of SsangYong, which we know well for banging out robust SUVs on ladder frame chassis - an old school approach the Torres continues with. Also, while EVX is a wholly new electric car, it’s also the second to be offered on sale by this crowd, the first being an electric Korando, which actually sold here, though you would be forgiven for not being aware of that.

In any rate, the Torres should be considered much less a next step than a fresh start; in design, engineering, execution and capability, it is streets ahead of the previous battery offer. 

As much as it’s another car that would have benefitted from Clean Car to get it going, it still demands attention if you’re looking for a sub-$80,000 EV that’s thoughtfully designed, has good technology and is bigger than average. 

The size definitely resonates. It is not a small car, and in terms of cabin space, should be considered a direct competitor for the Tesla Model Y and Ford Mustang Mach-E.

Torres is also a fully petrol car - and is also coming in a hybrid drivetrain. The fossil fuel fed types already signed are much cheaper, for obvious reasons.

EVX stands out from the petrol by delivering with a different nose, with the front grille being dropped for a simple faired-in zone between the headlights that leaves the front end looking a bit barren. Hence, perhaps, why they’ve embedded above this six front LED daytime lights that launch into a vaguely Tesla-ish light show of strobing flashiness at start-up. It also has the usual aerodynamic wheels.

When others consider the overall look, don’t be surprised if they inquire about the off-loading chops. It actually has none - this is just a everyday front-drive car - but, all the same, the shape lends a strange subterfuge that suggests it could. 

Perhaps the designer has a thing for Land Rover, Hummer and perhaps Tonka. Anyway, the end result is that it has enough of a militaristic urban battlecruiser air about it that it’s surprising desert sand and khaki are not choices of paint hue. 

Some of the detailing is a touch too try hard. Losing the faux spare wheel cover on the rear door, re-designing the strange door opener that places as if it was for a vertically opening hatch (when it’s actually hinged to swing up) and eradicating those teensy plastic bonnet handles wouldn’t hurt it. And are those roof rails just for show? 

The perception of bigness is emboldened by the boxiness, though in saying that, at 4700mm long it is bordering on large. It does pretty much fill up a standard parking sport and, at 1720mm tall, it has a higher roofline than a Model Y; though with a flat rather than curved roof it avoids the Tesla’s gawkiness. 

Comparing with the Musk car and the Mach-E is worthwhile because, as in those cars, it is really spacious, not least offering bags of room in the back. 

While the seats themselves suffer bit for shapelessness, four adults could spend hours in there without feeling at all cramped. 

Behind the second row, there’s a very generously-sized boot that will become all the more commodious when folded down. The back seats split 60/40. Quirkily, there are no levers in the boot, so you have to open the back doors to do that, but the seat backs lay relatively flat when they're down.

The boot area is flat and devoid of the usual big bag holding charging cables because - ahem - it’s another EV that lacks a home replenishment kit. 

Though to compensate KGM does provision as part of the buy-in an item that others charge extra for; a vehicle-to-load adapter that looks a bit like a small hair dryer which enables you to power small appliances. Another sign of advancement, albeit one borrowed from Tesla, is a pet mode keeping the air conditioning running while the car is parked. Getting back to the boot, the lack of even lashing points, let alone a cargo net, seems a shame.

You sit reasonably high up in this car and it lends a commanding forward view; it is easy to see out of at intersections, but the wide rear pillars hamper over-the-shoulder visibility, so you soon appreciate it having front and rear parking sensors, and a rearview camera.

The dominant cabin feature is a digital instrument cluster comprising two 12.3 inch screens, the central one being touch-activated. 

The digital dash has a number of configuration options but the main screen is the main go to. As exercises in minimalism go, the cabin design is halfway good.

The steering wheel is too heavily loaded with controls, to point very few can be fathomed at a glance. This even though the main screen still involves more driver functions than most brands would dare incorporate. 

Again, working out what everything requires dedication and patience. One issue it didn’t need to have, but does, is that the shortcut icons on the screen are positioned for left-hand-drive. 

Fast-tracking to the front parking camera, climate controls and driving modes requires a downward swipe, which is easy enough once you twig to it. Having Apple CarPlay and Android Auto integration - albeit by cable involvement, though via latest USB-C inputs (which are well provisioned, including in the rear) - as standard is great. But annoyingly the screen switches away from the smartphone mirroring display whenever you adjust the climate settings. Some of the prompts are also a bit slow. Basically, almost everything asks a lot of attention that should be directed toward the road. No wonder the car was squawking. 

While the Torres’ copper textured dash trim and piano black accents are an acquired taste, the ambient mood lighting alone is an element of unexpected classiness, and those tactile, soft-touch plastics on the top of the dashboard are welcomed. 

China’s BYD is an acknowledged expert in battery tech, so KGM having secured their Blade LFP cell battery tech is quite a coup. KGM are so confident about this battery they offer a 10 year/one-million-kilometre warranty. 

The installation here presents 73.4kWh usable capacity, the motor making 152kW and 340NM and range is stated at 462km (WLTP). That’s all quite a step up from the Korando, which had a 61.5kWh battery, of which 55kWh could be used, and 240kms’ on a single charge.

