Nissan Ariya Review & Prices

If you’re looking for a well-equipped, posh electric SUV that’s pretty affordable compared with alternatives, the Nissan Ariya is well worth a look. There are some frustratingly fiddly controls inside, but it’s a stylish thing with a decent range between charges.

It’s a bit like getting a McMuffin instead of a full English breakfast – it does a good job and might be just what you’re after, but you can pay a bit more for a more complete meal. Or in this case, faster charging and a bigger boot.

Those breakfast alternatives include the Skoda Enyaq, Polestar 2 and Tesla Model Y. The Audi Q4 e-tron and Ford Mustang Mach-e should also be on your radar if you can stretch your budget a bit further.

Nissan Ariya: electric range, battery and charging data

Range: 247 - 330 miles
Efficiency: 3.1mi/kWh - 3.5mi/kWh
Battery size: 63kWh / 87kWh
Max charge speed: 130kW
Charge time DC: 35mins, 20-80%, 130kW / 40mins, 20-80%, 130kW
Charge port location: Right side front
Power outputs: 218hp / 242hp / 306hp / 394hp

Where the Nissan Ariya has most beat is with its stylish exterior, which looks futuristic yet simple, and is a welcome antidote to some of the overly fussy designs you see on many modern cars. You get slim headlights, a large front grille and a sloping roofline. There’s a full-width light bar at the rear, too.

It’s similarly sleek inside. You get the typical twin-screen setup atop the dashboard, but beneath this is a full-width panel that incorporates various climate control buttons, with this theme continued in the centre console. These buttons look great, but they’re really unintuitive to use and make simple processes quite frustrating.

Interior storage is pretty good, and there’s a quirky felt-lined drawer that pops out of the centre of the dash, which is useful for hiding valuables. However, boot space isn’t great – at 466 litres it’s well down on the Audi Q4 e-tron, Skoda Enyaq and Tesla Model Y.

Nissan’s electric SUV fares a bit better when comparing its potential range between charges, helped in part by the fact you get a heat pump as standard. This helps improve range and efficiency in colder weather, and is typically an optional extra on other EVs. There are two battery options, and while the smaller of the two only goes about 250 miles, the larger one goes up to 330 miles in official tests, which is similar to long range versions of alternatives – though the (much more expensive) Ford Mustang Mach-e can go up to 379 miles. Unfortunately the Nissan’s maximum charge rate isn’t fantastic, but you should still complete a 20-80% charge in 35 minutes at a fast public charger.

Driving the Ariya is relaxing, with only a little bit of wind and road noise making its way into the cabin. But there are some jitters that come through the suspension that can make it feel a little bit unsettled over smaller bumps and cracks in the road. Smooth electric power is naturally great for town driving, though there is a large blind spot over your shoulder, and the Mustang Mach-e is more fun to drive down a twisty road.

All up though, the Nissan Ariya is a worthy electric family SUV to consider – it’s stylish, spacious and comfortable. If that sounds like your cup of (breakfast) tea, see how much you could save with Carwow’s Nissan Ariya deals. Or if you'd prefer a used Nissan Ariya, or any other used Nissan for that matter, check out the stock from our network of trusted dealers. And Carwow can even help you sell your current car, too.

Despite looking so good and sporting the best interior Nissan has built in a long time, the Ariya is actually well-priced against alternatives. If you’re happy to go for the lower-range entry-level model, prices start just under £40,000, which is the same as a Skoda Enyaq, and that doesn’t feel quite as special. It’s also a bit less than the Tesla Model Y and Polestar 2, and much less than the Ford Mustang Mach-e and Audi Q4 e-tron.

If you want the extra range from the larger battery, prices start around £45,000, which is again pretty reasonable, because you can have it in the entry-level trim. This isn’t often the case with electric cars, with the Mustang Mach-e being a good example – if you want the long range battery you need to step up to the mid-spec trim, which is nearly £60,000.

Kit’s pretty good on the Ariya despite the impressive price, too. All cars get the twin-screen setup inside, 19-inch alloy wheels and LED headlights on the outside, and the all-important heat pump, which improves range in poor weather.

The Ariya is mostly smooth and refined, but it does have a tendency to jiggle over smaller bumps in the road

In town

Most electric vehicles, including the Ariya, are at their best in town, with an instant surge of power for easy pull-aways, silent running for better refinement, and low drain on the battery so your range doesn’t suddenly evaporate. However, the Ariya does have one low-speed flaw, and that’s the suspension, because it seems to jiggle and fidget about a lot over poor road surfaces. It’s nowhere near as soothing to drive as the Skoda Enyaq or the Audi Q4 e-tron.

