How Nissan Ariya is a genuine Tesla rival. Reverse your thoughts and think that you had been rendering your services for Nissan at its product planning section.
By Laura King
Tesla has 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?
Tom Barnard is sharing his views on the topic.
After living in this area for 6 months, I think I know the answer, but before I tell you, please like and subscribe. 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 eForce, which, after the recent price cut of £3,750, costs £54,840. 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 actually the only free paint option; Tesla will charge you more than two grand for its posh 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 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 are these buttons here, which are all haptic to do the commonly done things, electric things here to open drawers, and you can even move the center console with an electric motor. 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; these feel like the ones you get in the Bentley or maybe around the Lin 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 backward, which is all very nice and a nice luxury feature. But if you’re a bit on the shorter 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 miles, 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 beeping 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 what 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 seasickness you get from a car going like that when you go over speed bumps or when you brake heavily. It works really well; it 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 Nissan 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 pedal.
So it’s a little like a Dodge; if you’ve ever driven one of those, you don’t have to brake 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 to 2 position. 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 luxury. 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 in a less sophisticated car; perhaps nothing, but I’m glad I didn’t have to find out.
It hasn’t snowed properly 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; 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 miles per kilowatt-hour, which is pretty good for this sort of car.
This car has a big battery, it’s 87 kilowatt-hours. Now, what that does mean is that I’ve got a lovely range, which is almost always above 300 miles. And that’s a real luxury for somebody who’s used to a car with 200 miles. I don’t have to plan charging stops when I’m going long distances. It’s lovely to be able to think, “I’m getting home, and I’m not going to have to stop plugging 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 the 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 kilowatts. Now, that’s three times what you get at a normal domestic charger, and you will find 22-kilowatt chargers at offices, workplaces, but also in supermarkets like Tesco or Waitrose.
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 best for your battery. But the area doesn’t have it; there’s no way on the app or inside the car to stop your charging at 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, if you’ve been watching before, will know is something that I love. But also, you’ve got the option of switching to a rearview 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 ARIYA’s heated windscreen is a real luxury on cold days. But it also comes in handy if you’re trying to eke out those last miles of range by turning off the heating. It means you can clear the fluff 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 dials, 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 that makes driving in winter or at night much easier are the headlamps on this car. Now, they have an 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 the 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 about 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 NissanConnect app is pretty good too. It has all the usual things which keep an eye on the battery and set the preconditioning. 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.
