Kia e-Niro (2018-2022) reliability & safety rating
Great standard safety kit and a seven-year warranty are standard on the Kia e-Niro, but servicing intervals are surprisingly short
The e-Niro is hard to fault for safety, with advanced driver aids as well as seven airbags all included, while a seven-year warranty is another big bonus.
Kia e-Niro reliability & problems
It’s hard to comment on e-Niro reliability given that it’s a relatively new car, but evidence from the early performance of its Hyundai Kona Electric sibling and similar lithium-ion battery cars suggests the e-Niro will be far more reliable than diesel or petrol alternatives.
So, while Kia gives no guarantees in terms of battery performance over time, evidence from the durability of other modern electric cars suggests you should still be getting at least 80% of the car’s as-new driving range even at well past 100,000 miles or five years old.
The seven-year/100,000-mile warranty that covers the battery (for failure but not performance loss) and electric motor as well as the rest of the car is one of the best manufacturer guarantees going and should provide peace of mind.
Safety
The Kia has a five-star Euro NCAP safety rating, thanks to seven airbags including a driver’s knee airbag, two ISOFIX points (one on each outer rear seat) and a front passenger airbag that’s easy to switch off in order to safely fit a rear-facing child seat in the front, should you need to.
You also get plenty of active safety kit including autonomous emergency braking, lane-keeping assistance, adaptive cruise control (which maintains your distance from the car in front), forward collision avoidance, hill-start assistance and a system to warn if the car senses the driver is getting tired.
It doesn’t quite get the semi-autonomous level of technology that you can add to the Nissan Leaf can offer, and it’d be good to see blind-spot warning added or offered optionally, but even so the Kia is one of the best cars in its class for standard safety equipment.
