The 2023 Kia Niro is a Small Crossover with Some BIG Tricks Up Its Sleeve

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Tflev is brought to you by flowcharter maker of reliable high quality charging stations for your electric vehicle today you join me in beautiful san diego to take a look at the all-new second generation kia niro and this is a car that we have actually had a chance to check out before but only fairly briefly and on this trip we actually get to drive it and get it

Out on the road and that video is going to be coming very soon but before we get it out on the road we want to walk around the car and show you everything there is to see on it because there’s a lot to pick apart here now this new kia niro is going to be available with three different powertrains this base model is a hybrid then you can opt for a plug-in hybrid

Or you can even go for the all-electric model and as you go down that list they get more powerful you get more for the money but with this base hybrid version you get a 1.6 liter inline four-cylinder gas engine paired to a six-speed dual clutch transmission and you get a 32 kilowatt electric motor combined output 139 horsepower 195 pound-feet of torque and let’s

Go ahead and hop on the inside and check out what kind of interior you get with that because these segments are becoming very very competitive and so to stay competitive all of the manufacturers are having to throw in tons of tech and tons of features now you can see i have a really nice array of screens and a generally very nice interior one thing that i think

Is pretty cool is that on these cars kia is making the interiors in such a way that it doesn’t hurt our friendly animals so this headliner is apparently made partly from recycled wallpaper parts of the materials used on the seats come from eucalyptus leaves and they have btx free paint on the door cards which just creates less waste less environmental impact so

Kind of cool that they’re making these small electrified cars a little bit better for the environment you might as well um all around on the interior i mean the materials feel pretty good you know it definitely feels a little different than your usual but it doesn’t feel bad and the layout of the interior looks really nice i love the fact that they have a legit

Shifter it’s not a rotary dial it’s not a push button this is the kind of shifter that we prefer one thing that i’m not huge on are these screens for the climate i remember when we got the ev6 at our office i went on the program for the ev6 and i had to show my co-workers who are you know kind of old school had to show them how to use this setup to get to your

Climate i mean once you’re used to it it’s really not the end of the world um they couldn’t figure out where the tune knob was and i told them that you had to switch it away from climate in order to turn what would otherwise be the passenger side temp control into your tune knob because they were complaining that it didn’t have a tune knob it does they were also

Complaining that it didn’t have a good way for you to adjust the volume without having to spam this rocker switch on the steering wheel it does you just have to change the screen layout to do it so it’s a usable interior once you get used to it if you’re maybe a slightly older driver it might take you a moment to get used to this is also kind of cool you can leave

Your storage area down here a little bit more open if you have larger items to store or you can turn them into cup holders it’s a small thing but it’s kind of a fun way to make the most use out of your space that you possibly can let’s hop in there it is let’s hop in the rear seat and see how we fit because this is a fairly small car it’s not tiny and actually the

Nero is now bigger than the car the narrow that it replaces overall in terms of being able to fit in here i mean i’m only five foot ten i’m not a huge guy but i have plenty of leg room plenty of headroom it feels pretty spacious back here i also do really like that they’ve got vents here for the rear seat passengers that is really nice to have summer and winter

Being able to have climate for your rear seat passengers huge plus you also have usbc’s right back here not usbas which is great because most things are moving to usbcs and i know alex my co-worker who’s a total tech nerd he would be stoked to see the usbcs you do get actually both on the front there’s a usb a up there and a usbc and a qi wireless charger which

Is kind of cool really making videographer coal work to get shots of everything that i’m pointing out from random places in the car but yeah don’t mind the back seat at all and then finally let’s check out the trunk power liftgate and 22.8 cubic feet of space behind the rear seats which is you know that would be enough for me to hang out in if i wanted to it’s a

Decent sized rear trunk so overall really usable interior not a ton of excess i mean the materials especially in the back seat are nothing too fancy but it’s a usable economical interior i really don’t mind it at all now let’s go ahead and move on to this plug-in hybrid this is going to be your next step up in powertrains so with this step up you go from a 32

