On the face of it, Kia's new Niro is yet another offering to feed the seemingly insatiable global appetite for compact SUVs.
There's more to this one than meets the eye, however. Housed within a body that's clearly intended to steal some of the Nissan Qashqai's thunder is a petrol-electric hybrid powertrain. So, the Niro is as much an alternative to the Toyota Prius as it is to the legions of high-riding hatchbacks already on sale.
True, there are already hybrid SUVs out there, but these are all bigger and significantly more expensive than the Nero is likely to be.
It's no half-hearted effort, either. Rather than shoe-horn two propulsion systems into a body designed to take only one, Kia has created a bespoke new structure for the Niro, and has made it clear that it will be used for hybrids only.
The Niro is Kia's first dedicated hybrid, but it won't be the last. Global sales of electrified cars are expected to be close to 6.5 million a year by 2020, and Kia is targeting market leadership.
What you'll get with Niro when it goes on sale in the UK late this year is a brand new 103bhp 1.6-litre petrol engine as the primary power source, supported by an electric motor when needed, all driving the front wheels through a six-speed double-clutch automatic gearbox.
The batteries store just 1.56kWh of energy, so you won't get far on their power alone – a couple of miles if you're lucky – but they are topped up when coasting and braking, and there will be a plug-in hybrid version of the car with a much greater all-electric range in 2017.
The suspension setup is still being tuned, but even as it stands the Niro is a pleasant thing to drive: brisk enough for what it's meant to do and extremely smooth with it, while the decision to go with a dual-clutch gearbox in place of the type of continuously variable transmission favoured by Japanese hybrid manufacturers eliminates the manic whirrings they can stir up under hard acceleration.
Kia's combination of chunky, sporty SUVstyling with a hybrid powertrain has added yet another acronym to the auto industry lexicon – HUV, or hybrid utility vehicle.
It's an interesting mix, not least because it rules out a teardrop profile like that of the Prius and its ilk, which look the way they do in the interests of fuel-saving aerodynamics.
Instead, the Niro has an SUV's higher-than-average ground clearance and roof bars, both of which might be expected to create turbulence, but Kia is adamant it still cleaves the air more cleanly than the Toyota.
To that end it employs active aerodynamics in the form of flaps which admit cooling to the engine bay only when needed, side curtains to channel air around and away from the front wheels, and specially shaped 16- or 18-inch alloys, while extensive use of ultra-high-strength steel is said to keep the (unspecified) weight in check.
At less than 4.4 metres long it's smaller than Kia's existing Sportage SUV in size, which makes the impressive room it provides seem like a bit of rabbit-from-a-hat trickery. The interior is nicely styled and trimmed along the lines of the latest Optima, too, with a horizontal dashboard layout divided into upper display and lower control zones.
Many of the Nero's accident-avoidance systems also come from the Optima, while the navigation and entertainment systems demonstrate that Kia has finally woken up to the fact that connectivity is not some passing fad. The Niro can already be hooked up to Android Auto, and integration with Apple CarPlay is under development.
There will also be a wireless phone charger, bi-xenon headlamps, a rear wiper-mounted parking camera, autonomous braking, advanced cruise control and traffic signal recognition, to pluck just a few of the latest highlights from the list.
How much of this will be on UK cars and what the line-up will be is, at this stage, speculation with the car still almost a year away from launch, but in style and personality the Nero catches attention better than the prissy hatchbacks that dominate this end of the hybrid market. Now all Kia has to do is get the pricing right.
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