David Booth: There must be a lot of people ashamed of being seen driving a minivan. Otherwise, what’s with all the SUVs now “blessed” with three rows of seats? From the massive (Chevy’s Suburban XL) to the miniscule (Kia Sorento), pretty much every sport brute is now outfitted as a minivan alternative.
The problem, of course, is that, as people movers, SUVs are severely compromised in, well, the business of moving people. Typically, the third row of seats is useless, the smaller the sport utility, the less accommodating the seating. And ingress/egress to those rearmost perches ain’t anything to write home about either since traditional doors don’t offer nearly as large an opening.
Kia’s solution to this anything-but-a-minivan movement was to simply make it look like an SUV. So, the Carnival, still replete with sliding side doors — power even! — and a fairly commodious rear seat, is all blocky and rude like a true SUV, only, you know, you can put a kid’s seat in the back (on some models) without slipping a disc.
But does it work? Is its SUV styling convincing? And does this alleviate all that anything-but-a-minivan bias? How about it, Nadine?
Nadine Filion: Let me start with this: I don’t know why we hate minivans. When they were created 40 years ago – by Chrysler, évidemment – they were THE next thing, as much as SUVs are all the rage now. And you and I are old enough to remember that in the 1980s and 1990s, all families had – or wanted – a minivan.
Therefore, nobody can tell me our love for minivans can’t be replicated, today. There are those sliding doors you mentioned, but also the ability to transport a full-house on board. Also minivans are still the only vehicles that can comfortably haul up to eight family members. If you need to carry more people, you need to buy a bus.
Also, let me make a point here: I love minivans. Not for their looks nor their driving and handling, but for the many well-crafted ways they make our lives easier. In fact, when I drove the Chrysler Pacifica plug-in hybrid last spring – the only rechargeable minivan – I found eight reasons to choose the minivan over a SUV.
On the other hand, I didn’t like the Kia Carnival, not even for a second. It was antipathy at the first sight. The Kia Carnival is supposed to be a minivan. It needs to accept its position in life and deal with it. Don’t try to be some sort of boxy-go-everywhere SUV in disguise because it simply doesn’t work. The refresh brought for the 2025 Carnival wants to recreate the bold-style success of the Kia Sorento, but it’s not as great on this disproportionally long silhouette.
DB: Well, I gotta disagree with you there, oh, love of my life. I liked Kia’s butched-up Carnival. It is, in fact, pretty convincing at this faux-by-four stuff. In fact, when I walked up to it for the first time, I thought they had delivered the wrong car. It wasn’t love at first sight, but I wouldn’t kick it out of the garage for eating crackers. In other words, I had no problem with the disguise as long as it had sliding doors and lots of room.
More importantly, the new-for-2025 Carnival is available in Hybrid guise. In this case, Kia combines its 1.6-litre turbocharged four with a 54-kilowatt (76 horsepower) electric motor for a total of 242 horsepower and 270 pound-feet of torque.
It’s a spunky combination. Despite married to a truly Mesozoic six-speed transmission — with glacially-slow shifting at low speeds – it feels pretty tractable in part throttle acceleration. It’s particularly impressive because the Carnival is not lightweight, tipping the scales at no less than 2,292 kilograms, there being few lightweights that stretch 5,155-milllimetres from stem-to-stern.
Said spunkiness is that, because it’s a Turbo, the little 1.6L’s peak torque occurs at just 4,500 rpm. Plus, of course, the electric motor’s 224 torques are available at 0 to 1,600 rpm. Packaged together, they make the hybrid combination feel more powerful than it really is. Top-end spunk — seldom used, of course, on a minivan — is no great shakes. In fact, Kia says that the Hybrid needs a full 9.3 seconds to sprint to 100 kilometres an hour. But just brushing the throttle to pass a slow-moving semi? That, the Carnival Hybrid does pretty well. That said, it’d all work even better if there were eight or 10 speeds in the autobox rather than just the six.
One last thing I like about the Kia’s powertrain is that, in ECO mode, the steering wheel’s paddle control regenerative braking, but in Sport mode, they shift gears. Well done, Kia; a good idea well executed.
NF: Yeah, you’re right there. Someone at Hyundai Canada told me once that its engineers went for an automatic transmission for its hybrid vehicles instead of a CVT — a damned CVT! — because it wanted the drive to feel more “normal.” But as you say, with the Carnival, the archaic six-speed doesn’t feel normal; it feels old.
But what surprises me the most is this: Even if the minivan uses the same gas engine as the Kia Sportage Hybrid, it doesn’t match the SUV’s all-wheel-drive system. It’s a missed opportunity since Toyota’s hybrid Sienna and the non-hybrid Chrysler Pacifica come standard with AWD. At least, the Carnival does have the hybrid option – and said option is asking as little as $2,550 extra for half of the gas-trims available (LX+ HEV starts at $46,545, EX HEV goes from $49,445 and SX+ HEV tops at $56,445).
