Nissan Ariya EV | Too Little Too Late?

The brand new Nissan Ariya all-electric SUV car thing. This is bigger than a Leaf, more upscale, and this represents the future of the brand's design and the way that they're going to approach things. The other thing is it's a global product. It's not just designed to be sold in one country. So a lot of that development budget has been spread out, and there's some good and bad. And we're going to focus on how this is today, not in 10 years from now. So Nissan knew that they're going to try to change the way that they did their exterior interior design. So this is representative of what you're going to see going forward in terms of materials, the way they're doing technology, and all of that. But keep in mind this is relevant for like five to eight years, and they know that. So we're going to talk about the technical details in the shop, but let's talk about the exterior. It is striking for a Nissan when you look at the fit and finish. They definitely know how to do styling the way they've done the lighting, and it's an overall pleasing shape, but it is that cookie cutter EV box thing that everybody's doing when you look at a Model Y. You look at the ID.4, you look at the Mach-E, I swear if you just took the badges off here, from most angles people wouldn't know any different between those cars. So again, it's a lot of this copying pasting these companies are trying to figure out how to do this. So when we get on the interior space, of course, much like many EVs, when you have a flat floor underneath you and not a transmission tunnel and all that, you clear up the front space in front of you, in front of the driver, so it feels more airy. Because they ditched a frunk purposely, supposedly, this is why, because they didn't have to do the packaging with the frunk or the storage space under the hood. They can move the front wheels forward, the rear wheels back, and it creates a bigger cargo space on the inside. And you definitely notice that the front has huge amounts of leg room and head room and hip room and everything, and then the back seats are really large. Like there's ton of space back there, including the cargo capacity in the trunk. I mean, it is really big, it almost looks like you could fit a third row back there, which you can't, but there's so much space in here you couldn't want for more. So in the fact that when I say it's an SUV, you could probably buy that logic just in terms of the way that it feels on the inside. In terms of interior design, this car has these really like dark blue seats or light blue seats, and we saw some of these accents in the Nissan Z when it was released, and this microfiber type material across the dash, which is great for sound deadening. Despite this being a large space, it's not echoey. They've done a good job with the lighting on the interior and just cleaning up everything. And what I will say is, you know, we just looked at the new Mustang where they're trying to blow you away with these enormous screens. This has screens in it, but it's more integrated into the dash. It's more low down, it's part of the dashboard more so than just stuck on for the sake of it. And while it is still stuck on, it is a clean aesthetic. This plasty wood looking thing across the whole center plane of the dash, they've added capacitive touch climate buttons, which means all the climate is in the screen. But you do have these physical-ish capacitive buttons that you can adjust temperature on here without using the screen, and then they use the drive mode selectors, which are actually have detents in them when you push down. So there's a good blend of physical and capacitive and touch controls in here, and it does create a very clean aesthetic. They haven't messed around on the steering wheel with capacitive, it's still clicky controls, although it doesn't look like it. So I think they've found a good balance here that other brands haven't, and this is probably the way forward. I'm going to say that I still think there's a way to do physical controls and make it feel elegant and quality, but I think brands are going to get back there when they realize that it's just just easier than reinventing the wheel all the time with this. They have added this movable center armrest forward and back that creates a little bit more storage space, and the adjustability of the armrest is helpful if you want to get your elbow on if you sit close to the steering wheel. But it is very odd because it's not really all that mobile other than forward and back, and then the armrests are not level. They're not in a horizontal plane, so you're you're higher in the center and lower on the door, so it creates a little bit of imbalance in your shoulders. But the seats are incredible. The seats are really good in here, and this is Nissan does great. It's like a luxury seat, which is one of the things about this car is you want the world to disappear because it is a sedate driving experience. It's quiet, it's refined, it's got that EV drivetrain like all the other ones. There's nothing particularly exciting, so you want to be comfortable. So you are comfortable, and it is fairly quiet for the price range. However, the audio system is trash. I'm just going to say that. It sounds like there's a low and a high pass filter on this Bose setup, and we've listened to Bose recently and other brands where they're actually test really well. This does not. It's just it just sounds like you got earmuffs on, and I'm going to leave it at that. Even the EQ doesn't