Citroën ë-C5 Aircross vs Kia Niro EV

The Citroën ë-C5 Aircross is £930 cheaper to buy. Running costs are almost identical - about £176 a year either way, at 8,000 miles on an off-peak home tariff. Add 5 years of charging and the Citroën ë-C5 Aircross comes out roughly £890 cheaper overall. These figures cover list price and home charging only - insurance, servicing, tyres and depreciation will move the real total.

EVcarsguide estimates a real-world motorway range of about 224 miles for the Citroën ë-C5 Aircross and 194 miles for the Kia Niro EV - both below their WLTP figures, because sustained high speed is the hardest case for an EV. The Citroën ë-C5 Aircross goes roughly 30 miles further between charging stops.

The Kia Niro EV is the easier car for tight UK car parks: it is 111 mm narrower than the Citroën ë-C5 Aircross. In a standard 2,400 mm bay that leaves about 575 mm of total clearance for the Kia Niro EV and about 464 mm of total clearance for the Citroën ë-C5 Aircross. The Kia Niro EV also turns in a 0.3 m tighter circle, which helps with U-turns and multi-storey ramps.

Over a 8-year ownership window EVcarsguide's degradation model projects roughly 84% battery health for the Citroën ë-C5 Aircross and 84% for the Kia Niro EV. That is close enough that capacity loss should not decide between them. Both use NMC-type cells, so for daily use keep the charge limit near 80% to slow degradation. The Citroën ë-C5 Aircross has the longer battery warranty at 8 years, versus 7 for the Kia Niro EV.