Kilowatt electric motor to a 62 kilowatt electric motor and you also get an 11.1 kilowatt hour battery in this car so a much more substantial electrified component of the car you also get more power 180 horsepower versus 139 and you get 195 pound-feed torque so same torque more horsepower and you can drive up to 33 miles on all electric now tomorrow we’re going

To try to test out and see how far we can actually get on all electric in the real world but kia claims up to 33 miles they also claim that on a level 2 charger like the kind of charger you would install at home you can charge this battery in under three hours which is not bad most people’s commutes are probably around about 30 miles or less i know mine is so for

A lot of drivers you could do all of your driving on all electric which would be really really nice also about 53 miles per gallon on the hybrid model unless you spec it out with optional 18 inch wheels in which case that rating drops down to 49 and then 108 mpge on this plug-in hybrid model so already really good efficiency on the base and just a whole lot more

If you opt for the plug-in and then finally we have to talk about the crown powertrain which is the full electric model 201 horsepower from its electric motor and a 64.8 kilowatt hour battery and you can fast charge this car on a level 3 charger kia says 10 to 80 percent in under 45 minutes it can only fast charge up to 85 kilowatts so it’s not a super super fast

Charging car i mean ev6 does what i think 350 so that’s a really impressively fast charging car but this is a pretty small battery so charging it up on a fast charger even though it’s not the fastest charging thing in terms of how much power it can take in not that big of a deal because yeah it’s not that big of a battery and again 201 horsepower so you’re going

To get the most power output out of this full electric model also let’s talk a little bit about styling because i think that that’s one of the things that makes this car really stand out because again there’s a lot of vehicles in this segment more and more coming out and so you kind of have to do something a little dramatic to separate yourself from the rest and

I would say that this has definitely done that i think the biggest thing that you notice when you walk up to it are all of these elements of contrast especially along the side of the body you have a lot of black body work along the bottom and then this right here the aero blade so this is actually a functional intake right here helps with the aerodynamics of the

Car apparently i mean i haven’t tried it in a wind tunnel or anything but i believe them but i also think it’s cool that this panel is black you’re really not going to mistake this nero for any other car purely because of that i think that just makes it unique this might be maybe a little bit of a controversial point on this car it might not be everybody’s thing i

Definitely don’t mind it and then you’ve got these boomerang style tail lights overall pretty sharp car i would say i think he has been doing honestly a really good job with theirs and i like the ev6 a lot and i like this as well because it’s nice to have a smaller alternative one thing that i do wish that there was was i wish he had the option for an all-wheel

Drive variant there isn’t one every one of these powertrains is front wheel drive which is not the end of the world you could put snow tires on a front-wheel drive car and get around fine in most places being that we’re based in colorado i would always prefer to have the option of all-wheel drive of course you could get the ev6 if you want to step up a level to

Get all-wheel drive that is doable it would be kind of nice if they had it on this but at least they have other cars that satisfy that need so that’s pretty much all there is to check out on this car now uh before we get to drive it and let me tell you a little bit about the pricing so so far kia has only revealed the pricing for this the base model hybrid and

It’s going to start at 26 490 before destination and then you could spec it all the way out to 32 490 if you get the top trim of it um presumably the other two are going to be more expensive but um yeah you know not bad in in terms of pricing um especially considering how much you get there are a lot of optional features on this car you can get dual 10.25 inch

Screens on the car they do come standard with wireless apple carplay and android auto which is nice to have i mean that’s kind of become a standard at this point you can also get a ton of other stuff like smart cruise control with stop and go yeah really a lot of extra features that you can spec out on this car but even the base of what you get is really nice also

A lot of standard safety features you get a blind spot collision avoidance lane keep assist automatic emergency braking so yeah not a bad car if you don’t go in and spec out tons and tons of options on it but that’s what the pricing is at the moment be sure to keep your eyes peeled for the full review on this car coming down the pipeline very very soon and let me

Know what you think in the comments below foreign

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The 2023 Kia Niro is a Small Crossover with Some BIG Tricks Up Its Sleeve! By TFLEV