Hyundai Inster 2025 Review

Exterior Design

After we posted a picture of our Inster on social media, responses confirmed that its looks divide opinion. Some admired its quirkiness, while others considered it an ugly duckling. But as an urban car with a little bit of a rugged image we think it works.

It's boxy and the silver “mouth” beneath the front numberplate is a bit unnecessary. But like all of Hyundai's IONIQ EV range, this car has character. It's not a plain vanilla vehicle. The slightly flared wheel arches with black plastic edges add to the utilitarian image. The general sense is function over form, although there are plenty of elements to prevent the Inster from coming across like a box on wheels. We like the way the Inster looks, but we like the way the Renault 5 looks better.

Interior Comfort

Whether you go for the 01 or 02, you get black material interior upholstery. For the Cross trim, however, this is upgraded to grey with some coloured elements. Although these are more utilitarian than luxury materials, the seats are comfortable. Adjustment is entirely manual, but at least they’re heated in the 02 and Cross.

Some of the interior materials are also quite plasticky, erring on the side of durability rather than outright premium feel. With the 02 and Cross you can fold the front seats flat too, although that's going to make driving tricky. Handy if you need to sleep in your car, however, which is apparently a thing in South Korea.

The front feels reasonably roomy for a small car. There’s a fold-up armrest and some cupholders underneath that are connected to the driver’s seat, but no central console. There’s a ledge on the passenger side with USB A and C plus a 12V car power adapter, so presumably the ledge is for putting your devices on as they charge.

There is also a single wireless phone charging space in the middle of the dashboard. Our review car had the Tech Pack option, which includes a 240V 13A plug below the wireless phone charger that can deliver up to 3.6kW – more than enough to boil a kettle.

Although the Inster isn't very big, the rear space isn't bad. You certainly get more legroom than the Dacia Spring, Leapmotor T03, or Renault 5. There's decent headroom too. However, like the Leapmotor T03 and BYD Dolphin Surf, there are only two seats in the back.

This is because the Inster has a trick up its sleeve. With the 02 and Cross, the rear seats can slide forward and back, so you can vary between maximising passenger or boot space. With rear seats forward the legroom isn't so great, but it’s a compromise you can accept if you need more rear luggage space.

Rear passengers don’t benefit from air vents or device charging ports, but there are ISOfix points for child car seats.

Storage and Load Carrying

You can't really avoid having limited boot space in a car as small as the Inster. With the 01, which has a fixed rear seat bench, the total capacity with the seats up is 280 litres. This is adequate but below some cars in this class.

But the 02 and Cross have that rear bench that can move forward and back. With the bench all the way back, you get a meagre 238 litres of cargo space. But push it forward and the total is 351 litres. That's still less than a VW ID.3, but this is a much shorter car.

Drop the rear seats forward and you get 1,059 litres. This is less than the MG4, but again that's a bigger car than the Inster. However, with the Inster you can also drop the front passenger seat forward for carting more stuff with just a driver.

While you won't be moving wardrobes in the Inster, the flexibility between passenger and luggage space with the 02 and Cross is unique in a car this size.

Hyundai’s IONIQ electric cars are very tech focused, while its non-IONIQ vehicles have been less so. However, the Inster feels somewhere in between.

You turn the system on with a button, and you need to turn it off with this button too, or the car will complain when you exit the vehicle. There are traditional steering wheel stalks, with the one on the left for lights and indicators while the one on the right is for windscreen wipers. The auto rain sensing option lacks sensitivity but at least the manual controls are easy to access.

Below the windscreen wiper stalk is another for the drive modes. You rotate for drive, reverse and neutral while a button on the end selects park. However, this stalk is quite close to the windscreen wiper one, and we did accidentally switch the wiper speeds when we meant to change into reverse.

There are paddles on the steering wheel to adjust regen, and turn on i-pedal mode, which provides full single-pedal driving.

The instrumentation pretends to be analog dials, with a circular speedometer on the left and a circular power/regeneration gauge on the right. But it’s an entirely digital display. The centre can be ADAS information, navigation or other vehicle details.

