The all-new Nissan Ariya has been getting rave reviews around the world, as Nissan’s first international EV since the Leaf was launched. As you might know, we don’t muck about with reviews over a few days, here at DriveLife. We take cars to test for at least a week, and often spend about 600km testing them out, to make sure we get to test the car in all sorts of conditions.
It’s no different with the Ariya, and in fact we put over 1,200km on the car, firstly commuting and then taking it for a 600km weekend to Hawera and back, where we worked on our V8 project car.
How did the 2025 Nissan Ariya Evolve perform? Is it worth its $90,000 price tag? Read on to find out.
What We Like and Dislike About The 2024 Nissan Ariya Evolve
| What we like | What we don’t like |
| Ride quality Interior space Interior design/feeling of luxury Performance Low tyre, road, wind noise levels Features Driveability Day to day use Seats Surprising handling and grip Rear view mirror A refined drive | Good alternative competitor options at this price point Minor quality issues inside Shoulder room in rear seats Can’t turn off easy-entry Steering wheel haptic controls and ergonomics |
What’s In The 2024 Nissan Ariya Range?
There are 3 models of the car to choose from:
- Engage $59,990
- Advance $69,990
- Evolve $89,990
The Engage and Advance models are mechanically identical, separated by features, such as the Advance having heated seats, a heated steering wheel, and an electric tailgate.
The two lower models are both front-wheel drive, while the Evolve (tested) uses Nissan’s e-4ORCE system, which means it’s all-wheel drive. The two lower spec models have a 63kWh battery pack for a WLTP range of up to 398km, while the Evolve has a WLTP rating of up to 498k range from its 87kWh battery pack.
With 160kW of power and 300Nm of torque, the two base models will get to 100km/h in 7.5 seconds, with the Evolve model doing it in 5.1 seconds.
2024 Nissan Ariya Colour Range
Nissan does not charge anything extra for a change of paint colour, unlike an American EV brand – and other brands, to be fair. You get to choose from one of seven colours:
- Pearl Black
- Auroa Green
- Two-tone Ivory Pearl with a Black Roof
- Two-tone Blue Pearl with a Black Roof
- Two-tone Ceramic Grey with a Black Roof
- Two-tone Akatsuki Copper with Black Roof
- Gun Metallic
For a full list of specs and options available for the 2024 Nissan Ariya Evolve, head on over to Nissan New Zealand’s website.
How Does The 2024 Nissan Ariya Evolve Compare To Its Competition?
| Make/ Model | Battery Capacity kW-hr | Power/ Torque kW/Nm | 0-100km/h seconds | Range (WLTP), km | Boot Space, litres | Price |
| Kia EV6 GT Line (AWD) | 77.4 | 225/605 | 5.2 | 484 | 490 | $111,990 |
| Hyundai Ioniq 5 Limited (AWD) | 77.6 | 225/605 | 5.1 | 430 | 537 | $109,900 |
| Polestar 2 Long Range Dual Motor (AWD) | 78 | 300/660 | 4.7 | 480 | 405 | $104,990 |
| Ford Mustang Mach-E (AWD) | 98 | 258/580 | 5.1 | 550 | 519 | $104,990 |
| Nissan Ariya Evolve (AWD) | 87 | 290/600 | 5.1 | 498 | 466 | $89,990 |
| Skoda Enyaq Sportline Max (RWD) | 82 | 150/310 | 8.6 | 544 | 585 | $84,990 |
| Tesla Model Y Long Range (AWD) | 75 | 340/493 | 4.3 | 551 | 854 | $83,100 |
| VW ID.4 Pro (FWD) | 77 | 150/310 | 8.5 | 519 | 543 | $79,990 |
Please note that DriveLife does its best to ensure the information above is correct at the time of publication, however, prices, specifications and models can change over time. Please bear that in mind when comparing models in the comparison table.
