Hyundai Inster Review & Prices

The Hyundai Inster is a small electric car that thinks it’s quite a bit tougher than it is. With its square body, beefy styling, clad wheelarches and roof bars, it really does look like a kid on Halloween that’s wearing an SUV costume.

It might not be as rugged as it looks, but the Inster’s styling hides a fantastic little electric car. It was good enough to earn a Highly Commended spot in the Urban Living category of the 2025 Carwow Car of the Year awards, and provides an impressively mature and practical alternative to other cheap EVs such as the Renault 5, Citroen e-C3 and BYD Dolphin Surf. In fact, if your priority is passenger space, then you could definitely shortlist the Inster alongside larger cars such as the MG4 and Vauxhall Corsa Electric - it’s that roomy.

The Inster is one of the most eye-catching small cars you can buy. At the front you get expressive circular headlight units ringed with LED daytime running lights, plus a cool ‘pixel’ motif nicked from the Ioniq 5. There’s cladding along the underside of the body, even more so if you go for the range-topping ‘Cross’ trim, while the rear has a combination of circular and square light units that mimic those at the front.

Hyundai Inster: electric range, battery and charging data

Range: 203-229 miles
Efficiency: 4.7 - 4.8 mi/kWh
Battery size: 42 - 49kWh
Max charge speed: 120kW
Charge time AC: 6 - 7hrs, 0-100%, 7kW
Charge time DC: < 30 mins, 0-80%, 120kW
Charge port location: Front
Power outputs: 97 - 115hp

Inside, the Inster is one of the coolest and most practical small cars you can buy. Its dashboard is loaded up with proper physical switchgear, which gives it a bit of a retro vibe despite the high-res touchscreen and driver’s instrument display. In keeping with the days-gone-by theme, there’s even a pseudo-bench seat and a flat floor in the front.

In the back, you get loads of space - and if you opt for the higher trim level, the rear seats can slide fore and aft. This means you can have a bigger boot, or sacrifice space in the rear for truly cavernous legroom. This makes the Inster the best small car for rear passengers, period.

Even with the rear seats pushed all the way back, there’s still a 238-litre boot, which is fine. Slide them all the way forwards, and the boot opens out to 351 litres, which is more room than you get in the Citroen e-C3 or the Dacia Spring. And if the fancy takes you, not only do the rear seats fold flat, but so do the front two.

The Inster gets a choice of two batteries — a basic 42kWh version with a 97hp electric motor, which gets 203 miles of range — enough to beat both the Dacia Spring and the Citroen e-C3, but not the basic MG4.

There is a long-range model though, with a 49kWh battery, 229 miles of range and a beefier 115hp electric motor. That’ll hit 62mph in 10.6 seconds, which isn’t exactly muscle-car territory but it’s not shabby either.

Check out our best Hyundai Inster deals right here on Carwow. You can also look over our best Hyundai deals on other models, or find a used Hyundai for sale here. And remember, Carwow can even help you sell your old car when the time comes.

Three trim levels are available for the Inster, named 01, 02 and Cross. The former kicks off from around £23,500, which sits it in between the Citroen e-C3 and the MG4 with a couple of thousand pounds either side.

The main alternative to the Inster, in price terms, is the Dacia Spring which is a bit smaller inside, and doesn’t have anything like as much range, but which is — wait for it — a whole £7,000 cheaper.

The 01 cars get adaptive cruise control, climate control and a reversing camera along with those feature-packed twin displays on the dashboard. They also get 15-inch alloy wheels.

Step up to the 02 model and you’ll get 17-inch wheels, LED headlights, heated front seats and interior ambient lighting along with those clever fold-flat seats. Both cars do get a heat pump and battery heating system included as standard, which is rare on more expensive EVs let alone budget ones - it’s a great touch that should ensure more reliable winter ranges and charging speeds.

At the top of the range sits the Inster Cross, which adds even more kerb appeal to the Inster with chunkier bumpers, additional cladding, skid plates and unique black alloy wheels. It also gets the safety equipment that you get in the optional Tech Pack on 01 and 02 cars, plus an opening sunroof. At nearly £29,000, though, it’s getting dangerously close to the price of ‘proper’ electric cars such as the VW ID3 or Kia EV3.

