LAOIS MOTORING:  New Nissan Ariya is top of its class!

Nissan should be pretty good at designing EV’s after all they were one of the early pioneers when it comes to EV’s with the Nissan Leaf. 

The Ariya moves the game on a good deal and is a brand new Crossover EV boasting a more premium feel, a decent range and lots of practicality.

There are two trim versions available, Advance and Evolve with a choice of two or all wheel drive and two battery sizes, a 63kWh battery and a larger 87kWh battery.

So has it got street cred?

The new Ariya is quite a large car and in that alone it has presence. The styling is conventional enough in many ways but nonetheless attractive for that. 

What’s it like inside?

The cabin is impressive with nice quality materials evident throughout and the fit and feel of everything is very good indeed.

The fully configurable digital dash is one of the best I have seen of late and while the central touchscreen operates most functions such as climate, audio and so forth Nissan rather wisely put plenty of easy to access buttons for the most used features such as the climate control, drive modes and e-Pedal.

I must praise them for this as far too many manufacturers are placing everything operationally through a touchscreen which is both distracting and awkward to use on the move. Keep some buttons! Well done Nissan.

The driving position is excellent, you sit slightly higher than you expect of this car but it does give a commanding view of the road ahead.

Accommodation is excellent with lots of hard and legroom both front and rear.The boot is a decent size too and will swallow quite a bit of family luggage.

There's a host of standard kit too numerous to detail here but highlights include, Nissan’s Pro pilot driver assist systems, emergency braking, pedestrian and cyclist detection, a head-up display, Apple Car Play and Android Auto, wireless phone charging, and intelligent blind spot monitoring to name but a few.

What's it like to drive?

The new Ariya is one of the best driving EV’s currently on the market. It is very quiet on the road, accelerates well and actually handles well too despite its mass. The ride comfort is a best in class with the Ariya managing to soak up the worst of our somewhat uneven road surfaces with ease.

It seems to be a very well engineered car and it shows in how comfortable and pleasant a place it is to be.

So what about the dreaded topic of range. My test car had the 63 kWh battery with a claimed range of 400km from a full charge. Well if you are charging to 80% ( as recommended to extend battery life) your looking at a realistic range of about 350km or so depending on how you drive.  I started off with 87% and a predicted range of 371 Km but that whittled down to 350km or so.

The new Ariya will fast charge to 80% in about 35 minutes. The Ariya can also be optioned with a 22kW three-phase charger for domestic use.

Verdict

The new Nissan Ariya is quite expensive with prices for the Advance model with the smaller battery starting at €49,000, while the Evolve model with the bigger battery costs from €64,000.

That said I really liked the new Ariya. It is well put together, offers plenty of creature comforts as standard, its practical to live with as family transport and its actually good to drive, not something I can say of many EV’s.

The new Ariya then is really top of its class!