help, but we're going to head in the shop. We're going to briefly talk about the technical things about the Aria and what it is and what it's not. Mark, we're underneath the Nissan Aria, and you're going to hear from some premium gentleman from Nissan directly. But first, we're going to hear from celebrities on how to pronounce Aria correctly, Jack. Nissan Aria. Nissan Aria. Aria. Aria. All right, Mark. Before we talk to them, let's quickly give you a brief overview. But before we hear from them, we're going to hear from Brie Larson. It's a beast. All right, Mark. The Aria starts at about $53,000. It would be smaller of the two optional battery packs, about 63 kilowatts. Then this thing is fully loaded with dual motors, one front, one rear, for about $60,000. And that's, of course, before rebates and any other tax discounts you can receive. The car's bigger battery is 87 kilowatt hours. Now, you're going to hear quickly from Jim, and he's going to walk you through what the platform is, what it's not, and the two different battery packs along with their electric motor sizes. Yeah, so the battery pack, like I mentioned, it's available in two configurations, as well as the all-wheel drive and front-wheel drive. It actually has exactly 192 prismatic lithium-ion cells. And then all of that is powered, like I said, on a 400-volt system. And then we offer 130-kilowatt-hour Level 3 fast charging and then 7.2-kilowatt-hour onboard charging for the home Level 2 charging. And what we found is, people ask, why 130, why 7.2? No doubt that there's always a numbers race as far as it goes with electric vehicles and specs. But really, since this vehicle is very much a transitional vehicle, what we try to do is develop specs that were affordable, but also that most consumers can manage inside their household with little or no investment to add a charger. Because obviously, the higher you go, the more amps you need on your circuit. So really, we wanted to balance affordability, practicality, and charging time to really deliver on the features of the vehicle. As with any electric vehicle, I think there's more awareness now that extreme hot and extreme cold, especially the extreme cold, can vary your range. But we do have what's called a positive temperature coefficient heater or PTC heater. So what that does is, in the colder climates, I would say there isn't a strict rule, but anytime the temperatures get well below freezing, it basically has the ability to heat the battery. And what that does is, if you're looking to just extend your range or just try and minimize the range loss, you can turn it on for a bit. Or even if you know you're going to a charger, the best thing to do is take advantage of that battery heater so that when you plug into a charger in a cold environment, you'll get a much higher charge rate, sometimes two to three times faster, by making sure your battery is not extremely cold when you arrive. But specifically, I think that's more related to quick charging and if you're doing kind of a long drive. But to be honest, what we found is, through our external and internal research, is about 79% on average of people charge at home. So although, you know, kind of people like the sensationalized cold weather and cold charging, the reality is a lot of people are commuting with their vehicles and they're plugging in while they're in the office or they're plugging in at home. And it's, for the most part, a non-issue for most customers. But we did think about the heating and cooling and that is integrated in Zarya. So yes, this is a dedicated EV platform. However, sort of, they took the front and the rear off an existing platform. Here's the thing about Nissan and the grand scope of Japanese brands. They don't have Toyota money. They don't have Honda money. They're somewhere in between. They're bigger than Mazda, but this is their second attempt at a mainstream EV product. They will gladly tell you that they have been selling Leafs for like a billion years at this point. That was really the first widely adopted EV. This is taking a lot of the lessons learned from the Leaf and applying it to a more usable package. A vehicle that should replace something like an SUV or a CUV. It's something for Leaf owners that they can move up market. And without saying all the other brands, there's a lot of other options. Let's be 100% real about that. When you look at the competition, you can see how quickly this could get left behind. So what they did is they tried to focus on the things that probably most people are going to want, offering you an EV drivetrain and trying to keep the existing platforms they had and making them a little better. That's why this is a front wheel drive architecture first. And the electric motor in the rear serves to help dynamic balance all weather conditions, but it does not send all the power to the back all the time because it's front wheel drive bias. The electric motor in the front is larger. It's 70-30. And then when you go into all weather, it tries to bias 50-50, but there's greater flexibility. It will torque vector by brake to allow this thing to handle a little better. This is not a sporty vehicle. It's not meant to be a sporty vehicle. It's supposed to be maybe dynamically superior than a traditional Rogue with an on-demand all-wheel drive system, but it's not a sports car. You don't have adaptive dampers. You don't have crazy suspension modes. The one benefit though of the suspension tuning of this car versus something like a Rogue is the lower CG, the greater body