Kia Niro EV comes to Korea with 236-mile range

It can top up reasonably quickly, too. If you use a 100kW charger, it should take 54 minutes to reach 80 percent capacity.

To no one’s surprise, Kia is promising plenty of in-cabin tech as well. You’ll get a new 7-inch LCD instrument cluster in addition to the Niro’s familiar 7-inch touchscreen infotainment system, and there’s a host of driver assistance features including forward collision avoidance, lane following and smart cruise control. It’s not quite at the level of Tesla’s Autopilot (where you can command the car to change lanes for you), but it’s semi-autonomous enough that you can relax slightly when you’re cruising down the highway.

There’s one main problem: you’ll have to be patient. The Niro EV will reach its native South Korea in 2018, but further releases are only slated until sometime after that. That leaves availability and pricing something of a mystery in most corners of the world. If it’s not priced into the stratosphere, though, it could represent one of the few EVs that offers both a lot of space while remaining comparatively affordable.