Electric Kia e-Niro hasn’t QUITE got the range Kia thought

It seems the official range for the Kia e-Niro – Kia’s new electric crossover – isn’t quite as good as Kia has been claiming. But it’s still good.

The Kia e-Niro, and the sister under the skin Hyundai Kona Electric, have been hailed as game-changers for the electric car market with their Crossover styling, sensible pricing and properly usable range. 

But it seems there has been a bit of a cock-up with WLTP testing of the e-Niro, with an external WLTP testing company apparently failing to apply the proper testing procedure and delivering official range figures which aren’t correct.

It seems that when the testing was done the e-Niro was subjected to a disproportionate amount of time under the urban driving cycle which led to figures which were too flattering. So the e-Niro’s official range has now been cut from 301 miles to 282 miles for the 64kWh battery version and from 193 miles to 179 miles for the 39.2kWh.

Kia discovered the anomaly when they were doing homologation for another electric Kia (which we guess was the new Kia Soul EV), and has written to those who have placed orders for the new e-Niro to let them know. But we can’t believe anyone would change their minds based on this.

In fact, what really matters is what owners will get in the real world and, as we recently reported, the e-Niro performs very well in the real world with a range of 253 miles.

Expect to hear similar news for the new Hyundai Kona Electric.