rigidity, which helps you reduce some of the NVH that makes its way into the car. And the lower CG just allows it to be potentially more nimble than how tall this thing really is. Yeah, and I think from talking to Nissan, and that's why I wanted to talk to them, is to understand what the mentality was here because they're not winning on price. You can get this for a lower price, of course, but once you start to go to dual motor and all that and you ramp it up, it is expensive. So the concept of like, how do we make this transitional, which they said that's a transitional product, it gives you a glimpse then to the future of more of the commodity products because what it really does well, and we'll talk about it during the drive, is you get rid of the complexity of the internal combustion engine. You don't have to make it any more complicated than it is now to meet regulations. And you have the refinement of also removing things like CVTs and some of the other drivetrain crap that we complain about on the commodity cars. So that's all gone here. So now if they can survive, they can focus more on improving everything else and this becomes the same as every other car and it's just a matter of how well is it implemented now and would you spend your money on it today? I think the one thing they are trying to do is make the EV part of the ownership experience less painful. They cover your maintenance, they give you a very long battery warranty. It's like eight years, 100,000 miles, which you can argue you're going to keep an SUV longer than that, but in an EV product space, probably not. And then free charging as well. Yeah, for the first three years. Yep. So there's some benefits to this and, you know, we're going to take it for a drive and then we'll sum everything up in the final thoughts, Jack. All right, Mark, let's do it. Oh, Daryl. Oh, pre-Daryl. That is some electric acceleration. This thing's a beast. All right, so I was watching, I just want to get this out of the way. I was watching Basmati Blues and it inspired me to do this video because there's nothing better than coming to save everyone from themselves, from killing the earth with your V8, Jack. Do you feel good about that? I'm driving with my turn signal on. Are you going to drive on the shoulder and then like sweep across five different lanes and take some car out because we're in a Nissan? No, this is not an Altima. This is a reboot of the brand, Jack. So let's talk about, we talked about everything. We know what they're trying to do here. We know that the interior is a good place to be, but how does she drive? I'm going to be honest. The thing that this car does well, for the most part, is the creep in traffic, sit on the highway and be comfortable. Is this the best riding, most refined EV I've ever been in? No, not even remotely close, but in that like for high 40s, low 50s, $60,000 range, this is fully loaded. It's like 60-ish grand before government rebates. It does a lot well. The interior space is very well packaged. It's much quieter than any other Nissan I've been in and the tuning of the electric motors is pretty seamless and I do think when it creeps in traffic, there's minimal head bob for the most part. It's just the inputs in this car are not connected to anything that you're doing. Yeah, okay, so let's get into the nuts and bolts of that. Clearly, if you're buying this, you're not buying it as a fun to drive get-around. You're buying it because it is a sleek looking, modern interpretation, Japanese kind of feeling design on the interior, which we've already talked about. So when you're going to pilot this, you're not expecting that you've got the most sharp steering, that you're going to be thrown through the back seat with acceleration and you're not going to go through the windshield with braking performance, but there are some strange things about tuning. The big one, and you said it right away, I'm like, ah, Jack, you're full of ----. You touch the brake pedal on this thing. It is worse than video game pedals. The pedal travel is so artificial. The modulation compared to a regular brake pedal, where you kind of got like, you know, six inches, five inches of travel. This is one of those brake pedals you can probably almost push to the floor. You can. I pushed it to the floor, coming to multiple stops, literally into the floorboard, and the more you push it, doesn't feel like necessarily anything is happening. I feel like many times driving this car, I'm like, am I about to rear end this person? It's not that the brakes don't work. You just have no idea what the pedal is. Well, it's disconcerting. Like I come into a corner and you feel almost like you're losing brakes because you have to go so deep into the pedal to stop. You know, it's all digital. It's a digital approximation of like what the driver's doing. So that's one thing. The steering is, you know, whatever. Nobody cares about that. It's easy. You can drive it with a couple of broken arms. The throttle is definitely calibrated differently based on the drive modes, which honestly, you're going to leave an eco because you're going to want the range. The all wheel drive system is just good enough to pull you through a corner. The stability control is hyperactive. I mean, drivability, let's just be honest, is not this thing's strong suit. If you're buying this, in my approximation, you should get the all wheel drive model because I can't imagine sending all of that power to the front wheels with what is essentially a modified rogue front end, which