The Hyundai Inster is an easy and relaxing car to drive, but the brakes are snatchy and refinement could be better

In town

The Inster’s big advantage around town is its visibility. It has a huge windscreen, a low-set dashboard, and the corners of the car are not only quite square, they’re also all visible, so slotting through gaps is stress-free. The soft suspension does a good job of taking the edge off urban lumps and bumps and thanks to the decent performance from the electric motors, the Inster feels nice and easy to drive in town.

The brakes aren’t great though — they’re strong enough to stop you, don’t worry about that, but the pedal is over-sensitive and the brakes can feel a bit snatchy, bringing you to too quick a halt at times. There’s a good one-pedal driving system though, which uses the electric motor to slow you down to a total stop.

There’s also a handy auto-regen mode which slows the Inster down more if the car in front of you starts to slow. The turning circle is just 10.6 metres which is the same as the Citroen e-C3, which is tight but maybe not quite as small as you’d like.

On the motorway

Refinement isn’t the Inster’s strongest suit, and there’s quite a bit of wind noise from the windscreen pillars, and a good bit of tyre roar coming up from below unless you’re on a very smooth surface. More sound insulation would be good, even if that might bump up the weight a bit. The soft suspension works well in comfort terms on longer journeys, but small imperfections in the road surface make the Inster jiggle a bit, which is probably thanks to the cheaper torsion bar rear suspension. It’s fine though, and the seats are comfy.

While the Inster has good visibility around town, there is a big over-the-shoulder blind spot, which isn’t great when you’re trying to merge with motorway traffic. Top of the range Insters do get Hyundai’s brilliant camera blind spot view system, which shows on the dashboard what’s in your blind spot, and comes on automatically with the indicators. The standard automatic cruise control also helps on long journeys, keeping you a safe distance from the car in front, and helping to keep you in your lane.

On a twisty road

The Inster is no performance car, so don’t go expecting it to be an electric hot hatch, but it’s not bad to drive at all. There is body lean in bends, but it’s well-controlled and when you come off the bend and put your foot down, there’s enough poke in the electric motor to have anything that’s sitting loose in the storage trays flying around.

The front tyres do start to struggle very quickly when you’re pressing on though, so the Inster never feels as fluent to drive as the rear-wheel drive MG4. The Inster’s steering doesn’t have much feel, but it’s pretty responsive, and overall it’s a totally acceptable car to drive. Basically, it’ll go down a twisty road as quickly as you need it to, without getting into too much of a flap. Who could ask for more at this price?

Adjustable back seats are great, but the door bins are useless

The Inster’s front seats look like they might be a bench seat, but actually there are two cupholders between the two front seats, which slide back and forth with the driver. It’s a nice touch, and just about makes up for the fact that there’s no storage under the front-seat armrest (which folds up between the seats and is quite thin).

There’s a small storage area just under the air conditioning controls, which looks almost like an open mouth (actually a bit like Zippy from Rainbow, for older readers…) and more storage down at ankle-level on the centre console. There’s a small open shelf above the glovebox, and it’s here that you’ll find a pair of USB sockets and an 12-volt connection too and there’s a domestic-style socket at the base of the centre console.

The door bins are tiny though, you can just about fit a slim wallet into them, but forget fitting a bottle of water. The skinny doors also mean that the electric window motors sound incredibly loud. There’s a useful glovebox, but it does flop open rather cheaply.

Space in the back seats

The Inster’s back seats look quite cramped at first, with tight rear legroom on a par with that in the too-cramped new Renault R5 E-Tech. That’s not great. But then you remember that the Inster’s rear seats slide back and forth, and when you slide them all the way back suddenly you’ve got all the legroom you could possibly want, almost limo-style. It gets better as the rear seats also recline, and they recline way, way back for maximum comfort. The shame is that you can’t get the adjustable seats on the basic model.

As with the front seats, there are little mounting points on the door which can allow you to fit optional accessories such as extra storage boxes, which you’ll need to do as the door bins are, once again, close to useless.

At least the rear floor is totally flat, which is great for foot space, although there’s only two seatbelts in the back so it’s not quite as practical for family life as you might think, although there are at least ISOFIX child seat anchors on both rear seats. There’s only one seatback storage net, but again the back of the passenger seat comes with those clip-on points which allow you to fit accessories, including a rear picnic table.

