[jpear]

Are most new Niro buyers going with the PHEV model as opposed to Niro HEV? I’d like to trade my 2017 EX Niro for the 2018 Niro PHEV but right now I’m concerned about the accessibility of charging stations. I’m renting apartment and it would be very difficult to charge Niro—- I no longer have a garage so I’m pretty limited as to purchasing a PHEV vehicle. I noticed all my local Walmarts have reserved spaces for charging but it would take too many hours to hang out at WalMart... UGH! ???. Anyone know how many hrs needed for empty-to-full charge?

 

[FiddlingNiro]

Without an easy way to charge I don't see why you'd trade in your HEV. I have a 240V outlet in my garage and it takes about 2.5 hrs to fill it and more like 8 or 9 at 110V. That only gives me 26-30 miles of range on full EV so I am plugging in every night and between trips on the weekend. There are apps like PlugShare to show you where to plug in but I can't imagine that would be convenient for you even if you found one close by.

 

[charlesH]

Are most new Niro buyers going with the PHEV model as opposed to Niro HEV? I’d like to trade my 2017 EX Niro for the 2018 Niro PHEV but right now I’m concerned about the accessibility of charging stations. I’m renting apartment and it would be very difficult to charge Niro—- I no longer have a garage so I’m pretty limited as to purchasing a PHEV vehicle. I noticed all my local Walmarts have reserved spaces for charging but it would take too many hours to hang out at WalMart... UGH! ������. Anyone know how many hrs needed for empty-to-full charge?

6.5 hrs at 120v 12A

 

[picstart]

PHEV are in high demand and KIA has limited production. The concept with a PHEV is that your house is your gas station. You fill the battery each night and yes 240v is better for the battery and takes less time. If your round trip journey is less than 25 miles your home is the only gas station you need. If your take a long trip or exceed 25 miles then you will drive the excess miles as a pure Hybrid.
Charging stations make no sense since for every 2.5 hours spent recharging you only get another 25 miles. If you can't charge at home then the value of the PHEV is diminished. Even with the $4500 tax credit a regular hybrid is the better choice if you can't charge at home. If you can charge at home you easily can have a gas avoidance windfall of $1500 per year and coupled with the $4500 tax refund it is the better bargain compared to a pure hybrid. Over 4 years that's equivalent to $10,000 off the MSRP.
As regards home chargers Level2 they are little more than a relay with a simple PWM circuit and a few comparators. They are way over priced. expect prices to halve or more ...... maybe down to $50 in a year or two.
Reminds me of HDMI cables that are worth $5 being sold with new TV's for $30.

 

[hawke]

I purchased the PHEV because I average 8 miles per day for my commute to work. I charge my battery at home no more than twice per week. The PHEV is a great fit for us but if we had significantly different circumstances, I would have purchased the HEV instead.

 

[dontfret]

My 2018 PHEV Niro is my second PHEV, traded in my 2013 Cmax Energi. Since I already had the Level 2 station in my house, and a solar electric roof, I was committed to another PHEV. With Federal $4500 tax credit, state $1500 rebate and power company $450 credit, and getting California HOV stickers good until 2022, the PHEV over hybrid made complete sense even I only used it as a hybrid (which is my practice when driving trips away from home). I would never charge at a pay-EV station, or take the cars' 110v line to use in a hotel. The only time I charged away from my own garage in the 5 years with the Ford was a client I was working at for several days that offered free charging for EV cars at their office.

BTW, having learned about LiOn battery degradation in the Ford, I would recommend you do not constantly charge back up multiple times a day and attempt to drive this as an EV car. If you charge while the battery is still hot from discharging as driven, you will heat it further during charging. Heat is the enemy of LiOn battery life. Both the Niro and Ford have air-cooled drive batteries, not liquid cooled like pure EV cars, so they will degrade over time - you will find the "10-year/100,000 mile" EV battery warranty does not state how low a capacity level warrants a replacement. After 5 years my Ford battery capacity had fallen from 5.2 kwh available for EV driving to around 3.6, which translates in estimated EV miles from 24 when new to 15 when traded (and that depends on how heavy your foot and demand is - 16 miles at 35 MPH, 10 miles at 65 MPH). Ford would never agree this loss is a warranty defect, they just reiterate LiOn batteries will lose capacity over time, normal wear and tear. What is abnormal - they will never state. Only Mitsubishi sates: "The traction battery on the Outlander PHEV comes with a warranty of 8 Years / 100,000 miles. This includes a guarantee that if the traction battery capacity falls below 70% in the first 8 years/100,000 miles a free repair or replacement will be provided."