The Ariya’s steering is nice and light, and while the turning circle isn't amazing, it’s manoeuvrable enough in tight parking bays. Forward visibility is excellent, thanks to a low-set dashboard although the door mirrors are a little small and the windscreen pillars do cause a blind spot. The view out of the back isn’t so good, as the rear glass is quite shallow and the rear pillars are very chunky, so there’s a big over-your-shoulder blind spot. There is help from a standard-fit 360-degree camera system though, which also comes with sensors, moving object detection, and emergency braking to stop you backing into things or, worse, people.

The Ariya also gets the ‘e-pedal’ system from the smaller Nissan Leaf, which uses the regenerative braking effect of the electric motor (or motors, if you’re in the four-wheel drive one) to slow the car down. Very handy around town, but unfortunately — unlike the Leaf — e-pedal mode in the Ariya doesn’t stop the car completely; you have to physically step on the brake to do that.

On the motorway

The Ariya’s suspension never quite settles down at higher speeds either – it’s not harsh but it is a bit fidgety, especially over coarse concrete motorway sections. That said, it is still broadly a comfortable car, with cosseting front seats. It’s quite refined, but you will hear some wind roar around the door mirrors and the edges of the windows, though it's not intrusive enough that you'll have to raise your voice in conversation.

The Ariya’s electronic driver aids are good though, with the ‘ProPilot’ radar-guided cruise control and the lane-guidance steering keeping you firmly and safely in lane.

On a twisty road

Despite the Ariya’s chunky kerb weight it actually corners pretty keenly. There’s very little body roll, and while you will start to feel the weight if you’re really attacking a twisty road, the Ariya copes well enough to be pretty good fun. The Ford Mustang Mach-E is much more enjoyable on a countryside jaunt, though.

The brakes have a much more natural feel than you find in most electric cars, so it's easy to judge how much pressure to apply to the pedal. Hit a mid-corner bump, though, and the Ariya's suspension skips about a bit, which can be slightly unnerving.

The Ariya is roomy and comfortable in the cabin, but it’s surprisingly short of boot space

Under the front armrest, there’s a shallow storage area that’s also home to a wireless phone charger, and there’s a couple of adjustable cupholders in front of that. Beneath the centre console, there’s a little upright tray for storing a mobile phone, along with USB and USB-C slots, and a 12-volt socket too.

There’s a conventional glovebox in front of the passenger seat, which is an okay size but the Ariya’s practicality party trick is a big felt-lined drawer in the centre of the dash, which you open by pushing a little touch-sensitive button on the console. It’s a neat bit of in-car theatre, and it’ll hold a big-ish tablet like an iPad.

You also get good-sized door bins, although they don’t get felt lining so smaller items will rattle around inside. Oh, and if you don’t like where that centre console is placed, you can actually move it — electrically — backwards and forwards to find the best spot.

Space in the back seats

There's plenty of knee room in the back, and loads of space for feet too. The rear seat cushions are nice and deep, which is good for supporting the backs of your legs on long journeys. You can get three people sitting side-by-side, but the person in the centre seat is a bit perched above the rest and won't be as comfortable as those at each side.

The line of the roof is quite low on the Ariya, which does eat into headroom in the back, but it’s not too bad — you’d have to be very tall to find your head brushing the roof lining. It’s slightly worse if you go for the optional panoramic glass roof, but either way it’s not as roomy and airy in the back as a Hyundai Ioniq 5.

High-spec Evolve models get heated rear seats, and you get two more USB sockets (one standard, one USB-C) for back seat passengers. The door bins in the back are fine, as are the seat-back pockets, and you get cup holders in the armrest.

The ISOFIX anchors are covered with annoying zip-up panels, which are fiddly to use. There is enough space for big, rear-facing child seats without having to move the front seats forward, though.

Boot space

All Ariyas get a hands-free powered tailgate, and the boot capacity is 466 litres — that’s not terrible, but it’s not as roomy as the Skoda Enyaq (585 litres) nor the Tesla Model y (854 litres). Four-wheel drive versions lose even more space, so those models get only 408 litres of luggage space. That is at least a bit more space than the Ford Mustang Mach-e (402l) and Polestar 2 (405 litres) offer.

The standard Ariya’s boot is clever though, as the moving boot floor is actually in two parts, which can be clipped up vertically to divide the boot into different sections (maybe food shopping in one bit and smelly sports kit in the other) and if you put them on their higher setting then there’s no loading lip. There are some small storage bins at the side of the boot, and tie-down points too, but you don’t get a 12-volt socket.

It's a bit fiddly getting the rear seats down, because you’ve either got to stretch in, or go around to the back doors. You do at least get a flat load space when you fold them.

Another down side is the lack of front-boot (froot), so there’s nowhere to stash your charging cables out of the way, meaning they eat into the available boot space. The Model Y, Polestar 2 and Mustang Mach-e all have extra spaces under the bonnet.

Posh car look and feel let down by dated infotainment graphics and fiddly controls

The Ariya’s cabin is just as lovely as the outside. Indeed, it might just be the best car cabin that Nissan has made in decades, and it’s so good that you could almost compare it to — mistake it for, even — the cabin of the BMW iX, which costs about twice as much.

