It’s possible I was already in the bag for the Kia Carnival. It’s been my favorite of the American minivans, though I’m overdue to drive the newest Toyota Sienna. I’m a huge fan of the way it looks, the way it’s packaged, the whole idea of it. The only qualm I had was with its efficiency.
If the headline and topshot were not a big enough giveaway, it seems like Kia fixed this problem. I took a Carnival Hybrid around New England for a big road trip. I loaded it with camping gear, drove it up a mountain, and did all the things you’re not supposed to do if you want good fuel economy out of a hybrid.
I didn’t get good fuel economy. I got great fuel economy. Unbelievable, blink-twice fuel economy. In theory, this Korean sips fuel at a rate of about one gallon per 33 miles (combined). I did way better than that, and with mostly highway miles.
[Full disclosure: Kia let me borrow this Carnival Hybrid for a week, so long as I reviewed it and didn’t cover it in sunscreen. I cleaned off the sunscreen, so there. –Â MH]
The Basics
Engine: turbocharged 1.6-liter inline-four
Electric Motor: Single A/C motor
Combined Output: 242 HP, 271 lb-ft of torque
Battery: Lithium-ion, 1.49 kWh
Transmission: six-speed automatic
Drive: FWD
Curb Weight: 4,967
Fuel Economy: 33 mpg combined, 34 mpg city, 31 mpg highway
Body Style: Minivan
Price As Tested: $57,255 (SX Prestige)
Why This Exists
As a car company, it would be anti-social and, frankly, unfortunate not to offer a minivan. Just like it would be un-American not to offer a pickup truck. Kia’s parent company decided to split the difference. Hyundai gets a truck in the form of the peculiar Santa Cruz, and Kia gets the minivan.
If you were curious, both the Santa Cruz and the Carnival are built on the same N3 platform that also underpins a bunch of the company’s products, including the Sonata, Tucson, and the Mufasa (a real car, I did not make this up).
Kia has been selling a minivan in the United States for nearly a quarter of a century, but it was mostly an afterthought. Almost no one bought a Sedona because they thought it was the best. They bought it because it had a lot of seats and was less money than other vans.
With the introduction of the Carnival in 2022, Kia got itself a new body and decided to distance itself from its older, less good self with a new name. I’m pretty sure this is the plot of The Substance, but I’ve been too afraid to watch it.
You’re Going To Love The Way You Look (In The Carnival)
While every crossover started to look the same a few years ago, it’s hard to say the same about minivans. Each one has its own style, ranging from the elegant traditionalism of the Pacifica to the Bosozoku-lite of the Sienna.
I think the Kia is the most attractive, but most attractive in a strange way. Normally, when an automaker tries to toughen up a crossover or a car with SUV-like tricks, I am appalled. Not everything needs to be an SUV.
It’s been argued that the Kia Carnival is the most SUV-like of the modern minivans, and I have to agree. This has been achieved with a couple of key styling cues that fool the eye. Right up front, the wide grille and the upright nose give a harder edge than most minivans. Another trick is the darkly-colored lower fascia and indented rocker panels. It makes the vehicle feel like it sits up higher, even though it’s nice and low like you want a minivan to be.
The little kink in the DLO behind the C-pillar also narrows the appearance of the car a bit without lowering visibility in any obvious way. It’s all a bit ridiculous if you think about it too much. Don’t think about it at all, and it works.
It Does All The Minivan Things Well Enough
If I’m going car camping, I’m going to put as much stuff into the car as I can possibly fit. It doesn’t matter if the campsite I was taking the family to was in Acadia National Park, some 500 miles away. That inflatable boat my daughter has probably outgrown? Toss it in! Telescope. Why not? 400 s’mores sticks. Why do we have 400 s’mores sticks? Oh well, better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.
I didn’t weigh the Kia Carnival Hybrid before setting off on this 1,000-mile round-trip adventure, but I did carry all the stuff, and it felt like 3,000 pounds. Somewhere between 50 pounds and 3,000 pounds.
The Prestige model comes with the fancy captain’s chairs that recline fully and pop up a little footrest. My family loved this the last time I had one of these, which involved an even longer drive with less stuff to Michigan. This time, the lack of a stowable or removable second row (the third row folds down) was a little more noticeable.
