My wife and I have been wanting to get an electric vehicle (EV) for six or seven years now. We were looking into getting a Tesla but then we found out that we were pregnant with our first child so that put a delay on that up until recently.

We actually have a pre-order on a 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning, but in the last month or two it's become apparent that it is not going to be ready for us for a year or more.

At that point, we had two new kids, so we started looking at different options. We saw that the EV6 was coming out, test drove one, fell in love with it and decided to snag one the moment we could.

Some of the EV6s we saw had a $10,000 markup. We saw all of these ridiculous markups and we kind of gave up. But then, I happened to find one with only a $2,000 markup, which given the state of things is not terrible. So we traded in a 2020 Kia Forte and took home a 2022 Kia EV6 First Edition.

The feeling of driving an electric vehicle is something I'm not used to. Being fully electric, you never hear the motor kick on. It's always quiet. It's kind of exciting to drive. Also, just being away from gas, especially right now, feels really good.

It has a really good turning radius. It's really zippy on the highway, especially. When you have to pass a slow car on, it gets going real quick. But it gets a little less range there than stop-and-go traffic because of regenerative braking.

It charges as advertised, about 20 minutes using fast chargers. I can plug in, run into the store and grab some things and have it sitting there ready for me without me having to just sit in the car and wait for it to charge. We have a home charger now so we charge overnight too.

I was really leery of the toggle between the media and climate controls, but it's really grown on me. Early on I was constantly blaring the heat or cranking down the air conditioning because I would expect it to be the radio. I want to turn the music up or down and instead I just blast the air conditioning at 50 degrees, but I've become used to it now.

If I could make a change I would have the heated seat and ventilated seat buttons be somewhere else. They're in a place in the center where my hands rest naturally, so if I'm reaching across to toggle the radio or air conditioning I can brush that and turn those on when I don't want them on. But that just took a week to get used to as well.

One thing I love about this car is the blind spot cameras when you flip the turn signals. It's so useful I don't know if I can ever go back from that. When it's raining it's pretty useless but every other time it's been super handy.

We live in Seattle, and we've already done a road trip to see family in Spokane and plan on doing more of that. But what's interesting is the difference in charging infrastructure between here and there. There's not many fast charging stations in Spokane, which was eye opening. I guess it's because there's not as many EVs there. But we plan to do more road trips. We want to go somewhere farther and see how that goes.

How long we keep the EV6 really comes down to how long it'll be before our Lightning is available to us. We want a truck and we probably can't afford that and this car, so in a year or two we're going to have a tough decision to make.

That's not a knock on this car, more that it would be good to have a truck available to us for some home remodeling projects we have planned.

But I love this thing. It's got so many bells and whistles. I think if you can find one at or near MSRP you're going to be a happy driver.

Dusty Stokes is a software developer in Washington state. All views expressed in the article are the author's own, as told to Newsweek's James McCandless.

Have a brand new car and want to talk about your first month of ownership? Reach out at j.mccandless@newsweek.com.

Uncommon Knowledge

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

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