TO THE END OF THE EARTH

Welcome to Svalbard, home to the Global Seed Vault and the world's northernmost EV charger and also our destination in Kia's new EV6 GT. A car to help save the world?

- James Taylor

THE SILENCE OUT HERE IS OVERWHELMING. No background noise, no human activity. Just the faint sploshing of water lapping at the boat's sides and the hulking glacier silently standing sentinel in front of us. Then a faint rumbling; indistinct crackles and groans from within the ice. We watch and wait, rapt, and then it happens: huge chunks of the glacier's leading edge crumble and collapse into the water.

Brake lights flare in the heaviest regen modes

We are at one of the many edges of Svalbard, the archipelago in the Arctic Ocean closer to the North Pole than Land's End is to John O'Groats. On the other side of this body of water, where the sea cuts deepest into Svalbard's largest land mass, is the world's northernmost town, Longyearbyen. At its dock, the quickest-ever Kia production car is being unloaded. We have already covered more than 960 kilometres in the all-electric EV6 GT back on the Norwegian mainland and its next challenge is to explore Svalbard.

While it is being readied, we have turned tourist with a boat trip to the glaciers framing the horizon opposite Longyearbyen. It is an awe-inspiring experience-walruses sunbathing, Arctic birds skimming the waves, a fleeting glimpse of a whale surfacing-and a sobering one, too.

The port of Tromsø, at Norway's cap. Next, Svalbard

This glacier-crumbling process-calving, it is called-is natural but it is occurring more frequently than it used to. 'It happens every time I'm here,' says the boat's captain. Scientific studies indicate Svalbard is the fastest-heating place on the planet. Temperatures have risen by 4 Celsius over the past 50 years. The winter season ends two months earlier than it did in the 1970s and it is becoming wetter as well as warmer. Increased rainfall caused a fatal avalanche overnight at Longyearbyen in 2015, destroying homes close to a hillside.