2023 Nissan ARIYA

BRIAN: Folks, I am here with something very, very exciting. And I cannot wait to show it to you. This is the all new Nissan Ariya, the company's first follow-up to the Leaf and the first real challenger for the Tesla Model Y. Now this futuristic Nissan-- FUTURE BRIAN: Brian, stop. It's not 2020 anymore. BRIAN: Wait, what do you mean it's not 2020? And why are you me? FUTURE BRIAN: No, we don't have time for this right now. Just stop what you're doing. BRIAN: What the hell is this thing you're driving? It looks like a spaceship and from the '80s at the same time. FUTURE BRIAN: It's not a spaceship. It's a Hyundai. BRIAN: No, no, no, no, no, that's not a Hyundai. FUTURE BRIAN: It's a Hyundai. BRIAN: I got to sit down. FUTURE BRIAN: There's no time for that. Just get in your Nissan, and follow me to the Edmunds test track. God, I'm annoying. [MUSIC PLAYING] BRIAN: Well, if you say so, future Brian. Wait, what about Kia? It might be hard to remember now, but Nissan actually had a really big lead in the EV race when it came out with the Leaf in 2011. And the Leaf was actually the best-selling electric vehicle of all time all the way up until 2020 when it was supplanted by the Tesla Model 3. Now 2020 was actually the first year that we also saw the Ariya. And it was supposed to debut in the second half of 2021. And if it had come out at that time, it would have really only had a couple competitors, the Tesla Model Y and the Ford Mustang Mach-E, which debuted at the very end of 2020. But as we all know, 2020 was a crazy year. And due to global supply chain problems, chip shortages, all that good stuff, the Ariya didn't debut in 2021. And that means that instead of a weaker field, it comes out into a very, very strong one. And it ran straight into this thing. This is the Hyundai IONIQ 5. And it is our reigning champion as it received the latest Edmunds Top Rated Award for best electric SUV. Backing up the IONIQ 5 now is a very deep field of competitors like the Kia EV6, Volkswagen ID.4, Toyota bZ4X. And of course, the Tesla and the Ford haven't gone anywhere either. Now we here at Edmunds, we love our numbers. So what better way to kick off this competition than here at the Edmunds test track? Even though the IONIQ 5 is down about 70 horsepower to the Ariya, it's actually quicker to 60 miles per hour and in the quarter mile, thanks to being about 400 pounds lighter. This is a disappointing result for the Ariya, as Nissan claimed that it has a 0 to 60-mile-an-hour time of just 4.8 seconds. But that's a result that we were unable to match in our testing no matter how hard we tried. But the truth is, both of these vehicles will have plenty of power for both day-to-day driving and to even have some fun from behind the wheel. So how does the Ariya feel behind the wheel? Things are a bit mixed. It didn't quite live up to its advertised 0 to 60-mile-an-hour time on our track. But it still feels plenty punchy, especially this dual-motor version that we're in right now. Plenty of power. And it gets around our track pretty easily. The Ariya is actually a lot more comfortable when you're driving it in normal mode than sport mode because sport mode really amps up the steering so that the ratio gets really quick. So when you're on center and you make a little movement when you're in sport mode, the front of the car just dives in. And the suspension isn't really ready for it. So you turn the car, and it's real sharp. But then it leans way out to the opposite side. It puts all the weight on that outside wheel. And it feels like you're really going to understeer unless you back off. Ride quality is pretty good. On the street, the Ariya is comfortable. But if there's one area that it really struggles in, that would be braking. Get on the brakes really hard, and the front end is very, very uncomposed. You can actually feel a lot of wiggle through the steering wheel. And it's kind of hard to keep the Ariya tracking straight if you're braking hard. There's one final annoyance in driving the Ariya, and that is that it doesn't offer one-pedal driving. It offers something close to a one-pedal experience called the e-Step. And you can turn that on via a little button here on the center console. And what that does, is it basically feels like one-pedal driving most of the time until you get down to where you think that the vehicle is going to stop itself, and it just keeps rolling. We're going 20 miles an hour. I'm going to lift off the throttle. And it feels like this is going to slow to a stop. But then we get down to about 5 miles an hour, and it just keeps rolling, keeps rolling, keeps rolling. I thought that this was something I might be able to get used to driving it on the street for a bit. But every time, it's like you feel the car is going to stop, and then it just keeps going. One-pedal driving, this is definitely not. In sharp contrast to the Ariya, the IONIQ 5 is just very, very solid all around. There is some body roll in the corners. But as one of our vehicle testers described it, it's not bad body roll. It's body roll in the old-school Mazda way where the body roll was a feature. And what it does is it lets you feel what the car is doing underneath you. But it never ends up feeling sloppy or vague. In fact, I think that the IONIQ 5 steering and the way the suspension works makes it a lot more fun than it should be, even out here in an environment like on a test track. Turn-in is sharp. And you could feel the body and that weight