Like the petrol Torres, EVX is front-wheel-drive. There are elements of the experience which suggest it might have been better off had it followed an increasingly common EV design norm of siting the motor in the back, driving the rear wheels.

The challenge is that electric drive is not only immediate in its delivery, but also can feed out all it has pretty much instantaneously, if you want that. That can be handy for quick get aways, though on that point the EVX isn’t quite a sprinter, with 0-100kmh coming up in 8.1 seconds, which is two seconds superior than the petrol version, but not as quick as Mach-E, Model Y and all the VW MEB platform stuff.

It’s more how all that pul effects the way this car tracks that might be the issue here. It obviously has a very careful modulated traction control to keep it from being a torque-steering monster, but you do find need to be careful not to overdo throttle loadings for more than just likelihood of provoking wheelspin. On less than absolutely grippy surfaces, the front wheels can also battle each other. 

The steering has clearly been engineered to compensate for this, to point it has no real feel, but ultimately even when driving quietly, there are times when you still sense the motor pulling. It’s a vague sensation, but was enough that, after the big run, my wrists were tingling. 

There are very few battery cars in which range claims and realities cross paths. The open road run was going to put nigh on 400 kilometres on the clock and though conditions on the day were ideal - a reasonably flat run, in quite light traffic and in slightly chilly weather - it was also primarily at open road speed; with any electric, spending more time at 100kmh and less time cruising around town will negatively impact range. 

That appeared to be the case here. On outcome of the big drive was impression that the range estimation software is far more accurate for dedicated urban running. 

I’d left home with the battery at 76 percent and the car predicting 335km range, with intention to replenish in short time to 100 percent at the 300kW hyper charger 50kms’ up the road. When that exercise didn’t work out, I instead settled for bringing it back from the 67 percent state it held on arrival to 82 percent, with the car then showing it was good for 350kms’ running. Conceivably, enough to see me through the remainder of the journey. Somehow, I doubted it would, but how short if fell came as a surprise.

‘Small meals, taken often’ is a mantra that holds well for electric driving over distance, one that seemed worth bringing into play when making a stop for a mid-morning coffee - my choice, not the car’s - at 136km. A handy 50kW charger just down the road was too good to pass up, given the battery state at that point was … say what, just 55 percent? Sure, it’d been through some hills, but I was taking it really easy.

I lingered long enough to get it back to 75 percent, 323km range this time asserted. A prudent idea, as it transpired, given I got to my turnaround destination with 202kms clocked, the battery down to 56 percent/245km range left - and 200kms to run. So, at mid-afternoon, I again stopped at that same small town charger employed in the morning, by which time the battery was at 40 percent, the estimated range 182kms. I replenished to 67 percent, which promised 288kms range, and got home with 392km covered … and estimated range of 159km with the battery at 36 percent, almost $40 spent on powering up. 

Basically, if you follow all the numbers, the car was always using  comfortably more power than it ever estimated, even though it was primarily in the eco setting - which tends to blunt the throttle response but also enlivens the free-wheeling side - and driven carefully, with observance of speed limits.

It’s a heavy vehicle, of course, and the brick-like shape obviously isn’t best for aero efficiency. But even so, having driven a Volkswagen ID.4 and BMW i5 on much the same route previously got better result from both, I thought the KMG with its beaut battery would score better.

After all, I’d made conscientious effort to keep away from the sport mode, having found that its response to the accelerator pedal was just too twitchy, whereas eco seemed more subdued and refined and certainly easier on the Nexen tyres.

I’d also tried to employ, as often as possible, the regenerative brake modulation settings, which allows the driver to choose how savagely the car will slow down when they lift off the accelerator. - the second of three was best suited to this day - and the adaptive cruise control, which remarkably has five distance settings, two more than the usual.

For the most part, and considering its on big wheels, the Torres rides pretty well, rounding off the edges on severe bumps and absorbing the smaller ones with minimum fuss. 

As with so many electric cars, the weight of those batteries under the floor means it can slump into dips, and multiple bumps in quick succession can catch out the suspension. Also effecting the demeanour is it having that utilitarian body-on-frame construction at time when most new SUVs have the underpinnings and bodywork combined in a single piece. 

SsangYong always preferred theseparate chassis and body approach because it mainly also sold cars with four-wheel-drive so as to entice off-roading and towing enthusiasts. All-paw being in the EVX’s future might be a good idea.

It’d be intriguing to have this car in dual motor. That would not only suit the styling theme and the engineering approach but might also be of benefit to keeping sweet with traditional SsangYong customers. 

A front-drive electric Torres doesn’t yet have any aptitude for hitting the dirt and, with a 1500kg maximum braked towing rating, is barely useful for hailing boats and caravans. 

However, an all-wheel-drive variant might reconcile those matters and also give distributor a Korean competitor for a promising battery-wed all-paw rock hopper from a certain Japanese marque it also represents. Surely the Subaru Solterra could do with more competition?

As it presents, the EVX is highly promising, if not wholly fulfilling. There’s sense it is very conceivably a better car as a KGM than it could have hoped to be under the previous stewardship, and though it has annoyances it also has potential.