First Impressions Of The 2024 Nissan Ariya Evolve
The design of the Ariya feels like an extension of the Qashqai, with a few EV trinkets thrown in, like no grille. That’s not a bad thing, and the designers have done well to hide the size of the car – it feels long, tall, and wide.
Unfortunately, our test Ariya was finished in grey, and that didn’t do it any favours, but in a brighter colour, I can imagine this car would really stand out. Although, the entire colour range is quite muted, as is the current trend.
What’s The Interior Like In The 2024 Nissan Ariya Evolve?
Wow – opening the door of the Ariya for the first time is a bit of an experience. It’s open and welcoming, and the blue Nappa leather and Alcántara really sets it off. Most of my passengers were blown away by the feeling of space, and the level of luxury and features inside the Ariya. The touchpoints in this car are all soft and smooth. Nicely done, Nissan. Note that the blue quilted Nappa leather upholstery is not an option – it’s fitted to all Evolve models. That Alcántara is on the doors, console, and spreads across the dash. It pulls your fingers to it, to have a feel.
On entering the cabin, the passenger’s door feels so far away, such is that feeling of space. Not only that, but unlike the Leaf it sort of replaces, the floors are completely flat, front and rear. The “transmission” hump in the Leaf is huge, so this was good to see. As an added bonus and a bit of a party trick, the Ariya’s centre console is electrically adjustable, so you can move it back if you have no middle-rear passenger, to give yourself more room in the front. It moves about 250mm, so a reasonable difference can be seen and had.
The lower front of the centre console has two USB-C ports, a 12-volt socket and a holder for your cellphone, complete with a piece of plastic to wind the USB cable around, to stop it getting in the way of your feet.
From the driver’s seat, there’s a surprisingly small and chunky leather steering wheel, perforated for your pleasure. It feels great to the touch, and is electrically adjustable in both directions.
Under the centre-console armrest is a very small storage area that I could just fit my wallet in, and that was it. In front of that is a Qi wireless charging pad, hidden by the lid when it’s closed, to help remove the temptation of looking at your phone. There’s wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto available, so you shouldn’t need to look at it, anyway.
While there’s no more storage in the centre console at all, there are two felt-lined glove boxes in the Ariya, one in the normal location, and another to its right. They are both very usable sizes, and true to Nissan, the owner’s manual is tucked away on a shelf inside the glove box, and doesn’t actually take up any room in the glove box lid. While there is an absolute feeling of luxury in the Ariya, I was surprised to see that both glove box lids hung down 2 or 3 mm from the dash, looking unsightly – and that was with nothing in them to weigh them down. Not only that, but the gap in the padding between the door and the dash is around 8mm, and doesn’t look great at all. That was all the fit and finish issues I could spot, but they were both surprising to see.
Special mention needs to be made of the seats in the Ariya Evolve; They are both heated and cooled, with 3 settings to choose from for each. They are electrically adjustable of course, with 4-way electric lumbar adjustment, and two memory buttons – and both front seats are the same. A nice touch here is that if you have your seat on heat or cool and get out of the car, when you come back, the car remembers the setting you had it on. This happens far too rarely in cars, so it was great to see Nissan doing this. You do have to use the touchscreen to enable seat heating or cooling, but there is a shortcut button to this at the lower part of the screen, so it’s not too painful to operate. Touching that button also gives you the option of a big ‘off’ button, so no matter what setting you have the seat on, you can just hit the off button. In most cars, you have to keep tapping the heat or cool button until you get back to the ‘off’ setting.
The centre display is 12.3” in size, and is nicely quick between screens. It has a home screen, something that is missing in many cars. If there’s one drawback of the Ariya’s centre screen, it’s that the resolution could be better. It’s not bad, but the competition does it better. That resolution is carried over to the dashboard, so again, could be crisper.
Under the screen on the dashboard are some touch buttons for the AC settings. These are haptic, so push in a little, but actually, that makes it worse. Some ‘real’ buttons and dials here for the AC would have been great, but I doubt that’s in keeping with the modern feel of the Ariya. But in the middle of the dash is a big-ass volume dial that is also used for powering off the audio system, so all is not lost.