start to move around a bit. But it never feels out of control. And rebound is so nicely dealt with so that even when you do quick changes of direction like this, the IONIQ 5 just never really feels out of sorts. Very solid under-braking. And actually comes with a true one-pedal driving experience. So by clicking on i-Pedal here and I lift off the throttle, it'll bring me down slowly to a stop just like this. Not that hard, is it? I don't mean to harp on this point too much, but when the Ariya first debuted in 2020, this design was very fresh and striking. Though now in 2023, it doesn't really land with the same impact. There are lots of other EVs that also have funky styling and similar shapes. When I look at the Ariya, the Volkswagen ID.4 comes to mind. Although, I think that the Ariya does a much better job than that vehicle of having some unique exterior details, including this cool detailing in the grill that's called a Kumiko pattern that's based on Japanese woodworking. And we see that theme extend to the interior, as well. But it is not as striking as the IONIQ 5 with its retro '80s-inspired styling that still turns heads to this day. Now which one you prefer will be more up to you. Between the three of us, me, and my producer, and our DP, we all have our own separate opinions. But if you want to have the most forward-styling of these two, it's unquestionably the IONIQ. Although, the Nissan, not bad-looking at all. The interior of the Ariya does have some really nice things going for it. But it also suffers from what I would call some execution flaws that really take the shine off of it. Materials overall are quite good. The stuff on the seats and up here on the dash, especially, are comfortable. There are some hard plastics around, but not too many of them. Mostly on the doors. And nothing on places that you would touch normally. This piece of wood trim here is very nice. And it actually houses the climate controls. These are all haptic controls, which we don't normally like too much. But Nissan actually did a very good job with the execution of these controls. It's very clear to tell when you've actually pressed the button. It gives you enough feedback. And they all seem responsive enough. And there's not really a missed press anywhere here on the dash. Move to the center console here, same type of controls. And these are all helpfully illuminated, so they're easy to find, even at night. And this center console is also powered. So you can slide it forward. You can slide it back. Why you need this, I don't really know. But I guess it's kind of cool that it can do that. One problem with this, though, is that when you have a powered center console, you've got to put a motor in there. And what that does is it really limits your center storage. It's actually quite possibly the smallest center console storage that I've ever seen. It's something that would come more out of a Miata than out of a family vehicle like this. And really, the only thing I could fit in there is a tin of mints. Wireless charging pad here for your phone. It's placed pretty nicely. It's easy to get to. The problem is, though, it's a little bit shallow, so that if you actually brake the Ariya pretty hard, your phone will go flying out of it. There is this cool storage bin right here that comes out from under the screen. And this is necessary because there's no storage here. But you might think that this would be an opportunity to have a one-touch control. And instead-- Upfront here, we have matching 12.3-inch screens, one for the instrument cluster, and the other one for the multimedia system. There was really an opportunity here for Nissan to upgrade the multimedia experience in its vehicles. But instead, what we get in the Ariya is much like what we get in other Nissan vehicles where it does feel a little bit lacking. Now that's not to say that the screen itself isn't sharp. It's actually pretty nice and high resolution. But if you look at what powers it, like this navigation screen, for example, it just feels last generation, especially when you compare it to what you're getting with smartphone mirroring app these days. The nice thing is you do have some Google integration, so you're getting updated places and location data. But, for example, as we move the map around here, the fonts just feel old. It looks a little bit blurry. And it's just an experience that doesn't feel as modern as the rest of the vehicle does. Ariya's backseat does have two different recline settings. So you have to reach back here, grab this handle, and then you can lean back a little bit more. But in the IONIQ, you actually get four or five different settings. So you have a lot more flexibility there for rear passengers. Plenty of features back here. You have heated outboard rear seats and two USB ports for phone charging, as well as air vents that you can see. Here in the IONIQ, interior materials probably not quite as nice as the Ariya on the top end. But still a very nice place to be. I really like the design and layout of this dashboard. Everything is very easy to reach. And you don't find yourself having to lean forward out of the seat to get to any of the climate controls or anything like that. And the IONIQ is far superior when it comes to central storage. So like the Ariya, it has a movable center console. It's not powered, but it's still very easy to move. And that means that this whole area here can also be open. So this tiny storage area right here, which is kind of