It is, overall, a comfortable place to be, with power sliding doors to make sure the kids don’t bang them into a nearby Altima while excitedly bolting from the van in order to look at a cool crab, or whatever.
As I recounted in my last review, it is neither the most nor the least minivan in terms of pure storage, flexibility, or size. If you want the most minivan for your money, you’re probably better off with the cheapest Voyager or Pacifica you can find.
One Big Annoyance And A Few Small Ones Before I Lavish More Praise On This Van
I camped for three days and two nights at the Blackwoods campsite deep in Maine’s Acadian National Park. It’s a uniquely American park, with gorgeous lakes, mini ecosystems that seem to change every few yards on every path, and stunning views of the Atlantic Ocean. It is a place of both absolute serenity and complete frustration if you get stuck in traffic waiting for a bus.
My real frustration came, however, when the damn van’s battery discharged overnight. Not the Lithium Ion battery, which had plenty of juice. The 12-volt one. The weakest part of any electric car or hybrid is the regular old battery used to power the accessories (and starter motor, if applicable), which doesn’t just automatically steal energy from the huge battery in the floor of the car.
Electrons, electrons everywhere, but not a particle to charge.
The van was off, which seemed fine, though we did go into the rear of the van and use the power door a few times to grab various items we forgot to put into the tent before going to sleep. With a regular van, I don’t think this would be an issue, but what happened next shouldn’t have surprised me. I went to get something from the car, and the lights didn’t signal to me that the van was unlocked, which immediately told me it was dead.
To make matters worse, the Kia’s battery is in the console between the seats, so to jump it you have to find the post in the engine bay (for the positive terminal) and a negative post… that’s… where the hell is it? The manual doesn’t say.
The little negative terminal nipple is actually hidden, deep in the engine bay, and has no obvious markings. If I hadn’t found a YouTube video explaining the problem, the van might still be there. To make matters worse, as soon as I got the car started, it wouldn’t turn the van’s motor on, so I couldn’t be sure if the 12V battery was charging, which meant I had to drive around the campsite randomly accelerating to recharge the battery (and, before you ask, sport mode doesn’t keep the motor running as in other hybrids).
So annoying! The van also beeps like crazy when you use the ADAS system or, frankly, just about anything. You can go into the settings and turn the beeps off, which is something I eventually had to do to spare my family the time and effort of throwing me off Cadillac Mountain.
It Drives Like A Big Car, Just Like The Non-Hybrid Version
I was sort of expecting the replacement of the regular Carnival’s 3.5-liter V6 with a smaller inline-four and hybrid system to feel a lot different. The gas version benefits from a better-than-decent eight-speed auto, but rather than a planetary-type eCVT, the Carnival utilizes a more traditional six-speed box.
It works. While the Carnival is not quick, it’s not demonstrably slower than the V6 version. Because it shares a platform with most Kia and Hyundai vehicles, it feels like most modern Kia and Hyundai vehicles. The steering is a little better than you’d expect, the ride is muted, and if you want to hustle it around Cadillac Mountain, it’ll quickly remind you that it weighs almost 5,000 pounds.
This is a first year for the hybrid, and the one dynamic shortcoming is its brakes. While you can control the degree of regeneration, every mode I tried was a bit more obvious and a bit less progressive than what I’d expect. Even after hours in the Carnival, I’d find myself applying a little too much (or not enough) pedal pressure for the situation. This is a calibration thing, and something I suspect will be addressed in later model years.
It does make me appreciate my Honda CR-V Hybrid, which has extremely well-tuned regeneration.
How Did I Get 38 MPG?
In life, what you don’t notice is almost as important as what you do see. Perhaps your eye wanders over to the lifted Jeep Liberty on Ford wheels nearby, and you miss the whale breaching the surf out in the harbor (worth it).
What I didn’t notice at first when driving the Carnival was that it didn’t seem to need fuel. Our trip took us from NYC up to Connecticut to drop the cat off with the grandparents, through Massachusetts, and finally up into Maine. This was the first 250 or so miles of the trip, and I was so distracted by other things (and the hope of eating a lobster for dinner) that it didn’t occur to me that we hadn’t stopped for fuel until my wife mentioned we should probably gas up for the next day.
