Nissan Ariya e-4ORCE long-term test: family EV reminds us why it's an award winner

Verdict

The Nissan Ariya is still impressing us with its broad range of abilities. We’ll be keeping an eye on brake wear and hope the range continues to increase in the warmer weather, but we’re enjoying life with the SUV.

• Mileage: 9,027
• Efficiency: 2.9 miles/kWh

Our Nissan Ariya is still the best part of two years short of its first MoT test, but you can’t be too careful, especially not when eBay offers you a free pre-MoT check. 

The global auction powerhouse set up a pop-up garage at Woburn Safari Park in Bedfordshire as part of a push to promote its car parts and accessories retail operation. The Ariya passed with flying colours, as you’d hope for a 13 month-old, 9,000-mile EV, and the Walker family got to see some monkeys. 

There was one blot in the car’s copybook when the technicians reported “slight wear on the front brake discs”. EVs are generally supposed to be fairly light on their braking consumables, by virtue of the strong regenerative braking systems that mean you have to use the car’s actual brakes far less frequently, but it’s a potential issue that we’ll be keeping an eye on. 

Service intervals for the Ariya under ‘normal driving conditions’ are every 12 months or 18,000 miles, with a full service every 24 months or 36,000 miles. That’s a little longer in terms of mileage than with a petrol or diesel car, and there’s less required to be done on each visit, with no engine oil or oil filters to worry about. Nissan sets the intervals for a diesel X-Trail SUV at 12 months or 9,000 miles, for example. 

Back to those brakes, and I’ve been selecting the Nissan ePedal mode as a matter of course when driving in town. It performs largely as advertised, removing the need for those gentle brake inputs you have to make on a car without a strong brake-regen effect. It won’t bring the car to a complete stop for true ‘one-pedal driving’, but plan ahead in the right traffic conditions and you can still make brake use a rare event. 

You’ll still probably want to disengage the ePedal mode for longer trips, because it slows the car too briskly when you release the throttle at higher speeds.

There’s also a ‘B’ mode on the main drive selector that offers a less intrusive setting somewhere between the standard brake-energy regen effect in ‘Drive’ mode and the ePedal, but if you’re going to choose one, why not go the whole hog with the ePedal? I do.   

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The other issue that’s developed on the car is a squeak from the front-wheel area on left-hand bends. It’s almost inaudible with the windows up – credit to the car’s robust soundproofing for that – but as the weather has warmed up and the windows have come down, I’ve started to notice its intermittent whine when just the right angle of left-hand steering lock is applied and the car’s weight moves to the front left corner. Otherwise, this 9,000-mile car seems to be in rude health. 

We’re also starting to see the expected seasonal electric car range improvement. The car struggled to break 2.5 miles per kWh in the winter, for an indicated range on a full charge of around 210 miles. Now temperatures have climbed, it’s getting up to 3mi/kWh without much effort and better than that on longer runs. I’m typically seeing 230 to 240 miles indicated on a full charge with mainly urban driving, and 3.5mi/kWh is possible in Eco mode on longer A and B-road trips. The official maximum range of 314 miles still looks a long way off, though. 

The Ariya drives well for a big SUV, on its fully independent suspension. The car feels well tied down at speed, with none of that disconcerting bounciness that you can get in less sophisticated 4x4s on undulating roads. In corners, there’s initial body roll but then the Nissan’s low centre of gravity steps in, stopping the lean becoming excessive. Everything feels nice and stable. 

As you’d expect from a car with e-4ORCE all-wheel drive, there are no issues getting the 306bhp power output down to the road and with 600Nm maximum torque, there’s lot of acceleration when you need it.  Sport mode quickens responses but adds a lot of weight to the steering and activates the annoying artificial ‘engine noise’ that sounds like it’s inspired by the flying-saucer effects in a fifties’ B-movie. I usually leave it alone. 

At lower speeds the Ariya isolates its occupants from rough surfaces well. There is a tendency for slight shudders to go through the car when the rear end rides over bigger craters, but Nissan’s engineers have largely got the set-up right for family-carrying duties. The car holds up well against rivals in this area and I can’t see many prospective buyers having complaints with the way it behaves on the road. Those prioritising a fun drive might want to look elsewhere, but they may also need to rethink their expectations of a 2.2-tonne SUV.