 

[Superhomem]

Regarding whether or not it makes sense if you are in an apartment... Depends on the state you are in. For example, in Oregon there is a law where you can make the apartment owner install an electric charger for you. Problem solved. You can plug in every night.

I recently purchased the Kia Niro PHEV. I have a Nissan Leaf (2012) and Spark EV (2014) as well. I'd say Kia is doing the electric thing right... However, if you are really interested in going electric and you already have the Niro. It's a really small upgrade to go to the PHEV. You may just want to wait for the full BEV with 250 mile electric range. That will be cool. I just ran out of patience. The Hyundai Kona BEV will be basically the same vehicle. Same range. Probably here sooner.

I am interested in driving the car as an EV mostly. So, I'm concerned about long term degredation. I assumed it had to have good battery chemistry since it is newer and Nissan learned that lesson in 2013. You would think the Koreans would know this stuff... They make most of the batteries.

Any suggestions for tools to more accurately read the state of charge vs total capacity?

 

[yticolev]

Personally I think the Niro EV is much better looking than the Kona. C pillar treatment, and general proportions. The Kona has very cramped rear seats compared with the Niro. I haven't seen any specific aero specs on either one, but pretty sure that based on dimensions, the Niro will be a good bit better, leading to longer range despite a small weight penalty.

 

[aak]

Something else to keep in mind is that some of the public chargers are more expensive than running your PHEV on gas.

Gas near me costs about $3.50/gallon, and I average 47mpg in hybrid mode. This comes to about $0.07/mile.

I get about 30 miles of EV driving from a full charge until the car switches to hybrid mode. A few samples:

$0.09/kwh (my home electric rate midnight to 6AM): $0.01/mile
$0.15/kwh (the rate on the Chargepoint chargers at work): $0.02/mile
$0.28/kwh (the summer "normal" electric rate at home): $0.05/mile
$0.53/kwh (the summer "peak" rate at home): $0.09/mile
$0.59/kwh (the rate charged at Blink chargers here): $0.10/mile


So on the two bold ones, the EV charging is actually costing more than gas. If your gas prices are lower than $3.50/gallon or you do a lot of full-speed freeway driving (which shortens the EV range), the break-even point may move down even further.

I do about 45 miles round trip commuting and charge at both ends, with the timer set to only charge at home for the six hours that my rates are "super off peak". It means if I run other errands after work and fully discharge the battery it doesn't have time to completely recharge during those six hours, but it has enough time to get me a full drive to work, and it's more sensible to finish the charge there for $0.15/kwh than it is to do the remaining part of my charge at home for $0.28/kwh. Of course we're also talking about pennies here, and I doubt it ends up being that significant even over the life of the car compared to taxes+tags, tires, insurance, etc. - it's such an efficient car to start out with that the energy costs end up not being the lions share of the cost of ownership.

As for charging, I've found from zero miles remaining it's around 7.5 hours to fully charge on the 120v charger that came with the car (set to full speed), and maybe 2:40 on the Chargepoint Level 2 one at work.

 

[charlesH]

Something else to keep in mind is that some of the public chargers are more expensive than running your PHEV on gas.

Gas near me costs about $3.50/gallon, and I average 47mpg in hybrid mode. This comes to about $0.07/mile.

I get about 30 miles of EV driving from a full charge until the car switches to hybrid mode. A few samples:

$0.09/kwh (my home electric rate midnight to 6AM): $0.01/mile
$0.15/kwh (the rate on the Chargepoint chargers at work): $0.02/mile
$0.28/kwh (the summer "normal" electric rate at home): $0.05/mile
$0.53/kwh (the summer "peak" rate at home): $0.09/mile
$0.59/kwh (the rate charged at Blink chargers here): $0.10/mile


So on the two bold ones, the EV charging is actually costing more than gas. If your gas prices are lower than $3.50/gallon or you do a lot of full-speed freeway driving (which shortens the EV range), the break-even point may move down even further.

