Kia Picanto hatchback - Reliability & safety

Kia’s impressive warranty is the envy of the industry and has helped the brand to cement a reputation for reliability. Kia has put considerable effort into ensuring that this is the safest Picanto yet but buyers should be aware of the different safety ratings for the car depending on whether the optional safety pack is fitted.

Kia Picanto reliability

The latest Picanto came an impressive 15th out of 75 cars in our 2022 Driver Power satisfaction survey, five places up on 2021. It scored highly across the board, in key areas like reliability and build quality, running costs and value for money. Owners were also very impressed with its infotainment setup and connectivity – an area where small city cars used to perform very badly. 

Kia as a brand also made a very impressive account of itself, coming in third place behind Tesla and Porsche in our 2022 Driver Power survey according to owners. It was high in the top 10 across every category, impressing with the quality of its cars for the price. Owners love how their Kias drive, and were impressed with their practicality and controls. Around 20% of owners reported a fault within the first year, and while we’d prefer this figure to be lower, we expect most of these were small niggles rather than anything that would see you need to pull in at the side of the road.

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Safety

The latest Picanto makes far greater use of high-strength steel and bonded joints, both of which are known to help with structural rigidity. The car received four stars when it was crash-tested by Euro NCAP, but be aware that the rating only applies to cars fitted with the optional Advanced Driving Assistance safety pack which includes autonomous emergency braking – models without the pack are officially rated as three-star cars. Six airbags are standard on all models and a driver’s knee airbag is optional.