Kia Niro PHEV: reviewed

In theory this should be a real box-ticker. It’s a modern-looking SUV that was designed from the get-go as a hybrid vehicle, so there are fewer compromises than in some. You could get it last year as a conventional petrol-electric hybrid, but now you can also choose it as a PHEV – plug-in hybrid electric vehicle. With a claimed range of 38 miles on electric juice alone, shouldn’t this get that pen ticking?

In many ways this is like the first hybrid, and it has the same 1.6-litre petrol engine. You get a smooth and pretty peaceful journey out of it, with the system shuffling drive from electric to petrol and back in a seamless manner. It’ll only call on the petrol engine when it feels it needs to, and doesn’t panic at the first sign of an incline.

But if you put your foot down a bit more then it gets a bit more fraught. The dual-clutch auto box is the main but not only culprit. It tends to hold the gear for longer than seems necessary, clearly not feeling confident about pulling a higher gear. Keep accelerating and the revs stay really high, and this isn’t exactly the sort of engine that sounds like a Ferrari wailing to the redline. It’s a bit of a grind to be honest.

That engine of course is joined by an electric motor, battery, ancillaries and much else, all of which adds a further 150kg than even the far from lightweight standard hybrid. You’ll know about it when you try to whisk down a B-road. It’s an unfortunate mix since the steering is heavy and devoid of communication, and the front end starts to wash out quite early, so things start happening before you get any warning.

The handling isn’t bad, certainly strong enough to stop the body from rolling around in the corners, but that leads to a crashing ride as the vehicle struggles to deal with the extra weight. It’s worse at lower speeds, so motorways are less of an issue.

That battery pack is under the back seats and knocks 60 litres off the boot capacity. Despite its exterior size, the SUV would struggle to get the amount of luggage in that you’d have a right to expect. Space for the occupants is rather better, although build quality is only okay rather than very good. But at least there is a lot of kit in this PHEV as standard, including an 8in touchscreen with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto compatibility.

Whether this works for you as a vehicle is more about what you would use it for. If you take the view that this is an SUV and so should be used for exploring new worlds with the family, then it probably isn’t for you. If you do short journeys in built-up areas a lot, then it might be. The actual electric range is more like 25 than 38, but that’s about par for the course.

So it’s almost a bit topsy-turvy. This rugged looking SUV is actually best suited for short journeys across town. The further you go the worse the fuel consumption is going to get, although we’d still expect it to better 50mpg - so not quite the official 217mpg.