For enhanced safety, the front seat shoulder belts of the Kia EV6 are height-adjustable to accommodate a wide variety of driver and passenger heights. A better fit can prevent injuries and the increased comfort also encourages passengers to buckle up. The Chevrolet Bolt doesn’t offer height-adjustable seat belts.
Both the EV6 and Bolt have child safety locks to prevent children from opening the rear doors. The EV6 has power child safety locks, allowing the driver to activate and deactivate them from the driver's seat and to know when they're engaged. The Bolt’s child locks have to be individually engaged at each rear door with a manual switch. The driver can’t know the status of the locks without opening the doors and checking them.
Over 200 people are killed each year when backed over by motor vehicles. The EV6 offers optional Parking Collision-Avoidance Reverse that uses rear sensors to monitor and automatically apply the brakes to prevent a rear collision. The Bolt doesn’t offer backup collision prevention brakes.
The EV6 offers all-wheel drive to maximize traction under poor conditions, especially in ice and snow. The Bolt doesn’t offer all-wheel drive.
The EV6 has a standard blind spot warning system that uses sensors to alert the driver to objects in the vehicle’s blind spots where the side view mirrors don’t reveal them and moves the vehicle back into its lane. A system to reveal vehicles in the Bolt’s blind spot costs extra.
To help make backing out of a parking space safer, the EV6 has a standard rear cross-path warning system, which uses sensors in the rear bumper to alert the driver to vehicles approaching from the side, helping the driver avoid collisions. Rear cross-path warning costs extra on the Bolt.
The EV6’s driver alert monitor detects an inattentive driver then sounds a warning and suggests a break. According to the NHTSA, drivers who fall asleep cause about 100,000 crashes and 1500 deaths a year. The Bolt doesn’t offer a driver alert monitor.
Both the EV6 and the Bolt have standard driver and passenger frontal airbags, front side-impact airbags, driver knee airbags, side-impact head airbags, front seatbelt pretensioners, four-wheel antilock brakes, traction control, electronic stability systems to prevent skidding, crash mitigating brakes, daytime running lights, lane departure warning systems, rearview cameras and available around view monitors.
For its top level performance in IIHS driver and passenger-side small overlap frontal, moderate overlap frontal, side impact, roof strength and head restraint tests, its standard vehicle-to-vehicle front crash prevention system, its standard vehicle-to-pedestrian front crash prevention system, and its standard headlight’s “Good” rating, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety grants the EV6 its highest rating: “Top Safety Pick Plus” for 2022, a rating granted to only 109 vehicles tested by the IIHS. The Bolt is not even a standard “Top Safety Pick.”