Autobayng News Team
When the Kia EV9 went on sale last year, it brought battery power and a healthy dose of gravitas to one of America’s favorite vehicle segments: three-row SUVs. Its 300+ mile range, comfortable ride and a cavernous interior, along with competitive pricing, made it a finalist for last year’s InsideEVs Breakthrough Awards.
For model year 2026, Kia improved the EV9 even more with a factory-fitted Tesla-style North American Charging Standard (NACS) port for seamless access to Supercharger stations. With this update, Kia owners will have access to more than 21,500 Tesla Superchargers across the U.S. That should practically eliminate any range anxiety owners may have on long road trips.
With a week-long EV9 press loaner at my disposal, I headed to a Supercharger for a 10-80% charging test to find out if this update really makes it a better road-tripper than it already was.
2026 Kia EV9 Tesla Supercharger
Photo by: InsideEVs
Even before the NACS update, the EV9 was already one of the fastest-charging EVs on sale, thanks to Hyundai Motor Group’s E-GMP platform, the same 800-volt architecture underpinning the Hyundai Ioniq 5, Ioniq 9 and Kia EV6.
The base EV9 with the 76.1 kilowatt-hour battery can charge from 10-80% in 20 minutes using a 350 kilowatt public fast-charging station, according to Kia. It has an EPA range of about 230 miles. Higher trims get the 99.8 kWh pack, which can do the same in 24 minutes. Depending on the trim, the range goes up to 305 miles with the larger battery. My test vehicle, a GT-Line AWD trim, was rated at 280 miles.
So, How Did The Charging Go?
The Supercharger juiced up the EV9 in 36 minutes, adding roughly 230 miles of indicated range in that time. It cost me $43 at a rate of 0.59 cents per kilowatt-hour. But that was not it—initiating the charging session was my most frustrating charging experience this year.
Unlike Tesla owners, who benefit from simple plug and charge at Superchargers, owners of other EVs rely on the Tesla app to begin the charging session. Hyundai and Kia EVs are supposed to get plug-and-charge capability at Superchargers by the end of this year, but my press loaner did not have that functionality activated.
2026 Kia EV9 at Tesla Supercharger
Photo by: Suvrat Kothari
When I pulled up the EV9 at a V4 Supercharger in Harrison, New York, the experience was buggy. After selecting the correct charging stall on the app and hitting start, the app immediately flashed a warning: “Charging error: Plug the cable back into the post and try again,” the alert read. “If error persists, select another post,” it said. I did exactly that, but the warning did not go away, which meant charging would not begin. So, I just decided to use a different stall because we did not have all day to solve that issue.
The second stall wasn’t much better. Twice, the app claimed it was “initializing charging,” but nothing actually happened. Thankfully, switching the vehicle off and on again solved the problem and it finally started pulling electrons.
I suspect the app glitches were linked to the Amazon Web Services outage, which had happened just a day before, taking large portions of the internet down, including airlines, food delivery apps and banking services. Several other EV owners reported errors on their Tesla apps around the same time, as per multiple Reddit posts. Photo by: InsideEVs
Once the electrons were flowing, it was smooth. Charging speeds immediately climbed to around 126 kilowatts at around 11% and maintained that level all the way to 80%, taking about 36 minutes, which is close to the 34 minutes that Kia advertises.
The EV9 can charge faster than that on paper, but the V3 Tesla cabinets charge slower than what the car is capable of since they don’t have the necessary voltage and hardware just yet. Although V4 cabinets that support up to 1,000 volts have started rolling out in California, they should deliver faster charging speeds when a broader rollout begins.
Also worth noting is that my other charging sessions at Tesla Superchargers with the EV9 were flawless, so the buggy experience could have been an outlier.
But it still shows that the NACS rollout isn’t as frictionless as automakers thought it would be. There are still plenty of rough edges to smooth out. Until then, let’s hope that the cloud infrastructure that hosts charging services holds steady and won’t leave drivers stranded when they need it the most.
Have a tip? Contact the author: suvrat.kothari@insideevs.com Related Stories We want your opinion! What would you like to see on Insideevs.com? – The InsideEVs team
