I pinged Kia on social media when they planned to bring an all-electric Niro to production and they said it was concept only and no production plans. bummer.
This is our original source for Niro Electric news. (A Google translation from Autorai.nl) "Michael Cole, COO of Kia Motors Europe, announces in an interview with AutoRAI.nl that Kia will come with an electric Niro in 2018. The model variant has the same technology as the Hyundai Ioniq Electric. We can not report anything yet about the radius of action, "he says. Construction of the Kia Niro Plug-in Hybrid (PHEV) starts in March this year." *Edit to add: I'm going to see if I can't get good information on this from Kia communications. *Edit again to add: Sent a question about it to Kia global communications and didn't receive a reply. Will try the US office, but I'm not hopeful they'll give me info. They probably will email me back at least, though.
I wouldn't put too much stock into that social media reply -- they've shown something clearly intended for market! Plus: https://www.egear.be/kia-niro-ev/ (a little translate help, anyone?)
These are the specs and estimated price for Europe, it seems. The price is unofficial, but they are guessing about 40K Euros ($47,164) for the 39-kWh version and 49K Euros (57,776) for the 64 kWh one. We have a thread with the official specifications all laid out, which you can find >here<.
Official confirmation = Kia's US website now has a page dedicated to the 2019 Niro EV: https://www.kia.com/us/en/content/vehicles/upcoming-vehicles/2019-niro-ev It says "The all-new 2019 Kia Niro EV has debuted internationally, expanding upon the Niro model family of hybrid crossovers and is set to arrive in the US at the end of 2018.1 This highly-anticipated electric vehicle has an electric motor that provides an estimated 201 horsepower and 291 lb-ft. of torque." Clicking on the disclaimer associated with that statement leads to: "1. Expected availability winter 2018 in select markets in limited quantities." Hurry up and make these, Kia! I've decided I just can't get excited enough about the Bolt to buy one.
Woot! Thanks for sharing this. I've signed up for updates. I imagine Kia will start with sales in California and maybe some other CARB states: (Connecticut, Colorado, Delaware,Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington, as well as the District of Columbia.)
Can't remember if we've mentioned this data point, but there is an article from Business Korea from October 2017 that says the initial production of the Niro EV will be 21,000 units. Can't say how many of those will make it to the States, though.
Man, that article confuses me. They're going to increase the planned production of the Kona EV by 20,000, bringing the total planned production number to 18,600? On the whole, the article does seem to be saying to expect about 20,000 Niro EVs in its first year of production. But that directly contradicts what the first sentence is saying, and the 38%/66% part doesn't make sense either, nor does the part about learning from the Ioniq example if the Ioniq example is that making 20k cars (since increased to 40k) is way too little.
