Kia Niro Review (2022)

Instead of the usual elephant-skin texturing, they’ve gone for a stone-like surface on the plastic door and dash panels, and there are flashes of colour to keep it all light. The trim panels are plastic but look like tarnished brass. And recycled materials are used in the seats and headlining.

Amid all the style, function hasn’t been forgotten, with plenty of easy buttons and switches. Kia’s switchable dual-purpose touchbar for the ventilation and the infotainment shortcuts is a little fiddly, but we’ve seen much worse.

The seats are comfy and supportive, and the lofty driving position will be appreciated by SUV buyers, but taller drivers will wish for some more reach adjustment in the steering. The Niro has Kia’s standard infotainment system, which requires a cable for smartphone mirroring but is otherwise easy to use.

What is the new Kia Niro like to drive?

To drive, the Niro is… fine. It’s not great, it’s not offensive. The old one was lacklustre at best, and on the evidence of its commercial success, the new one probably needn’t do much more than that. However, given the dynamic sparkle evident in the EV6, we had hoped a little more progress.

As the powertrain is largely carried over, it logically feels similar. Its peak figure of 139bhp sounds healthy, but up hills and when merging on the motorway, the four-pot has to work quite hard and communicates as much.

As before, you get two driving modes: Eco and Sport. The old Niro suffered from overly languid throttle calibration in Eco mode, but that has been addressed now.

Apart from having no reverse gear (that is taken care of by the electric motor), the dual-clutch gearbox is utterly conventional. In this case, there’s nothing wrong with that. Having six gears to cycle through means the drone from the engine isn’t quite as omnipresent as in the HR-V or the 1.8-litre C-HR, and the powertrain is a bit more alert than Renault’s E-Tech solution.

It mostly goes about its business smoothly, save for the very occasional and very slight snag when the engine has to suddenly chip in.

It’s a similar story with the chassis. The ingredients are promising: a wider track than before, a multi-link rear axle and Continental Premium Contact tyres.