You get a very handsome two-spoke steering wheel with lots of buttons, and some very smart-looking ‘haptic’ buttons on what looks like a slab of wood trim. These control the major air conditioning functions, but while they’re cool to look at, they're really annoying to use (and there are more of them on the centre console). They’re not as good as physical switches, but a marginally better arrangement than having the climate controls buried in the on-screen menus.

While the twin-12.3-inch screens — for your instruments and infotainment — look good in that big sweep across the dashboard, the graphics aren’t quite as sharp and the screens aren’t quite as responsive as you’d find in a Mustang Mach-E. The main digital instruments are also the same ones you’ll find in a humble Qashqai, which looks a touch cheap, although the impressive head-up display, which projects onto the windscreen, does compensate for that. The infotainment screen menus are reasonably easy to find your way through, and it's neat that the radio volume button has been neatly integrated into that big sweeping front air vent.

You do get lovely soft-touch materials everywhere though, including a gorgeous Alcantara suede covering on the dash. The seats — which you can have in optional blue Nappa leather — are great, and have a pattern of ribs which is apparently based on a NASA design to promote blood flow and reduce fatigue when you’re sitting in one place for a long time. Electric seat adjustment is standard, and there’s plenty of reach and rake adjustment for the steering wheel. On high-spec models, the steering position adjusts electrically.

Those high-spec Ariyas also get an electronic rear-view mirror, which can switch to display the view from a rear-facing camera if you’ve got tall people sat in the back, or you’ve got the boot loaded to the roof. Very handy.

The Nissan Ariya can charge at up to 130kW from a suitably fast public DC charging point. That's not terrible, but you can get versions of the Skoda Enyaq that can charge at up to 175kW, and the Tesla Model Y can top up at speeds of 250kW.

As standard, for AC charging (which means charging at home or from kerb-side chargers) the Ariya gets 7.4kW charging, which means that the big 87kWh battery could take as much as 14 hours to charge from flat. The better news is that optionally you can have 22kW AC charging, which is terrific for using kerb-side chargers but is rare to find from a home unit.

The 63kWh battery version has an official range of up to 250 miles, which should work out to around 200-220 miles in real world conditions most of the time. The bigger 87kWh battery extends this to a claimed 330 miles. If you go for the 'e-4orce' four-wheel drive model, then that claimed big-battery range falls to 285 miles, but your power jumps to a very healthy 306hp compared to the standard model’s 217hp, or the 242hp for the mid-range version.

In real-world testing, doing mostly motorway miles, we achieved 267 miles from the big battery version, which is about 86% of its claimed range, with efficiency of 3.2mi/kWh. This made it just as efficient as the Q4 e-tron Sportback and Mercedes EQA in our test, though it did do the highest percentage of its claimed range of the six cars it was compared with.

In terms of road tax, the Ariya is very good — free for road tax for the first year if you’re a private buyer, and incredibly low benefit-in-kind tax if you’re a company user.

The Ariya has scored the full five stars in Euro NCAP safety testing, getting 86% and 89% for adult and child occupant protection respectively. Perhaps even more impressive is its 93% rating for safety assist systems, as this tends to be one of the weaker scores for most cars.

The Ariya has lots of high-end safety equipment as standard. From the base model, you get Nissan’s ProPilot electronic driver aids, which not only do the usual keeping you in lane and keeping you a safe distance from the car in front stuff, but which is also linked to the navigation system so that it knows what corners, junctions, and speed limits are coming up. It’s not autonomous driving — nor anything like it, as you still have to be very much in control of the car at all times — but it is helpful on longer journeys, especially when you're in an unfamiliar area.

Other standard safety tech includes a driver attention alert, cruise control that can trickle you along in heavy traffic, a blind spot warning that also hits the brakes if you’re about to reverse out into oncoming traffic, emergency braking with pedestrian and cyclist detection, and automatic high-beam headlights. It’s a very thorough safety setup.

The Ariya’s quality levels feel pretty good, especially in the cabin where the acreage of suedette and nice leather, plus the touch-sensitive buttons and nicely tactile trim really give it a bit of a premium look. Historically, Nissan — as with most Japanese car makers — has built solidly reliable cars but the Qashqai doesn't have the best reputation in this regard.

That said, the Nissan Leaf has been broadly highly rated for the reliability of its electric motor and batteries, but has been less well rated for its infotainment and in-car systems.

Nissan offers about the minimum warranty you can expect from a car company in the UK. It’s a three-year, 60,000-mile warranty, which means it doesn’t last as long as Hyundai’s nor Kia’s. The electric drive components (that’s the battery, motor, inverter, and high-voltage cables) get a separate five-year, 60,000-mile warranty, and on top of that the battery itself gets its own eight-year, 100,000-mile warranty to repair or replace it if it drops below a certain state of charge.