The rear seats can actually recline enough that, if you also fold back the front seats, there’s effectively a double bed so you can use the Inster as an ersatz camper-van. Apparently that’s a bit of a craze in South Korea, known as ‘Chabak’ which usually involves throwing an inflatable air bed on top of the folded seats.

Boot space

Obviously, if you’re adjusting the back seats and sliding them all the way back, you’re going to affect the boot space. Even so, with the rear seats pushed back fully, there’s 238 litres of space, which isn’t great but equally it’s not terrible. Push the seats all the way forward, and there’s a much more useful 351 litres of space, which is actually more than you get in the Citroen e-C3.

Base models without the sliding seats get a 280-litre boot which is… fine. Fold down the back seats and there’s a properly flat load area with only a very small loading lip, which is good. The backs of the seats also have little flaps which cover up any gap between them and the floor when they’re folded. There’s no frunk (froot?) in the nose though — that’s full of electric motor and high-voltage wiring.

Big screens as standard, but you need to buy the higher-spec models to get the nicest cabin

The Hyundai Inster’s cabin has a touch of the nineties about it. There are so many cheap plastics and big chunky buttons that it’s almost like driving in an episode of Friends. However, while the plastics are cheap, the whole cabin feels bolted together very nicely indeed, so the actual sense of quality is good.

Also, you know you’re in 2024 once you’ve seen the two big 10.25-inch screens. These are standard across the Inster range, and you get nice, bright, configurable digital instruments and a decent central touchscreen. That central screen can be a bit laggy, but it does have Apple CarPlay and Android Auto (both wireless, too) so you can bypass the Hyundai software if you want to.

The fact that Hyundai has kept proper physical buttons for the air conditioning takes a lot of strain off the screen, and makes everything easier to operate. There are also handy shortcut buttons below the screen, and more buttons on the steering wheel which control both screens.

Basic Insters get a plain black-and-grey interior, but specced-up models get a much nicer beige-and-brown colour scheme, with a nice houndstooth pattern on the seats, which makes the Inster’s cabin look and feel much more expensive. There’s an enormous rear-view mirror, which looks almost comically big, but it does in fairness give you good visibility to the rear, while the sun visors are similarly huge.

Also huge is the big chunk of plastic stuck to the top of the windscreen which houses the forward-facing camera for the emergency braking system. It’s a shame that Hyundai couldn’t have hidden that a bit better.

Hyundai claims a range of up to 203 miles for the 42kWh battery, and up to 229 miles for the 49kWh battery. They’re both realistic ranges too, as on our test we averaged 3.9 miles per kWh, which suggests a range (for the big battery model) of almost 200 miles. Obviously, high-speed motorway miles will knock more off the range, but the Inster does a good job of delivering on its range promises.

Neither battery charges up especially quickly — the small battery can cope with 73kW from a DC fast charger, while the bigger battery can manage 85kW. In both cases, that means around 30 minutes to do a 10-80% charge up. That’s fine, but not exceptional.

Being an electric car means that the Inster will be cheap to tax — just £10 for the first year’s VED from April 2025. If the Inster is your company car, then you’ll pay as little as £8 per month in Benefit In Kind (BIK) tax.

The Inster scored four stars in Euro NCAP crash testing, with scores of 70% for adult occupant protection and 81% for child occupant protection. That’s not bad for a tiny car, but the BYD Dolphin Surf scored the full five stars, as did the electric Mini Cooper and MG4. It’s far better than the Dacia Spring’s dire one-star score, though.

The Inster gets seven airbags as standard, along with radar-guided cruise control, automatic emergency braking with pedestrian and cyclist detection, rear parking sensors and camera, driver attention monitor, and lane-keeping steering. Based on all that, the Inster should get a good mark when Euro NCAP gets around to testing it.

The Inster is too new a car for us to know precisely how reliable it might be, but the omens are good. Hyundai has a good reputation for making reliable, high-quality cars and it’s all backed up by the familiar five-year unlimited mileage warranty. The battery is separately warrantied for eight years and 100,000 miles.

Hyundai finished in 17th place, out of 32 brands, in the Driver Power customer satisfaction survey. That’s a (literally) middling result, and owners did raise concerns about overall quality and finish with their cars. Overall, 22% of owners reported problems with their cars.