I do about 45 miles round trip commuting and charge at both ends, with the timer set to only charge at home for the six hours that my rates are "super off peak". It means if I run other errands after work and fully discharge the battery it doesn't have time to completely recharge during those six hours, but it has enough time to get me a full drive to work, and it's more sensible to finish the charge there for $0.15/kwh than it is to do the remaining part of my charge at home for $0.28/kwh. Of course we're also talking about pennies here, and I doubt it ends up being that significant even over the life of the car compared to taxes+tags, tires, insurance, etc. - it's such an efficient car to start out with that the energy costs end up not being the lions share of the cost of ownership.

As for charging, I've found from zero miles remaining it's around 7.5 hours to fully charge on the 120v charger that came with the car (set to full speed), and maybe 2:40 on the Chargepoint Level 2 one at work.

your calculations seem to assume 7~9miles/kwhr. I think the correct number 3~4 miles / kwhr . (26~30miles/ 8Kwhr = 3~4miles/kwhr )

thus $0.09 / kwhr = 0.02~0.03 per mile

 

[charlesH]

Something else to keep in mind is that some of the public chargers are more expensive than running your PHEV on gas.

Gas near me costs about $3.50/gallon, and I average 47mpg in hybrid mode. This comes to about $0.07/mile.

I get about 30 miles of EV driving from a full charge until the car switches to hybrid mode. A few samples:

$0.09/kwh (my home electric rate midnight to 6AM): $0.01/mile
$0.15/kwh (the rate on the Chargepoint chargers at work): $0.02/mile
$0.28/kwh (the summer "normal" electric rate at home): $0.05/mile
$0.53/kwh (the summer "peak" rate at home): $0.09/mile
$0.59/kwh (the rate charged at Blink chargers here): $0.10/mile


So on the two bold ones, the EV charging is actually costing more than gas. If your gas prices are lower than $3.50/gallon or you do a lot of full-speed freeway driving (which shortens the EV range), the break-even point may move down even further.

I do about 45 miles round trip commuting and charge at both ends, with the timer set to only charge at home for the six hours that my rates are "super off peak". It means if I run other errands after work and fully discharge the battery it doesn't have time to completely recharge during those six hours, but it has enough time to get me a full drive to work, and it's more sensible to finish the charge there for $0.15/kwh than it is to do the remaining part of my charge at home for $0.28/kwh. Of course we're also talking about pennies here, and I doubt it ends up being that significant even over the life of the car compared to taxes+tags, tires, insurance, etc. - it's such an efficient car to start out with that the energy costs end up not being the lions share of the cost of ownership.

As for charging, I've found from zero miles remaining it's around 7.5 hours to fully charge on the 120v charger that came with the car (set to full speed), and maybe 2:40 on the Chargepoint Level 2 one at work.

your calculations seem to assume 7~9miles/kwhr. I think the correct number 3~4 miles / kwhr . (26~30miles/ 8Kwhr = 3~4miles/kwhr )

thus $0.09 / kwhr = 0.02~0.03 per mile

FTI The epa sticker says 32KWhr/100 miles or 3.1 miles per Kwhr. I have measured as high as 3.7 miles per Kwhr charging from home.

 

[aak]

oops

your calculations seem to assume 7~9miles/kwhr. I think the correct number 3~4 miles / kwhr . (26~30miles/ 8Kwhr = 3~4miles/kwhr )

thus $0.09 / kwhr = 0.02~0.03 per mile

Hah, yes of course you're correct, when doing my math for some reason I used the amount of charge the car actually takes after my commute (which it still has battery to spare) rather than the amount of charge it takes from "no EV range left".

Fixed numbers, assuming the 8.41kwh charge my car took today from zero miles remaining:

$0.09/kwh (my home electric rate midnight to 6AM): $0.03/mile
$0.15/kwh (the rate on the Chargepoint chargers at work): $0.04/mile
$0.28/kwh (the summer "normal" electric rate at home): $0.08/mile
$0.53/kwh (the summer "peak" rate at home): $0.15/mile
$0.59/kwh (the rate charged at Blink chargers here): $0.17/mile


So if we still assume 47mpg and $3.50/gallon gas, that moves the break-even point so that my standard "summer rate" power is slightly more expensive than gas. (In the winter the "normal rate" drops to $0.23 and the "peak" rate drops to $0.24, so they'll be slightly less expensive.)

