Is minimalism the new hallmark of electric vehicles? We drove in the Nissan Ariya and as soon as we sat down, the clean lines and the sober design of the dashboard were striking. Buttons and rotary controls are mainly found on the steering wheel, everything else is done with your finger on the 12.3-inch diagonal on-board monitor. The cockpit display is also digital, both monitors are connected to each other, in the middle there is a wide, black border. There’s a rotary knob below the display for audio volume adjustment, and climate control operation is via capacitive buttons on the dash, which are thankfully illuminated but not pleasing with spongy haptic feedback.
We tested the infotainment and wanted to know how it performed in terms of load planning. Almost everything in this respect is standard on board in the Ariya. But for the head-up display, at least the “Evolve Pack” equipment variant must be selected. The on-board system has a substructure from Google and comes with TomTom traffic information, according to the price list. However, they could not be activated in our vehicle. The lady Alexa from Amazon is also part of the standard equipment.
The on-board monitor permanently shows six buttons on the left for quick access to the submenus. The main menu can also be customized, you can add widgets, and overall the system is easy to use. Interestingly, all of the vehicle’s settings can only be made using the steering wheel buttons and the cockpit display.
Clear line in a wild guise: Nissan Ariya and its on-board system
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Image: manufacturer
The speech recognition captures the location and street of the navigation destination quickly and usually precisely, it works hybrid, says Nissan. Charging planning for electric driving is only available to a limited extent. The system gives a hint for targets beyond the battery range and asks if you want to search for charging stations. Then a fast charging station is displayed, which is still accessible. A lot of details are missing: You can’t see the calculated battery level when you arrive, there is no setting for the minimum remaining battery level and only the nearest charging station is suggested, but no list of charging points for long distances. It is also not possible to tell whether the charging station is free when you arrive. Systems from other manufacturers are significantly more powerful here.
Restrained communication of the loading data
However, you can get along well in everyday life if you manually search for charging points at the location or near your destination. A filter can also be set here to only display fast charging points. The Google database is bad for AC charging stations: three of us let ourselves be guided in the Bad Homburg city area – and found none. We discovered one after getting off and walking around the area. She was 200 meters from the position marked on the map.
Buttons and rotary controls are mainly found on the steering wheel, everything else is done with your finger on the 12.3-inch diagonal on-board monitor.
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Image: manufacturer
Another shortcoming of the Nissan Ariya is its reticent communication of the load data. If the ignition is off during charging, you can only see from an LED that charging is in progress. Neither the current power consumption nor the level of the battery are displayed. To see the latter, you have to turn on the ignition. There is only an estimate of the charging time at the beginning of the charging process and it is not based on the current power consumption. So there is still room for improvement here.
Overall, we liked the Ariya with the small 63 kWh battery and front-wheel drive. With a cautious driving style, the consumption is around 20 kWh for 100 kilometers and thus a range of just over 300 kilometers. If you drive mainly in the city or on country roads, you can drive even more economically.