Pulling into the gas station, it was obvious that I hadn’t even used half of the fuel in the tank. I still put gas in to be safe, but a quick calculation was confirmed by the Carnival’s internal MPG gauge, which showed I was doing better than 37 MPG. That’s on the highway! This is much better than expected. I should have gotten somewhere around 32 MPG, and that’s without all the crap in the back. Car and Driver got 29 MPG in their unladen highway test.
Maybe I was driving downhill this whole time? I did get a fun, temporary three-digit mileage by resetting one of the trip meters while driving back down Cadillac (MPG dropped while driving up the mountain).
Nope. Throughout the whole trip, I stayed above 37 MPG. This is just one long trip, but even being conservative, this does so much better than the regular Carnival and any non-hybrid vans. I was seriously impressed, especially when we stopped for the last night, and I was up above 38 MPG.
Is This The Best Van?
I need to drive the latest iteration of the Sienna Hybrid, which I’ll hopefully do during my annual Christmas minivan review. For the moment, the Carnival surpasses the PHEV Pacifica for me, as well as the regular Carnival.
If I were less concerned about fuel economy and more interested in driving dynamics, it doesn’t stand up to the Honda Odyssey in terms of pure speed and handling, but those aren’t the most important factors for me when it comes to minivans.
While I wouldn’t fork over the extra cash for the full Prestige package, a base LX hybrid with the excellent dark Flare Red paint has an MSRP of around $42,000, and that feels like a great deal in this space.
Also, go to Maine! Maine is great. I’m extremely pro-Maine now.
These have over 80% of the people-mover/minivan market in Australia. Though for whatever reason both Toyota and Honda abandoned the segment a while ago, so Kia’s sort-of winning by default. But the styling is a real winner. It’s the only people mover my wife actually likes because it look like a big SUV, and I think that’s the real clincher in Aus where every family-minded buyer seems to wilt at the thought of a van with sliding doors. This is even though, in my car-enthusiast mind, a soft-roading family SUV is just as depressing a prospect, perhaps even moreso because it’s also less practical.
I still think Honda dropped the ball (well, they did in many ways Down Under) when the global Odyssey gained sliders. Before then it was quite a stylish thing and sold pretty well despite being less practical than a Tarago.
Surprised the hybrids don’t have the ‘auto-jump’ that the EVs do that let you jump the car itself from the high voltage battery. I’m pretty sure most of their E-GMP cars offer that now?
I was surprised by that in my Ram 1500. It has a 48V hybrid system that also does the start/stop function instead of the starter motor. But when my 12V battery went dead (not totally dead, but dead enough to not start the engine), there’s no way to have it start the car for you, even though that’s what it does at every stoplight.
So what caused the 12v battery to crap out? I don’t care how good mpg’s it gets if it craps out with no warning like that.
I assume I was power-opening the rear liftgate and the doors all day with the car off. I’ve never had that issue with other vans, though, so this seems like bad 12V battery management (an issue not reserved to the Carnival).
Love the Carnival. I do want to know what kind of mileage it gets in normal city driving vs Pacifica PHEV, but my wife likes the look of the Carnival so that alone is a win.
That last photo is great. I get fewer and fewer of those, as my kid ages, and soon I won’t have but a few opportunities per year for that sort of document. It’s especially tough for me as the DP (“Designated Photographer,” what’s wrong with you?) to get pictures of the both of us together. Encourage everybody in your orbit to snap you two whenever possible!
And yet the ninnies will buy Tahoes. (I know – I know – they all tow every weekend.)
On paper, the Carnival was the van my wife and I wanted. We test drove all of them and it finished dead last. Granted we drove a gasser, but I think it is a SUV with sliding doors, it is not a minivan. The alternates do the minivan thing better. IMO
Based on that headline, I was expecting closer to 45mpg. 38 is not something to scoff at, but I can’t say I’m shocked it can do that.
Based on my experience with other Kia-Hyundai hybrids, and from what I’d read, I expected to get what was on the tin. And given how I was driving it, I expected way worse.
These things are big. For context, a Sienna hybrid is rated at 36mpg. A Kia Sportage hybrid is rated at 38, unless you get the unobtanium FWD version — and a Sportage is a lot smaller and about a half ton lighter than a Carnival.