Passengers in the rear of the Ariya have their own 3-stage seat heaters (outer seats only), as well as AC vents and two USB-C ports of their own. The centre passenger has a little bit of extra legroom, thanks to some under-cutting of the centre console. Legroom in general is very good in the rear. Headroom is reasonable, but shoulder room is a little tight. Three adults will find it a bit crunched up in the shoulder-room department.
The boot is a pretty usable 466 litres, and that’s good for an SUV with a sloping back. There’s no remote release buttons or levers for the rear seats, and they are quite a stretch away. The loading height is a little high too, but not too bad. Under the floor is a tyre pump and tyre repair kit, along with a big bass speaker for the 10-speaker Bose premium audio system.
What’s The 2024 Nissan Ariya Evolve Like To Drive?
Our test car had 482km of range showing when we picked it up, at 100% charge. This is pretty close to its claimed range of 497km, but as always, let’s see how we go when using the car in the real world.
With 298kW of power (that’s 400 horsepower in old terms), the Ariya should fair rocket along. In general, it does, but it’s no Hyundai Ioniq 5N, with the Ariya’s 5.1-second time to 100km/h reflecting that. It’s quick, but it’s no rocket ship. In saying that, just how fast do you want to go? It feels like a race to zero for EVs doing the 0-100km/h sprint, so 5.1 seconds is plenty fast enough for most people.
Mid-range acceleration is excellent, and this car can very easily tootle around in Eco mode, with 600Nm of torque pushing its 2,200 kg weight along. Of course, in Sport mode, the whole car perks up, but I rarely used this mode due to the amount of power available in Normal drive mode. There’s also a Snow mode, that reduces the amount of torque going to all four wheels in slippery conditions.
Like the Nissan Leaf, the Ariya has a ‘B’ mode to increase the amount of brake regeneration (‘regen’) to put more charge into the EV batteries on deceleration. The car doesn’t remember you selected B mode, and even if you (for example) put the car into Reverse, you’ll need to pull down on the gear selector again to reengage B mode. There is also the e-Pedal mode, which feels like it should allow for one-pedal driving, but it doesn’t. It does increase the regen more than simply using B mode, but you’ll still need to use the brake pedal to come to a stop. It feels like it would have been simpler to either use regen paddles (the Ariya doesn’t have these) or have two B modes, one stronger than the other. As a bonus though, you can go through the infotainment system to turn on a setting that makes the car remember you had e-Pedal turned on, so it stays on the next time you jump into the Ariya. The e-Pedal button is down on the centre console.
So, it performs well – but what does it handle like? Not that an SUV needs to be able to handle, but with 290kW it would be nice to know it’s not a handful in the corners. Rest easy, it’s actually quite a capable car – even with all that weight affecting its dynamics. There’s excellent grip in the corners until you really push the car hard, and overall it’s quite poised and composed. I was surprised to find the handling almost neutral through the bends. Steering feel is good too, another surprise for me. The steering weights up nicely at speed, too.
But that’s all weekend stuff – what about using the Ariya as a Daily Driver? On the whole, excellent. The car actually has a rear-window wiper, and while it may seem surprising to bring this up, we are seeing all-new car designs dump this important safety feature. So bonus points to Nissan for keeping one on the Ariya.
Other features for your commute include walk-up unlock and walk-away lock – two things that make living with the Ariya that little bit easier. All the windows are auto up/down, and the Ariya has double-glazed windows that help keep tyre, wind, and road noise to an absolute minimum. It’s an extremely quiet place to travel in.
On getting into the Ariya, it is fitted with easy-entry, and that means you have to sit there and wait while the electric seat moves forward into position and the electrically adjustable steering wheel moves down, into position. I know some people like this feature, but as a not-so-tall person, I find it a pain. Easy entry is normally the first thing I turn off in a car, but you can’t do that in the Ariya.
