Nissan Ariya Six months report – A genuine Tesla rival ? | Electrifying
Imagine it’s a few years ago and you’re working in the Nissan product planning department Tesla’s come along and stolen your leadership in the electric car market and you want to do something anything to try and Claw back some credibility what is it that you’d put on the flip charts and the Post-it notes
That would make this car more attractive to an electric car buyer than say a model 3 or a model y after living with this area for 6 months I think I know the answer but before I tell you please like And subscribe and if you’re a Tesla
Owner feel free to comment and say you disagree with me but take the caps lock off so it doesn’t look like you’re shouting so it’s a nice place to be and the buttons work but what about the rest of the car well we’ll do the basics
First our area is the 87 kwh evolve eforce which after the recent price cut of 3,750 quid cost 54,8 40 now if I had the free choice I would choose this Aura green paint which in some lights looks dark green at night it looks black and in bright light has
This kind of dark purple tinge but the best bit is is actually the only free paint option Tesla will charge you more than two grand for its poshes paints I’m not sure I’d have chosen the blue interior to go with that green in hindsight perhaps it’s fashionable I’m
Clearly I’m no style Guru imagine you get out of a Tesla Model y with its one screen and all its minimalist buttons or a Volkswagen group product with its nasty shiny Plastics and one button to do all the windows and then you get into here and suddenly it feels like luxury
There’s this nice suede there’s these buttons here which are all haptic to do the the commonly done things electric things here to open drawers and you can even move the Cent console with an electric motor and there’s this big open space as well it just means you’ve got plenty of room to
Stretch out should you want to it feels light Airy spacious and has a certain sense of luxury so we’ve got a nice clear instrument panel here and a head-up display which works really well and this screen here too which has all the information you can need and apple carplay which works well without
Struggling it’s little things like the carpet mats I mean these feel like the ones you get in the Bentley or maybe around the L in in Nan’s bathroom and they just feel so nice and luxurious my kids take their shoes off in the summer just so they can feel these there is one
Fault that the perhaps shorter members of the team have mentioned though as you get out of the car it takes a steering wheel out of the way and moves the seat backwards which is all very nice and a nice luxury feature but if you’re a bit
On the shter side it means you can’t actually reach the button without having to lean forward not a problem if you’re taller and not a big issue really but worth mentioning the seats are very comfortable both in the front and the back and my kids love
The fact they get bottom warmers in the rear too this is a surprise though this car has done around 11,000 mil and the seat bolster here is looking a bit creased and Tatty already not all of those miles have been with me at the wheel either so you can’t blame my
Bigger bottom talking of rear ends the boot isn’t as big as you might expect on this size of car either possibly because this is the version with two Motors the bleeping of the powered tailgate does seem a bit noisy on those early morning starts though oh and another thing when
It’s raining and of course it’s always raining the boot drips on you and your luggage one sort of super Posh convenience feature that I really like is that the car will automatically lock itself as you walk away you just keep the key in your pocket now that’s great
Most of the time and it does make you quite lazy easy and you don’t have to do Troublesome things like press a button but if you leave somebody in the car because you’ve popped to the shop or whatever then the alarm will go off and
Then you do have to press a button in quite a hurry to me the area seems very much like a luxury car or you’d expect a luxury car to be I wouldn’t say it’s particularly sporty in the way it drives but it’s very easy easy and relaxing to
Drive the steering is light but responsive it’s quiet and refined and of course you’ve got all these luxuries and things to make life easier one of the clever things about this car which is the eforce version with its two Motors is that Nissan has developed a system
That helps prevent the sort of pitch and Y and seasickness you get from a car going like that when you go over speed bumps or when you break heavily it works really well it does does make some people feel a little ill at first but I
Have no problem I think it’s great I think this is a superb comfortable car one of the things that nissam was a pioneer of was the kind of regen braking or in this the E pedal as it’s called which means that if you engage it you
Can go to a complete stop just by lifting off the throttle pedals so it’s a little like a Dodge him if you’ve ever driven one of those you don’t have to break if you don’t want to you can just lift off the throttle and the car will
Come to a stop or you push it down and it goes it’s quite simple and it is remarkably relaxing in traffic one thing that’s not quite so clever in my experience is the propilot cruise control now it works very well and it will steer around bends and do
All sorts of things to make life easier if you’re on the motorway but it insists that you keep your hands at the kind of driving instructor 10 to2 position here if you don’t and you have them up here or down there which is you know Perfectly Natural and I wouldn’t say
Unsafe then it gets upset and asks you to put them back here and you have to do it otherwise it will bong at you continually the area isn’t a slow car especially this eforce version with its two Motors in fact it’s quite quick but that’s not what this is about I think
It’s more of a kind of luxurious there’s Instant Power if you want it but it’s quite nice just driving around gently enjoying the Serenity and the ease of driving it the other good bit about the E4 system is it gives you more grip and stability of course I had a squeaky
Moment when I hit some standing water on the A1 and the car did nothing more dramatic than flash a few warning lights at me I do wonder what would have happened if I’d been a less sophisticated car perhaps nothing but I’m glad I didn’t have to find out it
