Hello everyone, this is John again and this is NOT my KIA Niro plug-in Hybrid.
This is one that I have on loan for a few days from McGrath Kia in Cedar
Rapids Iowa ,primarily so that I can learn what's changed between the 2019
version that I own and the 2020. The first thing we can go over is the engine
compartment. If you look on the right-hand side, you'll see the hardware
that is used to interface the 8.9 kwh battery in the back with
the motor generator unit over here and the starter generator unit over there, as
well as manage the interface to the level 1 level 2 charging port in
converting the AC to DC and DC to three-phase power to drive the motor.
The starter generator is right here and it is used to start the car and, when
the car is idling, it can then be used to pull power from the car motor and put it
back in the battery. This is used mostly in the middle of winter when you still
want to drive on electric power but the car has to use the engine in order
to properly heat the cabin. On the right hand side, you will see the connection to
the electric motor. The electric motor sits between the engine and the
transmission it takes the place of the torque converter. So when the electric
motor runs by itself, it disconnects the engine from the transmission and when
the when the gas engine is running it can then provide additional power to
help move the car forward or take a little bit of power away from the engine
in order to recharge the battery pack. Access to the back of the vehicle is
achieved through here. There's a rubberized button underneath that then raises the
hatch. The back of the Nero is the same as it's always been.
The floor here underneath that you have the tire inflator kit and then a little
spot to put the charge cable, a 110 charge cable, and behind that is the
lithium ion battery that is used for propulsion. On the right hand side
there's a little bit of a bump out here and this bump out is where the 12-volt
lead acid battery is housed, that would normally be in the front for a regular
hybrid. But because the front has all the power electronics, it has moved back
here. Perhaps the biggest change in this year is the comfort of the seats. In the
previous model year, the seats were a little bit firm and that could lead some
problems. If you have, as my wife does, fibromyalgia and sitting on hard
surfaces for long periods of time is a problem. Now, along with making the seats
considerably softer, they do have more of a matte finish to them, so if you sit on
them you won't slide into position quite as readily as you would
have before. But these are so much more comfortable, I think it's well worth the
compromise. Just like last year the passenger side seat chair is completely
manual. Manual for the seat adjustment, manual for the for the seat placement
and so that means it is not nearly as comfortable for the passenger as it is
for the driver and that can be an issue. If you want to use this as a family
vehicle, and drive long distances, the passengers won't be nearly as
comfortable as they could be. One nice thing about the passenger seat is that it
does have a very very wide range of motion. It can be... This is like the
default position and you can move way back in the in the rails so if you have
a very tall person with very long legs they will have no problem sitting in the
passenger compartment. If you have a very tall person sitting in the front seat
there is literally no leg room left in the back seat. You might be able to fit a
backward facing child seat, but there's no way even a child could fit in there.
You have about four or five inches of leg
or room to put your legs and that would not be comfortable even for short
distances. With the passenger seat in its normal position, there is no issue with
an average-sized person sitting comfortably in the back seat. There's
about three or four inches left between my legs and the passenger position. There
is a very small hump between the two sides in the back it is about two inches
tall, so it will not be uncomfortable for somebody who wants to sit in there for a
long ride. However, there really is only enough room
in the back seat for two adults. Three children should have no problems, but
three there's no way three adults could comfortably fit in the back seat. The
infotainment center is completely new for 2020. Instead of being a smaller
screen with a thick bezel, this is now, I think, a 12 inch screen with a
completely flat bezel. Somebody with fingers as big as mine can actually get
to the various spots on the screen in the upper corners. If I go to weather,
normally on my 2019, there's a thick bezel right here in the corner and
hitting that with my finger is kind of not reliable. But with the 2020, with it
being perfectly flat, I have access to every part of the screen. Now, with the
main menu is broken into three sections and each of those three sections is
configurable. So, if I go to the setup button->advanced->home screen->edit home widgets
and those are the three ones. By default, it gives you maps, but, since I
know where I am, I've changed that away. To change any of those three items, you
click and hold on the item you want, drag it over, release and now you have the new
value. Hit home, slide left and now it has the clock there rather than the calendar
or whatever. If I want to change it to something else it set up advanced... Now
another one is the custom button, which is the star right here. By default,
it has nothing and I always set it to home because that lets me get to home no
matter where I am, if I'm in CarPlay or someplace else, but by default it is None.