a throwaway given how big the rest of this bin in, this is bigger than anything you're going to get in the Ariya by itself. And if you look down here, this giant, open, cavernous space, that's a perfect place to put a purse or a small bag. Down here, there's also another little cubby, as well, in case it didn't have a big enough advantage already. If there's one thing that I don't really like about the IONIQ's interior up here is that it doesn't have wireless Apple CarPlay or Android Auto. And that means that you have to plug your phone in. And the two USB ports you can see here are charge-only. So if you want to actually have your phone talk to the vehicle, you have to plug it in all the way up here and then run a cable back. And that sort of defeats the purpose of having an open floor plan up front if you have to run a cable through it. Screen setup, pretty much the same. Side-by-side again. I actually prefer these because they offer better clarity. So this instrument cluster is a lot less cluttered, a lot easier to decipher the information that's actually coming at you. And Hyundai's menu structure we've always loved. It's just super simple and easy to use. Everything that you need to find feels just one or two presses away rather than in the Nissan where you're digging through menu after menu to find what you really want. I will say this, though, the map view in the IONIQ 5 is also not great. It does look and feel a little bit old. So I would say that in both vehicles, if you really want a modern maps experience, plug that phone in. The Ariya's cargo area is smaller than most of the other members of the segment with just 22.8 cubic feet behind the back seat. Though that does expand to 59.7 cubic feet with those seats folded down. The IONIQ 5 has more space behind its rear seats, but slightly less with those seats down. The bottom line is that both vehicles offer plenty of space for road trip luggage and for most day-to-day needs. Undoubtedly, the Ariya has some more advanced safety features that the IONIQ 5 doesn't have, including a rear-view camera mirror and ProPilot 2.0, which includes a hands-free system on the highway, similar to GM's Super Cruise or Ford's BlueCruise, features at the IONIQ doesn't have. But I would say that the overall execution of these safety systems in the Ariya is a bit uneven. So, for example, we're on the highway right now. I'm going to go ahead and turn on the ProPilot 2.0. And so it's green at first. And then when it turns to blue, that's when you're in hands-free mode. And when it's in that mode, the Ariya actually works very well. It does a very good job of tracking you straight. There's a little sensor here to keep an eye on you so you're not looking off and doing other things, and also gently remind you to look forward if you end up looking at the center console for too long or something like that. The problem is when the hands-free system isn't on, the wheel does a very poor job of detecting when your hands are actually on the wheel. So when the screen is green like this and you're just in regular adaptive cruise, you can have your hands on the wheel, and it'll still flash you these big warnings that say, put your hands on the wheel. And I'm like, my hands are on the wheel. The other thing the Ariya does weirdly is that it has a HUD. And the HUD does show blind spot warnings, which is something really useful to show in the HUD. But it only shows those blind spot warnings when the adaptive cruise control is on. So let's say you're driving on the street where people don't use adaptive cruise control all the time. But in that case, you don't get the blind spot warnings in the HUD. In the IONIQ 5, the HUD shows the blind spot warnings all the time. And it might not, again, have the same hands-free features. But it does automatically lane changes. And it does all the things that it needs to do rather seamlessly. It just seems a lot more cohesive in the IONIQ while the Ariya can do more, but it doesn't necessarily do it better. FUTURE BRIAN: Brian from the past, his brain is having a little bit of a meltdown. So I'm here to give you our conclusion on these two electric SUVs. Now both of these vehicles did very similarly on our Edmunds EV real-world range test, with the Ariya netting 265 miles and the IONIQ 5 going to 270 miles. Both vehicles beat their EPA estimates by a small margin. However, we should note that the IONIQ 5 is a lot more efficient than the Ariya because it has a smaller battery. But still went a slightly longer distance. Now when we total up all the scores of these vehicles, it's bad news for the Ariya. It only gets an Edmunds rating of 7.1, which puts it well below the IONIQ's Edmunds rating of 8.3. And that 8.3 is, again, good enough to give it the top spot on our Edmunds all-wheel drive electric SUV leaderboard, and, of course, that all-important Edmunds Top Rated Award for this year. Though the Ariya has a much lower rating, I don't want you thinking it's a bad vehicle. It actually does some things quite well. It's just it kind of showed up a little bit late. And if it had come out when it was supposed to, we would probably regard it much better. So at the end, it doesn't really turn out to be much of a competition at all. And there's really only one of these vehicles that's worth driving back to the future with. Look, man, we got to get going. BRIAN: Wait, one more thing. Who's the president? FUTURE BRIAN: Oh, Dwayne Johnson. BRIAN: Dwayne Johnson the actor? [MUSIC PLAYING]