The key fob has a graphic showing a button to raise
the tailgate remotely, but it didn’t do so - it only un-
locked it. That’s fine, since we’ll happily take an extra
mile or two of range for the added weight of the self-
opening liftback hardware. But the fob icon was per-
plexing.
The charging cable is stored under the cargo bay floor.
If you need to plug in overnight on the road, you’ll have
to unload your luggage to get to it (or remember to take
it out beforehand). Chevrolet solved that problem with
its second-generation (2016-2019) Volt, which has a
separate compartment in the side of the load area just
for the charging cable.
As noted above, we’d still like a way to set one-pedal
driving as a permanent default. We adapted to the need
for three pulls on the left paddle every time we powered
up, but we did occasionally forget - meaning the car be-
haved differently than expected coming up to that first
stoplight. A solution may be buried deep in the menus,
but we didn’t find it, and our test car had no owner’s
manual.
Still, these are pretty minor complaints. We found no
major drawbacks to the Niro EV, and a lot to like.
How will it sell?
While the Niro lineup outsold the Ioniq in 2018, its
sales of 28,000 are still low for a dedicated model. We
suspect the Niro EV won’t make an enormous impact
on those numbers, simply because it will be limited in
availability.
As we suggested earlier in regards to the Kona Elec-
tric, the big question is one that applies to many plug-
in models: To what extent Kia will make it possible to
While the Kia Niro lineup
outsold the Hyundai Ioniq, its
sales of 28,000 are still low
for a dedicated model. We
suspect the Niro EV won’t make
an enormous impact on those
numbers.
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