Now, on on my 2019, Home is this
screen and it is kind of annoying to hit the star button and have to slide left
every time. I think that that may be a bug just because it isn't work the way I
would expect it to, but it might be a feature who knows. Nav mode: you go and
enter your destination like you normally would. If you hit in map mode then
there's a little arrow on the right-hand side. If I click it over pops
the CarPlay or plug-in hybrid data or any of those items that you can normally
configure to be on the home screen come up over here. Which is very convenient
because you don't have to go the home screen to see a larger map and what
you want to, do you just go to map mode instead. CarPlay is normal. I haven't had
any issues with CarPlay. it is nice having CarPlay on the full width of the
screen, so you can go back. I can go to my playlists. I can scroll to any one that I
want I can press it and it gives me a list of the songs. You can either scroll
using your finger or you can use the up and down arrows. If you go to the
playing next screen and scroll down, then you choose to go to the next song
in the list. It will keep you scrolled where you were rather than taking you
back up, so if you scroll down a little bit and then the next song starts
playing and when you go back and forth you may lose track of where you are. I
can see advantages to both, it just is kind of surprising the first couple
times that you do it. This is the standard plug-in hybrid screen. It shows
you how many miles you have left, where your closest charging station is,
if you have charging management setup, how you're driving,
how the energy is flowing to the system.
You can see data coming from the
engine, going to the battery and so on. One thing that changed going from the
2019 to the 2020, which I do like even though reduces range, the full
charge is now at 95% of the battery full rather than a 100%. The
number you see here is not really the number that the battery management
computer is providing. This is one that's been massaged a little bit to provide
more of a user battery level rather than the real battery level.
95% from the BMS (Battery Management System) equals 100%. Here, it's down a little bit
because I've been sitting with the car on and it's gonna be,
of course, pulling power from the battery. If I had my ODB2 reader software up,
you would see it's probably pulling about 3 amps out of the about
400 volt battery to run all the electronics and so forth.
When you backup, one of the things that happens is, in addition to turning on the backup camera,
is it will mute whatever audio source you have. So if you have radio on, if you
have mp3s playing, or whatever, it will reduce that volume to level 5
out of the max at 45, so that will help reduce the distractions that
you have. It doesn't reduce it to a certain volume level, so if level five is
still pretty loud it will still be pretty loud, but it will least quiet it
down. Another thing that it will do is it shows you the three backup zones, so if
there is any obstacles in your path, it will like that and then generate
a tone. And that tone is in stereo so if it's on the right-hand side of the car
you'll hear to the right-hand side of your ear, if it was on the left-hand side
of the car you'll hear of your left ear, if it's behind you'll hear out of both
as well as being able to see what's going on. Another thing is there's
another mode for the backup cam and that is straight down from the back bumper, so
that you can see any obstructions that might be
immediately behind you as well as those that are a little further away. It
will also give you your velocity vector, so it shows me where I'm going as I back up
as well as hearing the backup tone to let you know. Then, as I turn the
steering wheel, you'll see my velocity vector changes so that I can see how the
car is going to travel and whether I'm going to miss the objects or not.
One of the other changes that has taken place inside the cabin, is there used to be a
little little cubby hole here that would be about good size for a garage door
opener. What happened is they've moved the parking brake from being a
pedal on the floor to being a button here. So, basically it's a it's a bit
easier to integrate. It also has an auto hold button.
For me I liked having the little tray right there, because I'mnot one of
those people who likes attaching the garage door remote opener to their visor.
It tends to hold the visor down a little bit. Because of that, it would be nice if, on the
technology trim package, they would give you the option of a built-in garage door
opener that you could just have it learn your regular garage door opener, as well
as a 360 camera. Because the backup camera, while being nice, is not helpful
when it comes to parking and the parking assist does not help you when and you
are trying to pull forward. I know they have it on other vehicles, it would
just be a nice addition to the technology package to be able to see
what's in front of you what's the sides you as well as what's behind, so that way
you can more easily pull in the parking spots. You can see who's in front of you
when you're pulling forward in the parking lot, or a parking space, and it
would just make life a whole lot easier.
I also almost forgot they have changed the power in front. It used to be that the
was two of these old-style 12-volt interfaces now in addition to having the
the CarPlay and Android Auto plug,
they have a power only plug right next to it so that way you don't need to
bring an adapter to be able to charge your passengers phone.
One of the other major improvements I've noticed, in the car, has been just the level of noise
that the cabin experiences. In the 2019 Niro that I own, it can be kind of loud.
If there's cross traffic, you definitely notice it. If the car passes even notice
it. I don't notice it nearly as much in the
2020. Another issue is when the gas engine kicks in, it is very very loud in
the 2019 and I haven't really noticed it in the 2020. Highways noise is
considerably less. I've measured with my phone a volume of 72 decibels with my
Niro and this one on the same route with the gas engine running it was only 66
decibels, which is a big big improvement and one of the biggest complaints I've
heard from people who've been interested in buying in here.
The lane keep assist is rather aggressive, which is good. It seems the
cameras have improved quite a bit. In some spots the car, would too
late realized that that was in the proper lane. Right now, in
some of the spots where I had problems in the past, I don't have any problems right now.
Also, if I get a bit closer to the lane it will automatically steer you
back. My wife's vehicle has Lane keep assist and it is not quite as nice.
