Minivans may be out of style, but they’re still the best answer to the question: “How do I comfortably, efficiently carry a bunch of people around?” With more interior space and better driving manners and fuel economy than an SUV, I’m usually a huge fan of their function-over-form, appearance-be-damned engineering. So I was thrilled when this Kia Carnival showed up the day before I needed to take five friends on a road trip.
I’ve driven Kia vans before, and aside from their wet noodle spring rates, they’re perfectly competent. This Carnival’s party trick? Kia's 1.6-liter hybrid powertrain promises great mileage: 31 on the highway and 34 in the city.
Check the mileage box—I hit nearly 33 mpg combined on our roadtrip. And check the “comfortably move your family” box, too, as all five of my fully-grown friends had zero complaints after a full day in the car. The interior is a fantastic place to be, the seats are comfortable, the infotainment system is fairly easy to use once you realize the volume knob is an additional menu layer deep, and overall it’s an exceedingly well thought-out package.
That is, for everyone except the driver. Not only is the hybrid version of this van dog-slow, but fine, how fast do you really need your 33 mpg van to be anyway? But the throttle mapping is so weird that even after more than 1000 miles across all three drive modes, I couldn’t find the sweet spot between accelerating with traffic and lurching forward so abruptly that the front wheels spin and the passengers start complaining in the little backseat monitoring camera.
It seems to be just baked into the experience that no matter what, there’s a 2-second delay between asking for a throttle position and getting it. And the chassis, well, I’ll let you know if one ever shows up. Sure, it’s comfortable around town, but that seems to be because the springs and dampers are so, so, so soft that it feels nearly dangerous on the highway.
Will the target customer care? Probably not–and honestly, if I were going on another road trip, I’d grab it out of the press fleet again tomorrow.
