2022 Kia Niro EV Hybrid Review and Test Drive

February 23, 2022

Join Nik Miles as he goes over the ins and outs of the new 2022 Kia Niro Hybrid. Nik takes us on a test drive and tells us about all the newest upgrades, how the car feels while driving, and gives us an honest review of the vehicle.

I’m Nik Miles at Dick Hannah Kia in Vancouver and today we’re going to show you the Kia Niro. Now the Niro comes in three different flavors: a hybrid, a plug-in hybrid, and a gasoline version. Today we’re going to show you the hybrid version. This vehicle gets around 50 miles a gallon and is one of the best SUVs/CUVs on the market. We’re going to show you how it drives, some of the exterior stylings, and some of the interior and technological features that this hybrid comes with. So, let’s get it on the road.

So, the first thing you notice about driving the Kia Niro Hybrid is how quiet it is. I’m right now in the electric vehicle mode. If I put my foot down the gas motor will kick in and you’ll hear it a little bit. And that’s the cool thing about this, if you drive at slow speeds, it’ll just use the electric motor. And so, what does it have? It has a 1.6-liter engine in here. And the fuel economy is absolutely amazing. Around the city, you’ll get around 51 miles a gallon out of it. Once you get out onto the highway it’s around 46 miles a gallon combined of 49 miles a gallon. Amazing fuel economy, that’s the first thing you notice about driving it. It’s a fairly good horsepower, 139 horsepower, 195 pounds-feet of torque, that’s combined with the hybrid motor, the gas, and the electric motor combined. So, they work together. And of course, the torque means that you can take off from a start using both the gas and the hybrid engine quite fast. So, it has a good pickup, it can overtake well, it has good altogether acceleration in the vehicle if you need to use it at the same time as still having great fuel economy.

Now I wouldn’t call this a sedan and I wouldn’t call it a crossover. It’s somewhere in between. It’s sort of a crossover height but the usability of a sedan. And that’s great for people who have things like dogs because them getting in and out of the vehicle is quite comfortable, loading things in and out of the vehicle is the perfect height. And just because this is a hybrid doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have some luxury features. I mean it has a leather-wrapped steering wheel, and the leather-wrapped steering wheel has lots of buttons and programmable buttons too; a mode button which is programmable, you have a button to activate your voice, a telephone button in here as well, adaptive cruise control, you also have a button for your pages, as well as your button to select your different screens on here as well.

Your screens up in front of you are all digital, there is no analog information inside this vehicle. And the digital information is quite comprehensive. Remembering that this is a hybrid, you can see what the car is doing at any one time, and it gives you good feedback and information about the car’s performance as you drive it. So, you can see the amount of power it’s using whether you’re using the vehicle economically, how much fuel is left, how much battery is left in the vehicle, if you’re using it with the adaptive cruise control, whether it’s within the lines on the highway, the speed, at the same time as whether it’s using battery or it’s replenishing the battery. So, all that information and some of the driving characteristics that you have are being demonstrated to you and shown to you via the digital cluster that is in front of you as you drive in the gauge display.

Six different colors and materials on the inside, five different trim levels in this vehicle as well, well laid out interior, a lot of piano black but it’s very smooth on the inside, a good flowing dashboard from side to side, and the screen looks like it fits quite neatly inside the dashboard as well. The heated steering wheel and the ventilation system seem to fit quite nicely into the dashboard. It all looks like one continuous unit. A smart key system with automatic start and keyless entry, 10.25-inch screen embedded in that dashboard as well, and of course it’s a touchscreen with all Kia’s latest infotainment system. Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are standard inside the vehicle, as well as a backup camera. The good thing about the backup camera is it does have the line projections as you back up and there is the option of different camera angles to choose from as you back your vehicle into a parking space.

Now Kia of course synonymous with safety and that safety is included on the 2022 Kia Niro. You have your automatic emergency braking, which this vehicle will do, you also have your blind spot detection technology, it’s showing a small vehicle that is in the blind spot, there is rear cross-traffic alert as you back up, lane-keeping assist is also available in the vehicle and that can be demonstrated as well inside your gauge cluster. And on the upper trim levels, you also get something called highway driving assist, and this is new from Kia, which is a driving assistance technology which is part of level two autonomous driving which allows you to have your automatic driving systems as you go on freeways where you can take your hands off of the wheel for a certain amount of time. But the system will require you to put your hands back on the wheel if it decides that the situation is unsafe at any time.

Taking a look at the outside of the 2022 Kia Niro you’ll notice the brand-new Kia logo at the front of this 2022 against the tiger-nose grille which we’re all familiar with if you know Kia at all. And this time it gets black piano black plastic at the front here and also those nice diamond-shaped indentations which I think look really cool on this version of the vehicle. The daytime running lights are low down with this very exclusive design. Projector headlights coming down the side of the vehicle. You’ll notice the monochromatic mirrors that have black at the bottom also have the signal lights embedded. The roof rails here actually have openings here to attach a bigger roof rack at the top so you can put things like bikes or kayaks on the top and we’ve seen people do that to take this vehicle on adventures here. Monochromatic door handles at the front and the back, and very nice wheels here which have also silver and black on them as well.

Coming around the back there is quite a lot of space inside this vehicle. The space in this Niro is quite impressive. 19 cubic feet of space in this Niro. And then you put the second row down you can get over 54 cubic feet of space. Now there is a secret to increasing that cubic foot of space and that is under the floor here. You can pull out this piece of foam and actually increase the amount of space in the vehicle by around five cubic feet of space. Now overall there is over a hundred cubic feet of space inside the Kia Niro. That’s plenty of room for your adventures and hauling around all your family and their stuff.

So, whatever the flavor of Kia Niro that you like they’ll have one for you to test drive at Dick Hannah Kia in Vancouver. Give them a call, check out the website, or come down and get yourself a test drive today.