was never designed for all that torque. So it's going to be hyperactive with electronic control of it. So I think the rear motor does help kind of sort some of this ---- out. Like when you start to understeer off the road, the back end kind of like kicks in to kind of pull you through. So that would be my personal opinion is just get that. And, you know, the other thing, too, is region region. So if you're just in drive and you don't have the e-pedal drive on, this thing never stops. Like you let off the throttle and it goes forever. And then with the brake pedal being so weird, you don't want to use the brakes. So personally, I drive and be just switching to be which helps kick in some region. But it's not region that makes you nauseous when you go in the full e-pedal. I'm going to do a stop. I'm just going to get this going here. And it gets more aggressive based on your drive mode, and I feel like it's so synthetic that it makes you nauseous every time you lift off the throttle. So personally, for me, keeping it in B for not for butthole, but B is just a much better experience. Look, we're doing a lot of criticism towards this car. I'm not saying it's not all deserved, but going back to the original conversation, the product planner and the engineer. If you're buying this, according to Nissan, you're it's either going to be a conquest purchase of other EVs. And from an interior perspective, from an exterior design side of things and usability, I would argue it's much better than something like an ID4. It's bigger than like one of the vehicles. Obviously, there's the Model Y, which regardless of how you feel about Tesla, it has the best infrastructure and it does have tremendous range. Then you have the Lyric, which I think is better than this, to be honest, at least in the $60,000 range. But if you compare it to a Rogue, the EV makes it a more refined driving experience. It's a quieter driving experience. And dynamically, the two electric motors in this vehicle get you in and out of corners better than a Rogue would or does. So there are some inherent advantages to the Aria. It's just, it's, it's, you know, on the call, we realized it's like most all these first gen EVs, it's a transitional product. And, and Nissan has fully said that, right? You have to make compromises to make this work. And the good things about it is some of the interior space, the refinement, as you said, it's quieter than their internal combustion cars. You don't have a CVT. And it's soft. And it's, it's pretty soft riding, but because it's not a completely dedicated architecture, it's not as solid feeling as an ID4. It doesn't ride as good as an Ioniq 5. So I don't know, dude, this is, this is a hard one. I like driving it. I have no problems driving it as you just turn your brain off and go where you need to go. And you got the ProPILOT too. If you, if you go further up the trim levels, the fact that you have hands-free driving at this price point, up to 90 miles, up to 90 miles an hour is, is very impressive. I don't think it's as good as SuperCruise, but Nissan isn't GM. They don't have the money that that company has. I do think it's better than, well, the fact that it exists and most other competitors don't have hands-free driving at this price point is a huge plus. Well, Jack, let's get to the final thoughts. We're going to hammer out the rest. All right, let's do it. You're going to ask yourself in this world of hybrids, EVs, and all these new cars, why would you want to make an investment in something like this? And I came into it not knowing a whole lot about the Ariya, except the media and commercials, which is easy to poke fun at this thing. And when you look at it as a whole, what it's trying to do today, it is a pretty well-balanced car. And you have to look at the feature set that it gives you on the interior, which I talked about. There's a lot that it's offering there. Technology that is not overbearing. Most of it is implemented well. It gives you a really strong sense of character, at least on the interior space. It's very comfortable. The seats are great. More like seats in a luxury car. So there's things that it's doing very, very well. And I think a majority of the consumer base that's looking for something like this will appreciate that. And then you see where the budget runs out, right? They didn't have the development money to redo a whole ground-up EV here. And it's worse for it, at least on the driving part. It's got a little bit more of a choppy ride. It's not as quiet, as isolated. The electric drivetrain, it's pretty much on par with most commodity internal combustion engines and on-demand all-wheel drive. So it's not a great dynamic vehicle, but it's really refined because of the EV drivetrain. And I think that's the big draw. The 300-mile range should be good. And really, Nissan's covering a lot of the finicky parts of EV ownership, at least for the first couple of years. And then the battery warranty is longer, so you don't have to really worry about it. And I think that's going to be a big step up for this brand. If they can roll this out and scale and keep the price down, along with some of the features they've already invested in, it's pretty good. It's like a 70th percentile vehicle. It's really hard in this space, as EVs keep getting better and better, and these other brands keep pumping them out. How long will this stay relevant? At least take a look at it, because it's way, way better than I thought it was going to be. Thanks for watching. I'll see you next video.