e-Niro Sightings

David T in Silicon Valley

David T in Silicon Valley

Active Member
How many of you have seen another e-Niro out and about? I have collected three so far (but no pics yet.. :( ) .
  • One in the parking lot at the Y (pearl white like mine),
  • One I have seen twice on the same stretch of road during my morning commute (either black or gravity blue... who can tell the difference?)
  • I saw one driving on 101 south a week ago. Aluminum gray.
I plan to be faster to snap a pic in future.

Let's post our sightings of this still rare car(*) here.

(*)About 1600 sold in the United States at the end of January 2020, based on the methodology in this thread.
 
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Still waiting to spot my Ghost's first fellow Niro in the wild . . .

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I have seen 2 or 3 in Toronto alone, so have to think there are a few hiding out there. But yes, this is the first time I've bought a car thinking it was rare, to actually have it be a unicorn among the other cars out there (very rare to see one, in the wild or on a dealer's lot).

Most of the time as soon as you buy a car you start seeing lots of them on the road - not so with the Niro EV.
 
Tom, do you have any data on Canadian sales? I wonder how they are selling, north of the wall you are no doubt starting to build on your southern border.

(I suppose a per capita sales rate better correlates with how often someone might see one. So for the US that would be about 5x10^-6 . of course there are going to be bunch of other factors in sighting rates, like local population density, median driving time for the typical person in the area, and the vehicles being predominately sold in certain areas, like LA and the Bay Area.)
 
I've seen between 4 and 7 in my small driving bubble around Seattle. I only drive 12 miles to work and I now am seeing a couple on my way to/from. The others I've spotted randomly on the road or at the store. I've seen multiple black ones and am not sure if it is the same car or not.

Glad to see them on the road, though I still see a lot of inventory at local dealers. I thought there would be a lot more demand for these in this town.
 
I have seen two others in the Seattle area. The first one was in Kingston near where I bought mine. The second one was in line for the ferry from Kingston to Edmonds. They were a few cars in front of me. Unfortunately, we started boarding before I could get out and chat with the driver. I hope to get another chance to chat at first opportunity.
 
David T in Silicon Valley said:
Tom, do you have any data on Canadian sales? I wonder how they are selling, north of the wall you are no doubt starting to build on your southern border.

(I suppose a per capita sales rate better correlates with how often someone might see one. So for the US that would be about 5x10^-6 . of course there are going to be bunch of other factors in sighting rates, like local population density, median driving time for the typical person in the area, and the vehicles being predominately sold in certain areas, like LA and the Bay Area.)
Click to expand...

In my area of the Greater Toronto Region there really are only 2 dealers who have really bought into selling EV's. Of those two, I've talked with one of them, they've sold more than 20 Niro's by about Nov 2019. The dealer I bought mine from was also close, in the 15-20 range for 2019. But apparently most of these cars were sent to Quebec and British Columbia because in Ontario the new PC government (the backwards thinkers they are) ended our subsidy for EV's and significantly impacted overall EV sales in this province (so don't think we're immune to the political problems that you're having down south, lol!).

Luckily in May of 2019 our Federal government got smart with a small rebate that reignited some sales outside BC and Quebec. I can't find numbers for Canada at the moment without buying a report (which I don't want to do) but I heard when I first started doing my research on the Niro that all of Canada had an allocation of like 450 units for 2019. So it's a pretty rare beast in these northern parts. Many, many more Lina's rolling around up here.
 
I live in Ohio (non-sale state). I know of 5 other Niro EV owners in the state (we helped most of them with either letting them see ours before purchase, planning their return drives since infrastructure is a little sparse in some areas, talked about why the winter packages were critical here, etc.). We have gotten together for pictures with one of them (attaching one of the pictures). And at our EV group's National Drive Electric Week event we parked the Kona EV (non-sale state for it too) next to us so that people could compare them.
 

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I’ve seen one other, a white one that cared not about SOC and stood on the hammer and disappeared into the traffic in front of me. My wife has a VW Arteon and I have yet to see one of those in the wild.
 
I've seen one Niro EV while I was passing through a city and another on the highway. All the other 5 Niros were hybrids or ICE. For a ZEV state that's pretty good in my books.

I did have one lady with a PHEV or ICE Niro pull into the same parking lot as me and park within line of sight. She must have seen my Niro because she looked at me as I walked up to my car. We did a little wave of recognition and parted ways. That was wholesome.

I did form a Niro caravan with a black Niro Touring two days ago. I looked real hard and saw the Touring badge on the left side rear. I saw them passing me so I sped up and matched them with ACC. They let me pass after a while and traffic broke us up. </3
 
I've only seen 1 other Niro EV in and around LA/Orange County, and that was at an electric vehicle event in Los Angeles. I know our's were the only 2 Niro EVs on the registration list of some 500 attendees. Otherwise, I've seen several hybrids.
 
Recently saw one near my house in SW Portland, the dark color. The Beaverton dealer we bought from in October, at that time said they had sold about a dozen.
 
Until quite recently, I had not seen any other Niro EV's on the road. That's been starting to change recently.
- The town I live in, Los Altos Hills, just acquired one - same color as mine (dark blue)
- I saw a grey one charging in a parking garage in Palo Alto
- I think I saw one on the freeway recently - can't remember with certainty if it was a PHEV or EV though.
 
I’d guess my commute, I 280 between San Jose and San Francisco, may be 15% evs. Most are some version of tesla, many bolts and i3s, some leafs. This is a busy 4 lane commute the whole way. There are times when I realize I am bracketed by evs.

I see an occasional Niro, but all except one have had a tailpipe. And then one day about 3 months ago, there it was; no tailpipe, and “graphite” color like mine. With a slight nod of the head we each acknowledged the wisdom of our decisions. Then, after a few minutes, intentional differentials in the flow of electrons separated us farther and farther. We each eased back into our accustomed Niro singularity. Yet we parted now knowing entanglement had been proven.


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I finally photographed one in the wild! This is the same color as one I saw at the Y a few weeks ago. No telling if it is the same vehicle since I did not get the license plate of the one at the Y.

Interestingly, they have a September sticker on their plate, but no commuter lane sticker yet. Mine came a few days ago (3 weeks for them to cash my check after I sent in my application, then 10 more days).

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"Inside EVS Forum - Error
You do not have permission to view media within this album."

???

_H*
 
I find the media handling settings on this site very awkward. I made the album private, but apparently that means even embedded images will not render. Smh. Could not figure out how to change the privacy on the album (SMH!!) so I made a new one. Here is the one I tried to post a couple of days ago, with the September plate and no commuter lane sticker.

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And a low res of a gravity blue. It was across the intersection and I never got close to it. You can actually see a blue tinge to the paint near the specular reflection of the sun. Why they made that color so dark is a mystery.

IMG_1702

IMG_1702

Gravity blue from across an intersection
 
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