Hasn’t properly snowed while I’ve had the area either so we had to cheat and go to an indoor ski slope as you do there’s a whole other video about that though there’s a link in the description below for a car of this size and performance the efficiency isn’t bad either even in
Colder weather it’s been averaging about 3 m per kwatt hour which is pretty good for this sort of car this car has a big battery it’s 87 kwatt hours now what that does mean is that I’ve got a lovely range which is almost always above 300 mil and that’s a real luxury for
Somebody who’s used to a car with 200 mil I don’t have to plan charging stops when I’m going on long distances it’s lovely to be able to think I’m get home and I’m not going to have to stop to plug in what it does mean of course is
That the battery takes much longer to fill up so I always charge at night at home because it’s on cheap rate and it will take maybe three nights if I roll in with a relatively empty battery to get back to full I can go with that though now the DC rapid charging isn’t
Particularly quick it’s only adequate but on an AC charger like this one it will take up to 22 KW now that’s three times what you get at a normal domestic charger and you will find 22 Kow chargers at offices and workplaces but also in supermarkets like Tesco or
Waitrose and that means you’re getting three times as much power in as you would at a typical public charging point or at home so if you go shopping you might be able to get in enough to get you 60 miles or so in the half hour that
You’re inside a shop it’s really handy there’s a weird thing though on every other car there’s some setting that allows you to stop the charging at 80% because that’s what’s rest of your battery but the area doesn’t have it there’s no way on the app or inside the
Car to stop your charging 80% weird now visibility is pretty good generally and the rear window okay it’s a little small but it does have a rear wiper which anybody who’s been watching before will know is something that I love but also you’ve got the option of
Switching to a rear view camera so the rearview mirror becomes a screen and then you can see behind you now I find it a little strange because you’re trying to focus on something which is 2D rather than 3D but if you’ve got a load
Of people or a load of stuff in the back and you can’t see out or it’s filthy or it’s frosty or whatever then it does make a difference because you can see clearly talking of Frosty The ARA’s heated windscreen is a real luxury on cold days but it also comes out hand if
You’re trying to eek out those last miles of range by turning off the eating it means you can clear the fuff on the windscreen without having to have the blowers on this car also has just about the right amount of buttons so I’ve got my touchscreen for lots of things but
Down here I’ve got my DMs and I can change the temperature of the heating and over here luxuries such as being able to change the mirrors without going through a menu I think they’ve got it just about right and it’s also really comfortable and clearly laid out
Intuitive I don’t have to read the manual to work out how things work one thing which makes driving in Winter or at night much easier are the headlamps on this car now they have a automated main beam which is not new for a lot of people but it has separate LEDs which
Can make a pattern so they can put cars coming towards you in Shadows so they’re not dazzled while still keeping the side of the road and road signs illuminated it’s really clever and it means that you can spot like a deer just about to LEAP
Out in front of you much sooner than you would with a conventional dipped beam now talking of creatures coming out of Hedges there’s something about this car which is weird it seems to attract pigeons to their death bear with me on this in 30 years of driving I have never killed so many
Pigeons as I have in this car they just seem to LEAP out of hedges in front of it now I don’t know if the motor emits some strange mating call to birds but honestly I’m feeling quite guilty there’s Carnage and all these feathers on the roads to my house just because of
This car one good thing though there’s no grill for them to get stuck in so I don’t have to remove it but sorry pigeons the Nissan Connect app is pretty good too it has all the usual things which keep an eye on the battery and set the precond conditioning but it’s really
Quick to update those totals so you can see if you have enough charge to finish your journey without having to go back to the car which means you don’t have to hurry your um salad when you’re having a lunch stop at the service station so is this a car I’d recommend
After having it for 6 months well yeah I think it’s really attractive and obviously so do the pigeons but I just think they’ve got it about right those Nissan BLS with their Post-it notes and their flip charts got it spot on I think I’d rather have this car than a Tesla
Model Y in fact I’d rather have this car than some things which are much more expensive because of the quality interior and the design that’s saying quite a lot but I really do love this car
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Nissan Ariya Long term report: https://www.electrifying.com/long-term-reviews/nissan-reviews/ariya/review
After six months of driving our Nissan Ariya, it’s time for us to hand the keys back and say goodbye. Would we choose one over a Tesla Model Y?
Tom has been mesmerised by the constantly same-shifting Aurora Green paint, but there are plenty of other reasons the Ariya is attractive.
It’s also the e4ORCE model, which means more power and four wheel drive, which we put to the test on an indoor ski slope.
Our car is the Evolve, which after the recent price cut of £3,750 costs £54,840. The Aurora Green paint we love so much is the only ‘free’ paint colour – all the others are a cost option. It also has the Sport Pack, which includes 20-inch alloys and a blue leather. In hindsight, the blue doesn’t really go with the exterior colour and the black or grey would have worked better.
Our Ariya has the bigger 87kWh battery, which means a genuine 300 miles of range on most days. The downside is that it takes much longer to top up. Doing all the home charging at the cheap rate overnight on Octopus Go means it takes three nights to get near full again.
We’d also say the Ariya has one of the best interiors of any electric car, with excellent quality and some lovely touches. It makes the efforts of Volkswagen, Tesla and even Audi look a bit downmarket. Even the carpets feel like a Bentley’s.
Do you have an Ariya? Do you love it as much as we do? Let us know in the comments below.
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