Kia Niro EV review: a decent car but offers zero driving pleasure

In this gig, there are loads of time when you get into a car expecting to hate it and get out of it loving it. On the other hand the inverse is true as well: you get into something expecting to love it and you come away thinking: “my God, I got that one wrong.” 

Of course there are various levels of disappointment — ranging from mild to wild — and, conversely, varying levels of euphoria — ranging from wild to mild — but there is nothing worse for a motoring hack to find something they expected great things from only delivering disappointment.

First there is sadness for the manufacturer, from whom you had expected great things that were not delivered; then there is angst for the poor saps who are about to or have already bought one of them; and finally there is pain for the reviewer — yourself — for having believed the pre-launch palaver about the car in question.

Sometimes there is also a feeling a with a few mild tweaks the manufacturer can salvage the situation for themselves and those saps who’ve bought into the product. On other occasions there is the terrible conclusion that the car maker has made a complete hames of the beast in question and it is unsalvageable.

The latter is not a feeling we have gotten very often, the former is one we have experienced on many occasions. But, as someone responsible to your readers to tell them the truth — every damnable word of it, sometimes — that can be a very painful job.

There are very few really bad cars anymore – but there are many that are bad by degrees, or by comparison with their rivals and when you encounter one, it is your job to tell it like it is. And so it is this week with the Kia Niro EV.

As a regular ICE car the Niro received modest plaudits in these columns over the last couple of years but Kia has stepped up a gear recently — in line with sister company, Hyundai — and stuff such as the Sportage and the EV6 have impressed hugely. Indeed, both walked away with gongs in last years annual Examiner Motoring Car of the Year awards.

That being the case, we came to the new Niro — specifically the Niro EV, rather than the ICE or hybrid versions — with high hopes that the company’s keenly priced small family SUV would also prove to be another winner for the South Korean outfit.

And, in terms of its new look which brings it right into line with both the above-mentioned EV6 and Sportage models, its glossy new interior and a bunch of new tech, the new Niro EV (it used to be called the E-Niro) should be close to the top of the pile. In many respects, it is, but in some others, though, it failed to meet expectations.

While the EV6 in particular has an electric-only platform, the Niro has been designed upon a platform which has to cope with electric, ICE and hybrid powerplants. It is, therefore, something of a compromise and I’m afraid that shows.

While the last Niro was known as a decent contender in its class, it was widely reckoned to be one of the worst for the quality of both ride and handling. Sadly, with the new one nothing much has changed.

Although the electric motor is under the hood and the car is therefore – unusually for an electric – front wheel drive and thus prone to the vicissitudes of that layout. It also has a new, slightly larger in capacity, battery and the body is slightly longer and wider and the wheelbase has grown by 20mm.

On the power front, the car — surprisingly — has a lower top speed than the old one (down from 173 km/h to 165 km/h) and a slower 0-100 km/h time (down from 7.5 seconds to 7.8 seconds), but these are slight variances and nothing that’s going to spoil the experience radically.

There are three driving modes — Eco, Sport and Normal — which can be chosen via a button on the steering wheel and as we have found so often ‘Eco’ provides nothing less than a stodgy, plodding drive, ‘Sport’ enlivens things a little and adds a little weight to the steering wheel, but ‘Normal,’ as is so often the case, the easiest setting to live with.

You can also adjust the level of brake energy recuperation using the paddles on the steering wheel and make it a fully one-pedal operation if you so wish.

All of this is just fine and dandy until you come to the ride and handling, something Kia says it has fine tuned in this new car. Well, I hate to tell them, but their work hasn’t achieved much.

The Niro EV feels really unsettled on scarred surfaces (and let’s admit that this describes a fair proportion of the Irish road network) and a tad nervous even on fast surfaces.

It also had an unsettling tendency to give what Ted Walsh might describe as “a buck-lep out of it” when encountering sharp changes in road elevation. 

By this I mean, it seems to kick the rear wheels up in the air. It does not physically do this, but that’s the feel you get and it is a little disconcerting.

In what was otherwise a pretty decent car, I though this to be a trait most drivers could live without. I certainly could do without it and really got the impression that both the handling and ride let the show down badly here.

Otherwise the car is roomy enough – for four large adults and a smaller on in the middle of the back seat; the boot is not particularly big with 475 litres (seats up) and 1,392 litres (seats down) and there’s a little storage space in the frunk as well, but that’s really for the charging cables.

Interior décor is of a high order and the infotainment systems are easy to use and assimilate, while the seating is comfy rather than luxurious. The materials used too are of a higher rather than lower order.

This is a car which is most at home in the urban environment, where its tight turning circle and easy to park demeanour stand out. It is not as comfortable as a B-road cruiser, though and this may play against it in overall sales terms.

The 450 km mark seems to be about average right now for electrics and this one claims 458 and will deliver very close to that even when you’re giving it welly.

In many respects the Niro EV is a smarter, classier, bigger, more efficient and modern car than the one it replaces, but it is deficient in crucial areas and, I’m afraid, that dulls an otherwise perfectly acceptable car. 

Given the gains Kia has made in recent times with such as the Sportage (the electric version of which we have yet to try) and the EV6, that makes it something of a slight disappointment.

We know Kia can do better; it just hasn’t quite managed it here.