Ian & Hilary Crowder drive a Nissan ARIYA Evolve 87kWh 2022.

This is Ian & Hilary’s fourth electric car, they’ve owned the Nissan ARIYA from new and drive 10,000-15,000 miles annually. The current mileage of the car is between 5,000-10,000 miles and they achieve 300 miles from a full charge.

Why did you choose the Nissan ARIYA?

We have been Nissan LEAF owners since 2016 and each LEAF we’ve had has included increasingly sophisticated technology. When the ARIYA was first mooted, we expressed an interest with our dealer, Wessex Cars in Gloucester, as we wanted a larger car that would be the sole vehicle in our family and one with a decent range.

Of course, it took much longer for the ARIYA to come to market and in the meantime, we test drove a number of similar-sized electric cars including the Ford Mustang Mach-E, Škoda ENYAQ, Tesla Model 3 etc but waited for the launch of the ARIYA, which happened in May 2022.

Needless to say, we were impressed enough with the display car (which was not road legal) and placed an order, followed by a test drive a few weeks later. Most importantly, my wife Hilary is short and found the car better for her than any of the others. Expected delivery was September but in fact it arrived in October.

Positives 

• Huge amount of space
• striking appearance
• great range
• excellent & useful technology
• very easy to live with
• very comfortable
• decent performance
• head-up display.

Negatives 

• e-Pedal – disappointingly, it doesn’t bring the car to a stand (as it does with the LEAF)
• irritating cheap and nasty rear parcel shelf held up with string. Surely a quality car like this could do better, i.e. a blind?
• could be a bit more space in the boot but it is adequate
• sat nav is OK so far as it goes but the charger info is hopeless. Zapmap saves the day, which is on a three year free subscription.
• charge port is a faff to release the cable. The car has to be shut and locked and then unlocked to release it, why not a separate charge port lock button?
• could do with a 12v socket in the rear or boot area to power appliances like a portable cool box; better still a 13-amp socket.

To be honest, these are irritations rather than real negatives!

Have you experienced any faults with the car? If so, what have they been?

The only faults are that the alarm goes off when climate is set from the App (not rectified yet) and an intermittent fault with the ProPilot which sometimes means steering assist doesn’t engage (not rectified yet).

What are the standout technological features of the car?

Wow, where do you start?

• The dual info screen system is outstanding but could be a little more intuitive and the graphics seem a little dated but it all works extremely well. The driving information (i.e. economy, average speed etc) is clearly presented.
• the intuitive headlights are exceptional and have never dazzled oncoming traffic. That they automatically adapt for driving on the right is a bonus.
• ProPilot when it’s fully working is excellent
• 360 degree and birds-eye-view cameras are excellent and allow precise manoeuvrability of the the car
• the smart key means that the car recognises who is driving from the key and adjusts to the pre-programmed driving position, which by is great
• battery technology with heating and cooling helps to improve charging and range
• haptic controls are good and help to deliver a clean interior almost absent of buttons and switches but it does take get some getting used to.
• Features such as Apple CarPlay, Alexa voice control, wireless phone charger & the Bose sound system.

Tell us something people wouldn’t readily know about your Nissan ARIYA

Well, first of all the economy and range. As summer came on, the range increased as of course did the economy. The best we have achieved is 4.7m/kWh on a trip which is exceptional but we are regularly achieving in excess of 4m/kWh.

We are currently away from home and were on a 100% charge at home before we started, the range indicated was 380 miles!

As for a quirky find…after six months we’ve just discovered that there is a panel that when pressed, reveals a place to keep one’s sunglasses. It’s in the roof interior light/sunroof control cluster area, above the mirror (which is an electronic display and superb). Who knew?!

What electric car(s) are you interested in next and why?

We aren’t looking at present but the number of new cars coming on to the market is impressive. Similarly, there are improvements already to the ARIYA range. We’ll keep our eyes open! Suffice to say we love our car and very happy with all that it offers.

Home charging unit

Our charger is by current standards, prehistoric. It is a free-standing Chargemaster unit that was installed in 2016. You plug in and it charges, no fancy technology, it is a charger and it charges. For timing etc we use the car’s technology.

Electricity supplier & tariff

We use Octopus which offers an economy rate overnight and that’s when the car is normally charged. We also have 18 solar panels which have significantly reduced the cost of our energy and on a fine day, we have enough to charge the car solely from solar energy.

What public charging networks would you recommend to others and why?

Overall comment: the UK charging network is being left behind by the number of new EV registrations and there are far too many units that are, for whatever reason, faulty.

Best networks:

• We have had no problems ever with InstaVolt, who also has top customer service
• Fastned is an excellent network too
• MER we have found generally to be reliable, both fast and slow chargers
• Osprey and Pod Point are also reliable although starting and stopping Pod Point via the App can be irritating. We found one charger which was in a supermarket basement with no signal, which was annoying!

Worst networks:

• bp pulse (which acquired Chargemaster) is exceptionally poor in our experience. We took a trip home from Lincoln recently and stopped at five successive bp pulse chargers, all of which were out of order and we couldn’t get them to answer their phone. On the basis of that we have given up our subscription. We have also had problems with GeniePoint but certainly not as poor as bp pulse.

Insurer 

The AA and the current underwriter is AA Insurance Underwriting which is on their panel. My experience of AA Insurance has always been very positive. They once sorted out an issue for us with our insurer, resulting in a much bigger payout than was offered following a no-fault collision.

Please itemise where you’re saving money owning & running a Nissan ARIYA

Overall, it’s hard to quantify and I haven’t recently done the maths. We take fairly regular trips to London to visit family and of course we save significantly in an EV as congestion and ULEZ charges don’t apply but that’s not going to last for ever.

On a fine day we can charge our car for free from the solar panels and overall have more than halved our energy bill. Insurance is more expensive than an ICE car and if charging at a fast public charger the cost now isn’t far off the price of an equivalent tank of petrol. Overall though, I suspect we are saving significantly compared with an equivalent ICE.

See other Nissan ARIYA Owner Reviews here