Hyundai Inster 2026 review: Extended range long-term | Part 3

This month we farewell our Hyundai Inster after several months. Are we glad to see it go or is this a pleasantly charming little city car?

Before we continue, it’s worth noting that we did get the Extended Range variant back after it had been crashed into shortly after our second month of testing began. Read our second chapter for more on how it compared to the Standard Range, but we managed to finish our testing with this version of the car which, at least on paper, seems to be the pick of the range.

Read More About Hyundai Inster

• Hyundai Inster 2026 review: Extended range long-term | Part 1
• Hyundai Inster 2026 review: Standard Range long-term | Part 2
• Big shake-up for ballistic EV

Having recently driven many of this car’s more price-savvy rivals from China, I noticed how nice and relatively unobtrusive the Inster is to drive.

While some more affordable cars, even a size up from the Inster, are full of invasive driver aids, annoying ergonomic features or controls, and sub-standard software, the Inster is refreshingly easy to get along with, and does a bunch of the no-brainer EV driving stuff really well.

For example, there are four levels of adjustable regenerative braking, from barely noticeable, to full single pedal mode, and these are nicely tuned so that they feel natural, whatever level of electric motor feedback you might be comfortable with.

I’ve already mentioned the nice steering and ride in previous chapters, which makes this car feel a cut above its size bracket let alone its price bracket.

The active safety features which helped the Inster earn a four-star ANCAP safety rating (harder than you might think for a car this small) are relatively unobtrusive, or at the very least, easy to turn off.

The lane keeping aid, which at times can be a bit heavy handed, can simply be turned down by holding a button on the steering wheel for a few seconds, rather than having to dig through menus on the touchscreen. The rest of the safety kit is relatively tame, saving you menu-diving time on start-up.

Then there’s the cabin practicality on offer. The Inster is a car seemingly very aware of its limited footprint. To that end, while you don’t get a centre console box, there are bag hooks hidden everywhere, like on the passenger side of the dash and there are fold-out hooks hidden at the edge of the armrest. Clever.

I mentioned in the first chapter how surprisingly spacious the cabin feels in both rows of seating, but one trick this car has is a second row on rails.

This means you can roll the seating row forward to either reduce or entirely remove legroom and expand the boot capacity massively.

It’s a rare feature on most city cars delivered to Australia, but much more common on Asian-market models, like Kei cars from Japan.

It means you can have kids or pets in the second row which don’t need as much space, while maximising boot space, or passenger room when you’re not carrying as much stuff. This makes it versatile, but as you might imagine the airport run isn't it's strong suit.

Upsettingly though, there’s no frunk. While it might seem gimmicky, frunks can actually be a useful place to put charging cables when the under-floor storage is hard to access because you’re carrying luggage.

I took the Inster for a spirited drive before I returned it to really test out its driving chops, and walked away impressed.

The amount of grip on offer and the solid feeling of the suspension is backed up with a good amount of agility in corners. It combines nicely with a bit of drivetrain punch in Sport mode to make for a fun little car to really push, even if the Hyundai N-style carbon-fibre-look digital dash overhaul is a bit ill-fitting.

It took a significant amount of work to get the tyres to eke out a squeal, to my surprise, and the suspension travel is limited enough that much of the uncomfortable feeling when the battery starts to ‘float’ the whole body of the car on undulating roads isn’t present.

Sure, it’s not objectively fast, but probably quicker than you expect, and it’s always better to drive a slow car at 110 per cent than a fast car at 10 per cent.

Efficiency wise, the Inster did pretty well. The final number I pulled from the car after around 1500km behind the wheel was 13.8kWh/100km. It’s lower than many of its larger rivals, which do between 14.5 and 17kWh/100km.

As for charging, it can be annoying that the port is on the front of the car, because it means you need to go nose in to some spots. At least it’s on the kerb side for when you're using outdoor roadside chargers.

The maximum charging speed is quoted at 120kW, but I’ve never seen it go faster than roughly 70kW, even on stacks capable of 150kW. For what it’s worth, it doesn’t need it. The battery is so small it still charges in half an hour or less.

Ownership looks like a decent story, too. Not only will this car cost a lot less in charging compared to a fuel alternative, but the Inster only requires a service every two years or a whopping 30,000km.

Unfortunately, Hyundai charges $655 per visit. A head-scratcher given a combustion alternative like the Yaris Cross with so many more expendable fluids and moving parts is more affordable to look after.