(I enjoyed a week in the Niro thanks to @KiaMotorsUSA and @Driveshop and I was not compensated for this review. Thoughts are all Dani)

Last month I traded my “well-loved” 2002 Passat for a week of toolin’ around in the Kia Niro. I am in the market for a new car (obvi) but I had my heart set on an SUV. (John wants another sedan) So I got the Niro and wasn’t expecting to be impressed, but then this happened:

Yeah….I was kinda smitten from the get.

We drove the car for usual runs around town, and I took it on a longer drive (2.5 hrs) to Orlando for the Mom 2.0 Conference at the Ritz Carlton. This is when the car started playin’ games with me. First…my phone auto connected with Android Car…and my life will never be the same.

I was already thrilled at the convenience and thoughtfulness of the car (peep vid above to see what I mean) but now it was making everything so easy for me. Listen. My car still has a tape deck… I’m not used to all that luxury 🙂

The ride was smooth, and I felt kinda low to the ground, but not in a scary racecar way. I felt like I had a wider field of vision of everything around me which is one of the reasons I wanted an SUV. The other reason I preferred one was the foldable back seats allowing me to easily transport big items I score at garage sales….or Ikea. Luckily, the Niro’s back seats fold all the way down allowing for a lot of space for hauling junk I don’t need.

One of the other mind games this car played with me was how smooth the ride was. I don’t know if I should be saying this, but…it is SO easy to speed in this car. It’s so smooth you don’t realize you’re going 3,000 mph on the turnpike. You just see all these slow cars falling behind…..So be mindful!

I didn’t get pulled over though, but fun fact: When I realized my speed, I slowed down, all embarrassed, and I got a call from a friend of mine who was headed to Orlando as well… Guess what she called to tell me: She had just gotten a speeding ticket! I took it as a sign from the universe and drove like a granny the rest of the way.

This was the first time I drove a hybrid car and the first 2017 car I’d driven as well. Looking at the dashboard was like looking into the cockpit when you’re boarding a flight. All these buttons, lights, displays, I was like…umm…whaaat?! But I learned quickly!

I was not expecting the inside of the car to feel roomy. Rohan and Kaya’s car seats both fit, without crampin’ the poor kids’ legs up, thankfully. The hatchback made it seem smaller than it actually was. I was still able to fit all my usual grocery haul in there along with the kids junk.

So, one of the biggies for me was safety. The Kia Niro will force you to stay alive. Like, it will play zero games. You swerve, BEEP, you get too close to something BEEP. You forget your seatbelt, BEEP! Kia Niro is like, Not today, satan. I was lowkey annoyed because I would change lanes on my deserted neighborhood streets without signaling (cuz…signaling to who? there’s nobody around except a dude on a horse a few blocks back) and Niro would beep at me as I changed lanes, forcing me to use proper signaling.

John drove the car just once and he compared it to the other car we received to test out and he liked this one 100% better. He is 6’5 and not skinny so he likes a bigger car. In the other one he was uncomfortable because the seat was too shallow for his long legs to be comfortable. But he had no complaints about the Niro.

He used the Niro to try and sell me on getting a sedan over an SUV as well. The gas mileage was ridiiiiiic. I literally drove 7.5 million miles on half a tank of gas. #handtogod.

OK. I may be off on the amounts… but not by much! (wink)

Seriously, the gas mileage is 52mpgs (city) and in the SUVs I’ve been spying out on line, it’s less than half that! Good selling point…. 1 point for John.

Since trying this car out, I’ve had the opportunity to drive the Kia Optima Hybrid, the full size sedan. I gotta tell ya…kinda diggin it…but I’ll tell you all about that in a different post.