There’s no doubt that the EV market has moved on significantly since the Ariya arrived, and there’s no sign of it slowing down. But the Nissan remains one of the top dogs in the large electric SUV class, and it’s plush enough in the Evolve spec we’re testing to draw buyers away from alternatives with more premium badges; priced at more than £57,000 with options, that’s just as well.

Nissan Ariya e-4ORCE: first report

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2022 Car of the Year joins our fleet, but will it impress us as much now as it did then?

• Mileage: 8,036
• Efficiency: 3.1 miles/kWh

Remember 2022? It seems such a long time ago, and in the fast-paced world of the electric-car market, it really is. Back in the summer of 2022, the Nissan Ariya was crowned as the Auto Express Car of the Year. It stood out thanks to its high-quality cabin, comfort and refinement, not to mention the strong performance and 309-mile official range from its electric powertrain.

Fast forward to 2024 and the market for electric family SUVs has filled out massively. So does the Nissan Ariya still justify its two-year-old accolade in today’s market? A long-term test feels like the ideal way to find out.

The car you see here hails from the upper reaches of the Ariya range and, priced from £54,840, this dual-motor e-4ORCE Evolve version looks quite expensive on paper.

That Ceramic Grey paint job is another £745 on top of the list price, and our car has also got the £1,995 Sport Pack. This gives you 20-inch wheels and the Nappa leather interior trim of the range-topping Evolve+ models. It does not, however, extend to the power boost that bumps the Ariya Evolve+ up to 388bhp from the Evolve’s 301bhp, and drops the already-lively 5.7-second 0-62mph time by 0.6 seconds. You need more than £4,000 to upgrade from an Evolve to an Evolve+ and having tried both, we wouldn’t bother. The standard car is quick enough.

Still, even with just these two options, our Ariya is priced at £57,580. This puts it in the same ballpark as a mid-range Audi Q4 e-tron or a top-spec Volkswagen ID.4 GTX, but the newly arrived Renault Scenic could be a bigger challenger for our Nissan.

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So how do key bits of the Ariya perform, two years after its award? The cabin still looks really smart, particularly in Evolve trim, with its bells and whistles.

The deep-pile floor mats that span the full width of the cabin are a minor highlight, but winter weather means we’ll soon find out how easy they are to clean. I also love the aforementioned blue Nappa leather trim, which is accompanied by soft blue suede-type material on the dash and door inserts.

It feels very sumptuous with all the natural (and natural-looking) materials inside, including the wood-effect panel that sweeps right across the dash and houses the unusual touch-sensitive heating and ventilation controls.

Between the seats is the Ariya’s party-piece sliding centre console that can be electrically moved forwards and backwards – but it doesn’t really seem to add a huge amount in terms of practicality.

The minor controls and systems are contained within the wide infotainment screen on the top of the dash. Its resolution isn’t as crisp as on the best screens from rivals, but it is one of the easier systems to use. Nissan’s design for the menus and, particularly, the instrument cluster can look a bit cluttered, but once you actually start using the Ariya, you realise that prioritising ease of access to information over flashy graphics really does pay off.

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One immediate bugbear is that the obvious place to put your phone is on the wireless charging mat under the central armrest, but Android users need a wired connection to use Android Auto (Apple CarPlay is wireless). Because there’s no USB socket near that handy phone storage area, you have to trail a long cable or relocate your phone to stick out of the slot at the front of the centre console next to the USB point.

Our Ariya has just over 8,000 miles on the clock, most of them potentially fairly hard work on the Nissan UK press fleet. Even so, as you’d hope, it’s holding up very well in terms of the materials and the way it drives.

Our Ariya might have 301bhp and a sub-six-second 0-62mph time but, as is so often the case with electric cars, such eye-opening numbers don’t translate to a heart-fluttering driving experience. However, although the suspension is sometimes noisy, it takes the edge off the bumps very well and, after the initial lean as you turn into corners, it keeps the body relatively well controlled.

Efficiency hasn’t been quite so impressive so far, though. The cold January weather has resulted in it returning a little over 3.0 miles per kWh, with the indicated range on a full charge hovering around 210 miles.

The caveat is that my motoring life tends to involve lots of very short trips around town combined with regular journeys on the motorway. During those longer A- and B-road trips, where the car is cruising more gently between stops for traffic lights and roundabouts, the efficiency numbers tend to improve towards 3.5mi/kWh. We’ll see how that develops as the test continues.

*Insurance quote from AA (0800 107 0680) for a 42-year-old in Banbury, Oxon, with three points.