Visibility on your commute is pretty good, although the C pillar is enormous, and blocks your view completely on the three-quarter view. There is blind spot monitoring, but I still felt quite unsure of what was happening around the car at times, on the motorway. On the plus side of things, at 10.8 metres, the turning circle is very tight for the size of this car – great for city driving and parking. While the Ariya is well kitted out with many features, at near-on $90,000, I was a little surprised to see that automatic parking is not included. There is a 360-degree camera system, and it works well, although the resolution is not as good as some of this car’s competition. You can manually turn the camera on with a button to the right side of the screen, so that’s good that it’s easily accessible.
Like the Leaf and other Nissan models, the Ariya is fitted with Nissan’s excellent Intelligent Rear View Mirror. That means you have an option of having a camera on the rear of the car become your rearview mirror. If you have rear-seat passengers, you don’t get their grinning heads blocking your view out the back. The camera mirror is brilliantly clear and a bonus of the system is that you can tilt the mirror towards you as much as you want, and the view doesn’t change. It might sound weird, but you get used to it very quickly and would likely never go back to using the ‘old’ mirror system. If you want to revert to the old way, you just flick the mirror’s lever and that’s it.
Other than the huge C pillar, there wasn’t too much else to dislike in the Ariya; I did have some Bluetooth issues that were a bit frustrating, the brake pedal feels very soft, and there are haptic controls on the steering wheel. I was really hoping Nissan would not go to haptic controls, and I found that even after over 1,000km of driving, I still had to look down now and then to see what “button’ I was pushing. Let’s hope haptic controls on steering wheels die a natural death.
I guess on the steering wheel controls, I still struggle with some manufacturers’ thoughts around button placement. For example, you can pick multiple screens for your dashboard, which is always nice to have a play with. Most drivers pick a dashboard view they like and stay with it. But the thumb wheel and left/right buttons to play with the dashboard view are the main controls on the left side of the steering wheel. It feels like it would be far more efficient to have had these operate the volume and track/radio station instead. After all, volume and track/station select are more than likely the most-used controls on the steering wheel. To change these on the Ariya, there is a left/right button on the top of the left side of the wheel for volume, and then the same further down for track/station select. My brain still made my fingers go to the dashboard view controls instead, as it just seems more logical.
You can of course use voice control for some of the functions in the Ariya, but it’s a little limited. You can’t control the aircon via voice, and so need to use the onscreen controls instead. You can control your phone, the SatNav, audio and check vehicle info via voice commands, and also you can connect to your smart home through Siri or Google Assistant.
As part of our testing, we took the Ariya Evolve up to Hawera to work on our V8 project car. This is a 600km round trip, so I made sure the car was charged up to 100% before leaving home, with the car showing 480km of range.
The trip to Hawera was uneventful, as you can imagine. This car is incredibly refined, with that double-glazing keeping everything quiet. That was one of my main takeaways from the Ariya; its smoothness and refinement are both excellent.
I used adaptive cruise control for a lot of the trip to Hawera, mainly to save my license. Like some other brands, the Ariya’s adaptive cruise control will slow the car for corners, and like Mazda, this doesn’t kick in early enough – it comes on when you are over halfway around the corner, upsetting the car’s balance. You can’t turn this off, so it’s a bit painful to use adaptive cruise control on windy roads in this car. One more glitch with the car’s adaptive cruise control – but quite likely affecting other brands too – happened when I came across a truck in road works, spraying water out the back to dampen the road. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been using cruise control in road works, but the Ariya snuck right up on that truck and didn’t see it, I am assuming because it thought the water was rain. Gave me a hell of a fright, and lesson learned.
The Ariya is also fitted with a steering assist system, and while it is generally ok, again, like many other brands, it hugs the centre line far too often, and I felt myself fighting the steering at times. You can turn this off easily with a button to the right of the steering wheel, so at least that’s easily disabled.
