The Kia Niro is not only available as an electric car but also a hybrid and a plug-in hybrid. The EV is the least popular of the trio in sales terms, which shows where the market is for such cars today . Yet between the hybrid and the EV, the remaining sales are split pretty evenly, the latter just shading it.I like the strategy of offering multiple powertrains in the same model.
Still, the petrol-electric system in the Niro Hybrid is one of the better ones around. It doesn’t whine and groan too much under heavy loads and for the most part is quiet and efficient.It pushes nearly 60mpg even on motorway drives and you do feel like you’re creeping around on electricity for large parts of urban journeys, thanks to the 1.32kWh battery allowing limited EV running. Meanwhile, the 42-litre petrol tank means a range in excess of 500 miles is possible.
Access to this is available for a £1.99 one-off fee, and it means no more inputting credit card details on spurious apps at random chargers. You get billed on a monthly basis and the electrons for this trip came to a few pence under £100, which felt like good value. Getting an RFID card has made charging so much more convenient, allowing access to more units and a quicker start to charging. It continues to hamper longer journeys.
As well as being the biggest of the six EVs on test, the Niro was also the smoothest-riding, which made it the ideal back-up camera car. With the rear seats folded down and the parcel shelf removed, there was a veritable ballroom’s worth of space for our lucky photographer to contort himself into for a few hours of low-speed tracking shots.
I must admit, the reference to the Niro EV’s level of dynamism caught me out a bit and through doing so many urban commuting miles mixed with lengthy motorway schleps, I hadn’t gone in search of this driving pleasure. So after reading about the Soul EV, I took the long way home that evening to go searching for the same.
One was as a base for a broader holiday, the second only an evening in the depths of January to break up a journey and the third an impromptu one-night break to use up a fast-expiring Channel Tunnel voucher. I’ve not got shares or anything, honest. The trusty free rapid charger at the Folkestone tunnel terminal has been pulled up, however, pending the installation of a proper bank of chargers, demand for which is patently there.