A Kia with bad 12v battery management? Say it ain’t so. Insufficient charging of the 12v has been a common complain on the EV6 forums. I’ve thankfully not had it happen to me yet on my car, but I purchased a jump box that lives permanently in the car just in case.
I just got a minivan and the Carnival ended up dead last in my ranking. It’s got some of the same issues as the Sienna (middle row doesn’t come out in high trims, slowish, less space than the Ody and Pacifica) in addition to some other really big ones (no AWD, worst expected resale, loudest interior, least minivan like interior which means worst interior packaging, worst crash safety ratings). I will give it to them though, the interior materials and infotainment/cluster were really nice (at least on the initial test drive) and it did have some options I wish other vans had (how does Toyota or Honda not offer a panoramic sunroof?). Ultimately, everything it was the best at ended up being “nice to have” features and it struggled in the “must have” areas.
The Odyssey sunroof is hilariously small. Slapping the same sunroof from what I’d assume is the Civic onto a van seems like a serious wasted opportunity.
The Sienna’s is the same lame tiny size. Crazy how these companies can’t slap some of the same features from their 3 row SUVs into their minivans.
Maybe I’ve become too much of an Arizonan, but I wish more OEMs would keep the ‘old-style’ non-pano sunroofs. The giant ones let in a bunch of heat even when covered, but the small ones are just enough to open for a bit of wind from time to time.
This is the fun thing about having only one kid. I think a lot of what appeals to larger families probably is less important to me. Which van did you end up with?
Sienna. If it were my choice in a vacuum, I probably would have rolled the reliability dice and picked the PHEV Pacifica or gone for the easily available Odyssey and VTEC, but my wife really wanted AWD. I didn’t actively dislike any of them and she was a lot more decisive about them than I expected, so it was easy to have her pick what she wanted most. I am sure I probably would have been happy with the Kia too, assuming it held up.
I second the Maine being awesome. So much to do there and in New Hampshire, and so many people haven’t been there. When I moved away from Maine to Missouri, I actually had kids ask me what time of the year crabs grew into Lobster. So, yeah, come to Maine.
First model year of a Kia hybrid with a turbo and conventional auto trans or a Toyota that’s been a production for a few year with their n/a engine and ecvt? Did I mention the Toyota also has a lower base price? The only reason to get the Kia would be that it looks more like an SUV. Which is probably just about the dumbest reason to spend $40k-60k.
Not to say it’s flawless, and I don’t disagree that it’s certainly a more complicated powertrain setup than Toyota’s. But the Carnival’s hybrid powertrain isn’t really first-year, having been around almost 5 years starting with the Sorento/Santa Fe.
The review we’ve all been waiting for (lol). But seriously it’s the review I’ve been waiting for.
38 mpg is absolutely freaking wild for this thing. I will say, most minivans, even the super inefficient Pacifica can typically get 31 mpg on a mostly highway road trip. It’s the horrific 19 mpg in the city that the hybrid was meant to improve. But hell, I’d gladly take another 7 mpg on the highway.
I’m interested to see if some of the lesser Carnival hybrids become easier to obtain. I’m not ready to move on from the Voyager, but if I needed to this option seems pretty compelling. Do we know if the second row is removable?
The 2nd row VIP-style seats are not, but the regular ones in the three-passenger version should be. I’d get those.
I’d never buy those fancy thrones for my children anyway (sorry guys) so I shouldn’t have to worry much about that. They should be thrilled to enjoy van life versus three across in a Dodge Stratus life.
I’ve been to a bunch of National Parks, and Acadia is probably my 2nd favorite. It’s amazingly beautiful.
The van is nice, too. Just too big for my needs. I should have bought a Mazda 5 when I had the chance.
Every time I see a Mazda5 pop up on marketplace I click to see if it’s a manual.
I don’t even have kids or a dog.
Fun trick I learned on our Pacifica Hybrid that might apply to other manufacturers too: if you open the hood with the vehicle on (or start it with the hood open) the engine will turn on! It’s apparently a safety feature; I guess if the engine’s off you might let your guard down and stick your hand into a dangerous area (fan or belt) that might cause an, uh, uncomfortable interference issue were the engine to suddenly turn on.