Kia e-Niro vs Kia Soul EV: costs
The Kia e-Niro is a former What Car? Car of the Year and remains an excellent choice if you're looking to go electric. But is the same brand's new Soul EV even better?...
Buying and owning
Costs, equipment, reliability, safety and security
There’s very little to separate the e-Niro and Soul EV when you look at their list prices, with the latter being just £700 cheaper. And while high demand and short supply mean no discounts are available on either, you will save £3000 thanks to the Government’s grant for electric cars costing less than £50,000.
If you’re thinking of buying on PCP finance, on the other hand, the e-Niro starts to look like the much more tempting prospect. Assuming a £4000 deposit and a three-year term (with a 10,000-mile annual limit), you’ll be paying £547 a month for the Soul, as opposed to £442 for the e-Niro.
And the bad news continues for the Soul when it comes to running costs. Not only is it predicted to depreciate at a much faster rate, but it’s quite a bit more expensive to insure.
Meanwhile, business users looking to lease their next EV will see a difference, too. Here the Soul EV costs £450 per month, versus £388 for e-Niro. And while both cars fall into the lowest company car tax bracket, the Soul’s higher P11D price means you’ll pay fractionally more (£8) over three years.
Equipment levels are high on both. Climate control, heated seats, automatic lights and wipers, keyless entry and start, 17in alloy wheels and adaptive cruise control are all standard, as is a Type 2 charging cable. From a 7kW home charger, this allows you to charge from flat to full in 9hr 35min. When you use a 50kW CCS public rapid charger, a 0-80% charge takes a reasonable 1hr 15mi, while a 100kW DC charger drops that to just less than an hour.
Neither the e-Niro nor Soul has been appraised for safety by Euro NCAP, but both cars come with plenty of active safety aids, including automatic emergency braking (AEB) and lane-keeping assistance. It’s disappointing, however, that there’s no option to add blindspot monitoring or rear cross-traffic alert to the e-Niro, especially when it comes as standard on the Soul.
We don’t have any reliability data on the e-Niro or Soul yet (they’re both too new), but Kia came a creditable sixth out of 31 manufacturers in our 2019 Reliability Survey. And don’t forget that all Kias are backed by an industry-leading seven-year/100,000-mile manufacturer’s warranty.
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