Kia e-Niro long term review

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Kia e-Niro Diaries

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Not sure how this car is being marketed in the US. In Europe it is known as the e-Niro with no less than Robert D. Niro being used for the initial publicity. They may have wasted their money on the great man as they had no trouble selling these cars. I ordered mine from my dealer in Niort on December 31st. I am a Brit living in France and took delivery on 15th March. I am having a go at V-logging my experiences on YouTube...I am not so good with cameras and all that stuff but readers of Inside EV’s are welcome to take a look, make comments and offer advice.

We are very much on a learning curve here, its a lot of fun and last weekend we did a 1,430 km round trip to Lausanne in Switzerland...first experience of rapid charging and destination charging. So far this is a great car, perfect for our needs but my goodness they are expensive to buy. As an owner of a Gen 2 Prius my intention was to look at the Niro Hybrid..a fine car but the demo of the e-Niro had just arrived and it sold itself..despite the fact that even in France I could have bought 150,000 km worth of petrol/gas (see I am bilingual)!!...If I were ordering one now it would be a Gallic shrug of shoulders and ‘sometime next year’..Really sad that they can’t make more of them as yet.
 
Kia e-Niro Diaries said:
Not sure how this car is being marketed in the US. In Europe it is known as the e-Niro with no less than Robert D. Niro being used for the initial publicity. They may have wasted their money on the great man as they had no trouble selling these cars. I ordered mine from my dealer in Niort on December 31st. I am a Brit living in France and took delivery on 15th March. I am having a go at V-logging my experiences on YouTube...I am not so good with cameras and all that stuff but readers of Inside EV’s are welcome to take a look, make comments and offer advice.

We are very much on a learning curve here, its a lot of fun and last weekend we did a 1,430 km round trip to Lausanne in Switzerland...first experience of rapid charging and destination charging. So far this is a great car, perfect for our needs but my goodness they are expensive to buy. As an owner of a Gen 2 Prius my intention was to look at the Niro Hybrid..a fine car but the demo of the e-Niro had just arrived and it sold itself..despite the fact that even in France I could have bought 150,000 km worth of petrol/gas (see I am bilingual)!!...If I were ordering one now it would be a Gallic shrug of shoulders and ‘sometime next year’..Really sad that they can’t make more of them as yet.
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Congrats on the car, and feel free to share your experiences and videos here. Looking forward to learning more about this car.

*edit to add....I've taken the liberty of adding your first video here. Tracked your YouTube channel down and was enjoying this one so, voila!
(p.s. Love your place in France. Lovely stone walls.)

 
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Domenick said:
Congrats on the car, and feel free to share your experiences and videos here. Looking forward to learning more about this car.

*edit to add....I've taken the liberty of adding your first video here. Tracked your YouTube channel down and was enjoying this one so, voila!
(p.s. Love your place in France. Lovely stone walls.)

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Thanks Domenick. The house and barns are about 200 years old and like many Brits who move down here for a better life we spent a few years renovating the house before we started thinking about a new car. Next month we have 8 solar panels going up on the barn roof so charging the Niro should be even cheaper. We have 2 acres here and have recently added an powerful electric lawnmower to replace our petrol driven ones..It does a great job so we are gradually saying goodbye to fossil fuels. The tough thing for me will be selling my 1956 tractor..a real classic but it burns diesel, last year I used 30 litres of the smelly stuff!..It runs for hours on a litre but electric powered gear is just so much better and of course cleaner.
 
Kia e-Niro Diaries said:
Thanks Domenick. The house and barns are about 200 years old and like many Brits who move down here for a better life we spent a few years renovating the house before we started thinking about a new car. Next month we have 8 solar panels going up on the barn roof so charging the Niro should be even cheaper. We have 2 acres here and have recently added an powerful electric lawnmower to replace our petrol driven ones..It does a great job so we are gradually saying goodbye to fossil fuels. The tough thing for me will be selling my 1956 tractor..a real classic but it burns diesel, last year I used 30 litres of the smelly stuff!..It runs for hours on a litre but electric powered gear is just so much better and of course cleaner.
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Old tractors are so awesome, it's hard to let them go. They can be converted, but that's a bit of a task. And $$$.
 
Two months into owning my e-Niro here in France with 4,500km on the clock. Last weekend we did a 280km trip up to Orleans for an overnight stay and a look around the lovely old city with its spectacular cathedral. On the way up we had fierce headwinds and rain.The the temperature dropped suddenly so the heater came on along with the wipers. On leaving the range had said 480km after charging at home on our standard French plug but on arrival in Orleans the range was down to 70km!..So our effective range was 350km. The journey home was a different story, fine weather and a slight tail wind. We left with 440km range showing and arrived home with 120km remaining. We were driving at 110-120 KmH on the autoroutes with the odd foray into 130kmH territory..so not exactly slow. All welcome to view the video on Youtube at Kia e-Niro Diaries.
 
You could google "where are niro cameras"...

It seems there is one forwards looking and perhaps a couple on the sided, but the only one you can "see" is the rear camera.

The rest are used for lane keeping, collision avoidance, etc, so in my mind somewhat moot.
 
Maybe, but keep in mind that Toyota and Honda do not have a pure EV that gets 200 miles on a charge. Only Nissan does.
 
I thought we were comparing Kia (Korea) to Leaf (Japan)... you were complaining about no front camera in Kia.

So, don't get what your post #13 has to do with my response (post #12) to your post #11?
 
I worked in the Japanese auto industry for a number of years. Nissan is sort of a rebel there, they do not buy components from the same suppliers that Toyota does.

I actually had my US boss tell me that I should not drive my Nissan 300ZX to work, and I should drive my Toyota.

So, I feel that Nissan is often more innovative, they have to fight for the market in Japan, just like Honda.

Greg
 
Did you see that video on youtube where they compared 8 EV's and ran them to empty to see what the real range was, and how accurate the range meters were? It's interesting that the really expensive cars like the Mercedes/Audi did not fare well, as I remember the Kia was the only one who met their advertised range.
 
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