Over the past year, the Nissan Ariya has joined a cohort of fairly appealing crossover electric vehicles, including the Ford Mustang Mach-E, Hyundai Ioniq 5, Kia EV6, Tesla Model Y, Toyota bZ4X, Subaru Solterra, Volkswagen ID.4 and Volvo C40 and XC40 Recharge. It’s a very crowded field.
All of these models were released before the Ariya and are roughly the same size and relatively similar in price. And some of them have versions that reinforce the sporty appeal.
But the Ariya has a secret weapon that makes him special in this class: his All-wheel drive system e-4orce. With that said, the Ariya doesn’t offer blistering starts (think 0-60 mph in a very respectable 4.8 seconds), although it does offer something more nuanced and endearing: it takes the chassis control wizardry of the GT-R supercar and applies it to the engine controls . The Ariya e-4orce can be steered communicatively, but still absorbs bumps and bumps and at the same time offers more control. It handles rough roads so well and maintains composure that you’d swear it had the complexity of air suspension, adaptive dampers or rear-wheel steering. It doesn’t contain any of these technical additions, and that makes it all the more impressive.
2023 Nissan Ariya e-4orce
The Ariya e-4orce is super-quiet and comfortable, hard to discomfit, yet satisfying and rewarding to drive quickly – a very unusual combination in this group of vehicles, which offers breakneck starts but tends to whine in the corners .
Nissan has done so much right with the user interface. The Ariya concentrates most of the controls on two 12.3-inch displays that are slightly curved toward the driver. Android Auto and Apple CarPlay connect wirelessly, and there’s a great combination of physical buttons and haptic surfaces that complement new and better switchgear.
2023 Nissan Ariya – Preview Drive (Euro-Spec)
The appearance of the entire cabin doesn’t disappoint either. It offers a warm luxury car ambience with patterns of Japanese wood carvings and nods to traditional lanterns in the ambient lighting, as well as a grained dashboard and console surfaces.
That being said, we’re not thrilled with the Ariya in every way. For example, the seat height could be slightly lower – something we’ve heard from different riders of different heights.
While the Ariya makes full use of its 87 kWh (usable) battery with a range of up to 304 miles (up to 272 miles on e-4orce models), the Ariya isn’t a leader in either efficiency or performance. Travel fast charging tariff. Nissan hasn’t even talked about whether it fits in at all Leaf’s bi-directional charging toolset.
The Ariya offers a smaller battery with 63 kWh of usable capacity. And it’s the only model in its class to offer all-wheel drive and the smaller package together. If you’re comfortable with this basic 205-mile range package, you can opt for the e-4orce version for just $48,485. Since 2024 pricing has not been announced at the time of writing, the 2023 Ariya ranges from $44,555 to $61,555, including destination. That means it’s priced slightly higher than most of the competition (and doesn’t qualify for an electric vehicle tax credit). ).
2023 Nissan Ariya
On the one hand, the Ariya is a latecomer in its segment. As a model that was shown in the preview IMx concept vehicle back in 2017 and then delayed several timesThe Ariya could have come to market before many others, but front-wheel drive versions only arrived in the US last December, and the all-wheel drive e-4orce versions followed a few months later.
Had it arrived in significant numbers in the long-range E-4orce version that our editorial team had to test a year or two ago, there would be far less debate internally about whether or not it’s the best of the year.
2023 Nissan Ariya
On the other hand, the Ariya is clearly the future and it ushers in a new era for Nissan – one in which vehicles are developed without concessions to petrol engines and can take advantage of all the flexibility of all-electric driving. It marks the beginning of a completely new look for Nissan, from the profile to the design details and from the interface to the switchgear and the materials you see and touch. Could you imagine a future in which the… Nissan and Infiniti electric vehicles built in the USA– or other Nissan and Infiniti models – do not use a version of this look and interface?
If anything, the Ariya is not only a great electric vehicle, but also a role model that bodes well for future electric vehicles from Nissan.
