Kia’s new Niro is rock solid, but could have been a lot better | Car

You should not tinker too much with a winning team. Imagine that national coach Rinus Michels had suddenly chosen eleven unknown football players for the final won during the European Championship against the then Soviet Union in 1988. Gullit and Van Basten would never have scored, the championship cup might have ended up in a display cabinet in Moscow and Orange was a dream and a folk festival poorer.

The development teams at Kia probably didn’t have Michels in mind when preparing the second-generation Niro. But their car shows that they had the philosophy of ‘gently change’ as their starting point. ‘Never change a winning team’, So. The first generation of the compact crossover from Korea was such a great success that its successor is hardly different.

Ahead: the appearance is a lot sleeker than the very careful looks of the existing model. With this, Kia wanted to kick as few car buyers in the shins in 2016; the result was an inconspicuous family car, but that unspoken character was also part of its success. After all, anyone who protrudes too much above the ground will never become everyone’s friend.

The new model still looks like a Niro, albeit with clearly sleeker lines and a more modern design language. The design provokes slightly more opinions than with the first generation, although this is mainly due to the ‘boomerang’ between the rear door and tailgate, which you can have in a contrasting paint color at an additional cost. As standard, the entire body is painted in one shade, but according to Kia, this discovery allows you to choose a total of 32 different color combinations and thus make it easier to ensure that your Niro looks less like the other copies on the street. That is one of the few complaints from Dutch people who drive the current generation of this Kia: you see this model a lot on the road.

In the corridors you hear that Kia itself did not expect that the Niro would become such a huge success in the Netherlands. Still, there are some clear explanations for its popularity. The most important is the fact that you can get this Kia – also in its latest guise – with three different powertrains: as a hybrid, as a hybrid with a plug and as a fully electric car. This helps car buyers make the switch to electric driving and offers a suitable choice for almost everyone: if you do not yet want or cannot drive completely on electricity, you have other options.

As a hybrid, the new Niro will be especially popular with private individuals, because of its relatively low purchase price. For 31,080 euros you have a great family car of an attractive size (the second generation with a length of 4.42 meters is 6.5 centimeters longer than its predecessor) and a reasonably low consumption. With 141 horsepower (104 kilowatts) and a somewhat hesitant automatic transmission, you do not have an overly spicy combination and you can only drive very short pieces electrically, but the 1.6-litre petrol engine is reasonably smooth and allows the Niro to handle a braked 1300 kilo trailer. Pull.

One step higher is the plug-in hybrid (also called PHEV), which can pull as much as the hybrid. Only this Niro contains a larger battery pack of 11.1 kilowatt hours, which you can charge with a plug. According to Kia, you can therefore drive about 65 kilometers per charge on electricity, making this version in theory much more fuel-efficient than the ‘standard’ hybrid. In addition, you have significantly more power: thanks to a more powerful electric motor, the plug-in version has 183 hp (135 kW) and slightly better performance.

There are also disadvantages: thanks to the more expensive technology, you pay a minimum of 38,760 for this Niro (albeit with a richer standard equipment) while the luggage space with 348 liters is much smaller than in the hybrid variant, which swallows 451 liters. This is due to the larger battery pack, which is partly hidden under the trunk floor.

The electric Niro – which is now called Niro EV instead of e-Niro – has an even larger battery pack (64.8 kWh), but because it is more flat in the bottom of the car, the battery variant also has the largest luggage space. A maximum of 475 liters fits in the rear, but because there is no petrol engine in the nose, this Niro also offers an extra luggage compartment of twenty liters in the front.

There, behind the charging port in the snout, you can at most lose a charging cable and some small stuff, but such a facility immediately shows why the electric version is the most convenient Niro. Unless you want to pull a trailer, because the Niro EV can have a maximum of 750 kilos on its hook: considerably more than the 75 kilos of the previous e-Niro, but much less than the other new Niro’s.

With a starting price of 40,850 euros, the electric Niro is the most expensive of the three, but also the finest. The flexibility of the electric motor between the front wheels alone makes it worth saving: with 204 hp (150 kilowatts), it has exactly the same power as the previous e-Niro and that is more than enough for this size car. In addition to the silent and effortless power delivery of this version, the hybrid and plug-in hybrid Niros feel like a step back in time, with their roaring petrol blocks and jerky shifts. In addition, the range promised by Kia of approximately 460 kilometers per charge is neat and very usable: so if you can even find the budget to go for the Niro EV, it won’t disappoint.

Let’s talk about that electric driving range: that reveals that the new Niro EV is not a huge leap forward in technical terms compared to its predecessor. That was 5 kilometers less far per charging session, with an almost the same size battery pack and the same electric motor. That is a bit disappointing at first sight, although this Kia can still make a good fist against other electric cars in this price segment, such as the Volkswagen ID.3, the MG ZS and the Hyundai Kona Electric. This also applies to charging, which from now on will go with a maximum of 100 kilowatts (against 80 kW with the previous Niro): that is not lightning fast, but ‘market in line’ for what you can expect for this price.

Actually, the Kia Niro EV is especially disappointing when you compare it with that other electric car that the South Korean brand delivers: the EV6. With that technological flagship, Kia pulled out all the stops. For example, a higher on-board voltage of 800 Volt makes super-fast charging possible: with 240 kilowatts, you can recharge the battery from 10 to 80 percent in about 20 minutes. With the new Niro you can easily stand twice as long. The fastest EV6 accelerates from zero to one hundred in less than four seconds, the Niro EV does that in 7.8 seconds. An EV6 can tow trailers up to 1600 kilograms and has four-wheel drive. Not DeNiro. But a big EV6 easily costs 60,000 euros. Not a Niro.

This is not a car with which Kia surprises friend and foe. However, these three Niro’s will remain friends with existing Niro drivers and make new friends with car buyers who do not want to go the extra mile on a technical level, but who are looking for a pleasant, modern and versatile family car for an acceptable price. With all the innovative technology that Kia has in house, the new Niro could have been much better, but in some cases good is good enough.