You might briefly wonder what a planet-protecting EV is doing with a Sport button, but the reality is that electric vehicles need to be exciting, and with 210PS (207bhp) and a fat 395Nm (291lb ft) of torque to unleash the e-Niro is pretty brisk, despite lugging a hefty battery pack about. It may well startle some family car drivers before they’re used to its rush of acceleration, which can be potent enough to have the front wheels scrabbling and the steering wheel stiffening with torque-steer.
You can get about pretty quickly then, especially as the Kia has plenty of roadholding. In spite of a 7.5sec 0-62mph time this is not a sportscar, eventual understeer and the sensation that you’re piloting a car of some mass (it weighs 1,737kg) ultimately a little discouraging. But you’re certainly not going to feel that eco-dom is leaving you behind in the cut and thrust. At the other end of the driving modes is Eco+, which dulls the accelerator’s response, turns off non-essential power drains, limits the electric motor’s output and applies the strongest form of regenerative braking. Husband your momentum well, and this mode quite quickly stalls the decline in available range, and can even add to it.
In both these modes, and the two in-between, the Kia’s suspension is unaltered which means that a little disappointingly, its ride is less supple than you’d expect of a family car, its weight and height doubtless demanding quite stiff suspension to counter bodyroll. This, however, is the most serious criticism of an electric family crossover that really does have the range to be your primary means of transport. That’s a big step forward for EVs (and one also taken by the e-Niro’s similar Hyundai cousin the Kona), which we can expect to become more commonplace, more quickly, than they have been to date.