Of course gas and electricity prices vary quite a bit, and it's not clear to me that the operating costs in EV mode versus gas mode don't change for reasons other than energy consumption (wear on engine parts, etc.) but any math like this has a ton of variables and you end up having to pick and choose the ones you're going to take into account. So YMMV, and will vary by a lot if you live someplace with cheaper electricity.

 

[Superhomem]

miles per kwh

For the Niro, I would assume about 3.9 miles per KWH Hwy, and 4.2 miles per kwh City.
You will do better or worse depending on your driving style. However, the Niro doesn't really let you drive aggressively with electric. It will just kick on the gas motor.

The most efficient electric car in the world is the all electric Hyundai Ioniq, and it can get 5 to 5.5 miles per kwh. Still it is very dependant on driving style, and you'll be lucky to get 5, even driving like a grandma. 4.4+ pretty much only happens with your tires inflated all the way, and driving 30mph or slower minimizing any stops, with roundabouts instead of traffic lights.

 

[Superhomem]

I have 6c per kwh, so electric is super appealing here. However, the fast chargers cost about twice the price of gas... Also, what I have noticed is I really value my time. So short range EVS, and even medium range (100-150 miles) just don't cut it for me. I want to be able to make a 2 hour drive time trip withot also taking 2 more hours to fast charge... Typically fast charge stations have just one power plug. so if someone else is there you have to wait for them to finish. This will be more and more of a problem as more Bolts and other US standard EVs get onto the system. Interesting that Hyundai Kona EV will use the US (CCS Combo) system, while Kia EVs have used the Chaedmo chargers.. Neither are great options at this point, and tesla is the only one doing it right.

That's why I ended up with the Niro. So far I think I made the right choice. It's a really comfortable car that looks good has so many nice options. Doesn't cost nearly as much as a tesla, but allows me to drive a super quiet car with modern safety features and plenty of cargo capacity.

My main concern since I've bought this car is residual value... I know Kias typically don't hold their value as well as other brands. However, Kia is working hard to turn around their image. I suspect the long warranty could help prop up resale value, and maybe even make it easier to trade in for a dealer to resell as CPO? This is my first kia...
What do you guys think residual values will be like?

 

[picstart]

Prices 5 years from now depends on a number of factors.As the price and density of batteries come down it is probable a future EV in 2023 will cost less than the equivalent today. This will decrease the depreciation of an EV trade in. Both the PHEV and the EV have tax and gas cost avoidance benefits. The price of gas will be a factor in 2023 for the resale value. I think the real risk is in buying a pure ICE in 2018. They will represent a decreasing ownership as electric becomes more ordinary. Electric drives nice and has low maintenance. The issue is city dweller ownership is difficult for electric due to lack of overnight charging facilities. The risk for a PHEV is less since it can always devolve into a pure hybrid. For an EV the cost avoidance of gas is always there so it most likely will offset the extra depreciation versus an equivalent ICE and even with no net financial gain the EV is better for the climate.
The huge cost advantage in producing an electric motor (almost 1/5th the cost lower maintenance and longer useful life) is the nail in the coffin of ICE's
There is risk to the pricing model in that gas tax pays for many things ( not just roads). Governments today subsidizing tax breaks for EV's will switch to tax increases for EV's to keep the revenue flowing. If the increase is in licensing fees for EV and ICE or miles driven fees there will be a level playing field.
We drive the Niro Ex premium PHEV less than 30 miles per day and can go 6 months or more before filling the tank with gas.

 

[NorCalNiro]

The Plug-IN will definitely give you some options over the standard hybrid. Forward Collision, Emergency braking, foglights are all standard. The larger battery allows those times you are able to charge, to get extra miles off the gas. Even if you don't get to charge all the time, the PHEV model like many have said, could pay off down the road if gas prices sky rocket, or if your eventually able to charge. a 220V public EVSE will charge the car in 2.5hours....find a mall with one, go see a movie, and get a charged battery, or KOHLS is another box store which has public EVSE's, generally free, and around stores/restaurants which will allow you to charge atleast on weekends.


But if all of this wont benefit you, the premium price tag of $4k more than a hybrid might not be worth it. Any NIRO is great, economical, comfortable and decently priced cars, heck there is a good amount of used ones available too for much cheaper.