If I force it across on the center line, we'll get beeped as well
as have to fight the steering wheel a little bit. I must prefer this more aggressive
lane keep assist as opposed to some of the more passive ones.
It also will do its best to keep you in the center of the lane, if you choose to
let it. I try not to just because it tends to make me bit lazy,
but if I do try to test that out it will correct and then come back to the
center of the lane rather than pinging you from lane from side to side. It will keep
you straight and level.
When I was doing my EV testing, what I
would do is I would start with a fully charged battery and then see how far I
could go under the various conditions. So, for the city testing it was pretty
straightforward as I would drive on city streets and residential streets. Usually, the
top speed was 25 to 35 miles an hour and as a result what I was able to
come up with range, when I tried, of 36.1 miles or 58.1 kilometers and that was
actually very good. The first time I tried to do a range test on my 2019
plug-in it was 34.7 miles. I believe and that was just what I
happen to notice. Now, I'm going to try that again to see how the bad we worked.
when I tried the highway miles that was a bit different.
Fortunately, there is a charging station in a convenience store that is right off
highway, so I was able to go there and check on plug in the charge up to 100%
and then do the highway test. I drove north out of town which is relatively
flat and then I was able to write drive about 15 miles north turn around
drive over 15 miles south until I determined how long it took before
the battery no longer held EV mode. The highway was
22.0 miles or 35.4 kilometers. This is lest than I did in my first test with my 2019 Niro,
but in that Niro, fully charge, at the time was 100%, where
this was 95, so going from 26 to 22 miles is not that bad. I noticed after having
my oil change last fall that the battery was charging at 95
percent. This is good because that'll help the battery last longer.
The 2020 Niro also has paddles on either side of the steering wheel and those adjusts
the level of regenerative braking. I can increase it up to level 3 and reduce
it back to level 0. Level 0 is the same level of regenerative braking that the
2019 Niro has. Unfortunately, these are not on-demand braking so I can't hold
the left pedal and have it slow the car down. It will increase the regenerative
level to 3 if I hold it down, but it will not set it back to the default when I
release it nor does it engage immediately. So I'll set it to level 3
and then it will take a little while before engages so it really halt it is
doing is adjusting the regeneration level and that's it.
Another nice feature of the user interface is on the dashboard. If I
adjust the wiper speed, it will tell me what the new wiper speed is. If I just
adjust the speed of the intermittent wipers it will also show me that I've
changed the intermittent speed, which is very very handy. The same is
true for the back wiper, so I don't need to pay attention as much I can just look
and see "okay this is how fast the wipers going." I can see if I should speed it up or slow it down.
My highway mileage test was done after the EV battery
had discharged so that it would not maintain EV mode. That way i did not
have the numbers compromised by still having electrical power back and still
in the battery. In that case, what I did is I drove around the south part of
Waterloo, Iowa, which is kind of hilly. It has rather tall hills with rather steep
sides and the north side of Waterloo, which is relatively flat.
What I found out is that the Niro behaves like pretty much every other
hybrid in that it does not like steep hills. The up side of the hill draws a
lot of extra power out of the battery and then, as you go down the other side,
there is not much chance for it to recover. Primarily because as you go
downhill the engine reduces power so there is not that much of a chance to
reclaim all of that energy. As a result of that, the battery level drops
tremendously. When I was driving in the southern part of Waterloo Iowa, US
Highway 380, the battery pack actually dropped down to about the 2%. What I
was finding is on some of the hills, even with my gas pedal fully depressed, I
could not exceed 62 miles an hour, so I could not maintain speed.
What I found worked for me was going into sport mode.
Because sport mode lets you choose the gear you want to be in, I could pull the
shifter to the left, that engaged sport mode. I could then downshift from fifth
to fourth and that provided enough extra horsepower that I could make up the
hill and recharge the battery. I would stay in in in sport mode until the
battery had charged up to about 15% then release sport mode, let the
battery discharge, and then repeat. What that meant is that the miles per gallon
I got or the southern part of Waterloo was about 43 miles per gallon, or 5.5
liters per 100 kilometers. I then ran the same test on the
north part of Waterloo, which is far far flatter, and got about 46 miles per
gallon or 5.11 liters per 100 kilometers. Hills do affect the
hybrids. I first noticed this with my Prius. if you if you have
low rolling hills, there's no problem the battery recharges just fine. If
you have a quick succession of steep hills, the battery drains and there's
nothing you can do.
Once again, I'd like to thank McGrath Kia for loaning me this
car for the week. It was very interesting to see what has changed in the new model
year. I was expecting some changes, such as the cosmetic changes, and it
looks like some of the interior changes were to bring it in line with the Niro
EV. Changes such as emergency brake moving from being a pedal to a button as
well as improvements in the infotainment screen. it had more improvements I was
expecting however just from 2019 to 2020 model year change