Being the top-spec model, the Evolve comes with a heads-up display (HUD), and it’s right up there with the best of them. The usual information is shown; your speed, the speed limit, your cruise control speed, audio, SatNav direction, phone calls.
Seat comfort on a long trip is excellent, and both front seats have two memory settings. They’re pleated seats and look very upmarket. There’s a heated steering wheel as well, and you can set it to one of three heat settings. But you do need to operate this from the centre screen, as you can’t use voice to turn it on or off.
Sounds quality is another surprising feature of the Ariya Evolve; it’s bordering on excellent. I spent time on my 4-hour drive to Hawera playing with the huge amount of settings that you can alter in this car. I like how Nissan has set the centre display’s home screen out, with half of the screen for maps, and the left side for phone and charging stations. Seems very logical.
After 350km of driving, including a detour to Palmerston North, I pulled into Hawera needing to charge the Ariya up. So that’s not really anywhere near its WLTP range of 497km, but it was all open road driving and much of it was in heavy rain, so for me, that 350km felt about right. Around town, the Ariya should do much better. To charge the car up from almost empty to 80% cost $48 at a Chargenet station; that feels like a lot, and while it’s nothing to do with the Ariya, a Nissan Qashqai would have cost around $60 in fuel – and then you need to factor in Road User Charges on top, for the Ariya. Still, as we’ve said before, it’s the charging your EV at home where you make the most savings, not on a long trip. But we need to bear in mind that the Qashqai is $25,000 cheaper than the Ariya.
I did like that once the EV battery got low, the centre display popped up with an option to search for nearby EV chargers. This doesn’t happen in all EVs, and it’s appreciated when it does happen.
The journey back to Wellington from Hawera was pretty event-free, with a few observations thrown in. While the car’s SatNav displays turn-by-turn directions in the HUD, when searching for an address, you also get search results from Australia. I still struggle to understand the logic around this. We’re an island nation, after all.
Ride quality on this car can be a little jiggly on sharper bumps. Over most surfaces it’s ok, but those short-sharp things like speed bumps are not the Ariya’s friend. It’s certainly not bad, but I had thought with its weight, it would ride more smoothly.
When not using adaptive cruise control, I did often use the Ariya’s speed “Active” limiter. It’s one of the few cars where the speed limiter will actually work downhill as well – in most cars with this feature, the driver has to brake. Another positive point for using the car on a daily basis (and wanting to save your license).
After driving the 2024 Nissan Ariya Evolve for 1,200km, our energy consumption was 20.3kWh/100km. For the size and weight of the Ariya, that’s acceptable, but it is more than some of its rivals. Nissan claims the car will do 18.0kWh/100km, so we weren’t too far off.
READ ON TO CHECK OUT OUR SUMMARY OF THE 2024 NISSAN ARIYA EVOLVE.
2024 Nissan Ariya Evolve – Specifications
| Vehicle Type | Medium all-wheel drive EV SUV |
| Starting Price | $89,990 |
| Price as Tested | $89,990 |
| Engine | Twin electric |
| Power, Torque kW/Nm | 290/600 |
| Transmission | Automatic |
| Spare Wheel | – |
| Kerb Weight, Kg | 2,200 |
| Length x Width x Height mm | 4595x1850x1660 |
| Boot Space / Cargo Capacity, Litres (seats up/seats down) | 466/1,690 |
| Energy Economy, kWh/100km | Advertised Spec – Combined – 18.0 Real-World Test – Combined – 20.3 Low Usage: 6-10 / Medium Usage 11-19 / High Usage 19+ |
| Towing Capacity Kg, unbraked/braked | 750/1,500 |
| Turning circle metres | 10.8 Small: 6-10m / Medium 10-12m / Large 12m+ |
| Warranty | 5 years, 150,000km 5 years Roadside Assistance 8 years, 160,000 EV battery warranty |
| Safety information | ANCAP Rating – 5 stars – Link Rightcar.govt.nz – 5 Stars – QLA993 |
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