One thing screen haters will appreciate is that the air conditioning controls are a separate panel with plenty of buttons. There is no need to use the infotainment screen to change your car's temperature with the Inster.

This 10.25in infotainment screen is bigger than some affordable cars in this class offer, but not exactly large. There’s a decent connected satnav built in, or you can use Apple CarPlay or Android Auto to get maps from your phone. The interface is reasonably responsive, although it takes a little while to start up. But it’s not packed with features.

Performance and Driving

The Inster isn't a powerful EV and it's not that fast as a result. The 42kWh car takes a pedestrian 11.7 seconds to reach 62mph, while the 49kWh model only drops this a little to 10.6 seconds. Nevertheless, being an EV, the Inster feels nippier than that off the lights about town, but you notice the lack of power particularly when trying to accelerate at highway speeds.

Still, the short wheelbase means it's extremely manoeuvrable about town and handling is decent on twisty A-roads too. We’ve driven the Inster on the hill track at Millbrook Proving Ground and it was surprisingly fun – more than you’d expect given the lack of motor power.

The Inster lacks presence on the highway but at least doesn't feel jittery at speed. The ride is a little hard over bumps but there's still plenty of composure, without too much bounce. Overall, this is a competent all-round car to drive, but best suited for urban use even if it has some highway competence.

Range and Charging

The Inster is a city car, but it won't be confined to the city, unlike some small low-cost electric cars we've reviewed in the past like the Smart EQ fortwo or Honda e. Even the basic 42kWh battery delivers a WLTP range of 203 miles, while the 49kWh battery increases this to 229 miles with 15in wheels and 223 miles with 17in ones. That’s just on the cusp of viability for inter-city driving, in the UK at least.

During testing we managed 5.1 miles per kWh when driving frugally, which is more than the WLTP rating, although this dropped to 2.9 miles per kWh with more vigorous use of the accelerator. If you can avoid excessive speed, therefore, you can probably get 200 miles out of the 49kWh car quite easily.

DC charging isn't that fast, however – 85kW with the bigger battery and just 73kW with the smaller one. That means either one takes half an hour to charge from 10 to 80%. Not terrible but you’re probably going to have to charge every 140 miles on a big trip. Long-distance driving will be possible, but you'll need to stop often and plan carefully.

Running Costs

If you manage to achieve 5.1 miles per kWh as we did, the 49kWh car will be very cheap to run, particularly on an overnight charging tariff. With a 7.5p per kWh Octopus Intelligent service you’d be paying just 1.5p a mile. Even when driving more vigorously the costs will be low.

The Inster also comes backed by Hyundai's solid warranty, which is for five years and unlimited miles on the whole car. The high voltage battery has the typical eight years guarantee for 100,000 miles. This will be a cheap car to insure, too, as the Inster is in group 21D with the 42kWh drivetrain and 23D with the 49kWh one.

Safety

The Inster may be an affordable car, but it doesn't skimp on safety features. Since we recorded our video, the Inster received a Euro NCAP rating of four stars. That’s good, but we’d have preferred the full five stars.

The basic 01 incorporates Forward Collision-Avoidance Assist and Lane Keeping Assist, alongside Rear Occupant Alert, and Parking Collision-Avoidance Assist for when you're backing out of a space.

It also features blind-spot view monitoring, parking distance warning, and a rear-view parking camera.

With the 02 you also get front parking sensors, and a 360-degree view for the camera. This trim adds adaptive cruise with lane following assist, which isn't quite the same as autosteering but aims to stop you drifting across the line.

The Cross enhances this with Hyundai Smart Sense, which beefs up the adaptive cruise control with Highway Drive Assist for more autonomous-style driving on motorways. The blind spot detection includes a camera view like higher-end Hyundai models so you can avoid pulling out in front of a car in your blind spot.

Overall, you're not sacrificing safety with the keen price of this car, whichever version you choose.