But for that kind of money, and because Koreans manufacturers are usually good at bringing enticing equipment not offered by the competition, I would have expected some extra perks on the Carnival’s features list. Maybe massaging front-seats or hands-free sliding doors that open just with a swipe of your foot. And, why not a cooler hidden somewhere or a vacuum, like the top trim of the Sienna offers?
DB: OK, dear, you’re right about the AWD. Hell, half the point of a hybrid’s electric motor is to shunt power to the rear. I really don’t get not having AWD as standard equipment on what is, after all, a dual-motor — gas and electric — vehicle. And the excuse that people trot out about front drivers with snow tires being fine for winter, well, that’s just nonsense; except for provinces with mandatory winter tire laws, few people change their tires during the winter and, unfortunately, often suffer the consequences. We live in Canada! All-wheel-drive is, if not an absolute necessity, most certainly a bonus.
That said, the real reason for adding an electric motor to the powertrain is to improve fuel efficiency. This, the hybrid version of the Carnival does in spades. Natural Resources Canada rates the Hybrid’s 3.5-litre V6 sibling at 11.1 litre per 100 kilometres overall (12.9 L/100 km in the city and 8.6 L/100 km on the highway) while the hybrid rates a fuel-sipping 7.2 L/100 km overall (6.8 L/100km in the city and 7.6 L/100 km on the highway).
That’s a 44% improvement, an incredible number made all the more impressive considering that that V6, with 288-hp and 260 lb-ft isn’t especially more fleet of foot. On the other hand, Toyota’s Sienna, equally passenger accommodating as well as electrified, is rated at 6.6 L/100 km (for the front-driver and 6.8L/100 km for the AWD model).
Here’s where that spunkiness I mentioned before costs the Carnival. While Kia prefers to mate its electric motor to a 1.6-litre Turbo, Toyota’s ICE part of the powertrain is a 2.5L Atkinson-cycle four. That proves an important factor, depending on the speeds you travel and how much lead your right foot possesses, in fuel economy.
Turbochargers are indeed frugal at low speeds. Essentially, when the turbocharger isn’t spooled up, they suck fuel at the rate of a naturally-aspirated engine of the same size. In the Kia’s case, that’s a small 1.6-litre four-banger. Once your foot is deep into it — or you’re speeding along fast enough that the turbo is spinning — all that small-displacement efficiency gets thrown out the window.
In practical terms, that means the hybridized Carnival sips but 6.8 L/100 kilometres when you’re cruising along at a steady 100 km/h. That’s not half bad, less than half a litre per 100 km more than the Toyota which is supposed to enjoy the ne plus ultra of partially electrified technology.
At 120 km/h, however, the little 1.6’s turbo is spinning and the Carnival Hybrid needs 8.8 litres to get 100 kilometres down the road. That’s at least one full litre more than the Sienna uses; its larger, but Atkinson-cycled, 2.5L now more efficient than the small Turbo. Keeping the intake valve open longer — that was James Atkinson’s secret to ICE thermal efficiency — really can make a larger motor more frugal.
Add it all up and it comes down to this: Drive the new Carnival Hybrid like a little old lady from Pasadena and it will almost keep up with the Toyotas. Push both well past the traditional baby-on-board limit and the Kia’s fuel economy suffers in comparison. It does sound and drive sportier, however.
NF: Well, that’s another thing that surprised me – the “Sport” mode offered on the Carnival. Really, who’s going to fall for that? The Carnival tried a few other things, too, that don’t fit with its “family hauler” vibe, it’s not quite making life any easier for anyone.
First, it has the traditional gearshift level mounted on the steering column down to the middle of the (monstrous) centre console – where it might be in an SUV. In doing so, not only does the cabin lose some of the airy feeling so dear to minivans, but it also gives up on the practical free space that you traditionally find between minivan’s front passengers and where you can drop a purse or whatever else you might be carrying.
The refreshed 2025 Kia Carnival also has new tech, but having to hit a button to switch from the climate controls to the media commands is just a headache that no one needs.
Another try-but-miss: The SX+’s VIP Lounge Seats in the second row. Not only do they remove one seat on board (down to seven), but they are among the heaviest seats in the industry. They can’t fold flat, nor can they be removed. Yes, they can recline like a first-class seat on a plane, but to get that siesta-like position, you need to fuss with so many unnecessary mechanisms, buttons and switches. Seriously, when the owner manual is requested to understand how a f@#$ing (excuse my French) seat works, something’s not right.
DB: I’m with you on that, oh love of my life. Those Captain’s seats, as plush and adjustable as they may be, are, at best, a little impractical. At worst, they destroy the reason one should choose a minivan over an SUV. What my lovely wife is raging at is the following. On spec alone, the Captain’s seats appear wonderful. They tilt back quite far and also have a front foot rest that powers up to create veritable Lay-Z-Boy seating in the second row. So far, so good, right?
Only to do so, they must be moved all the way back and also to the side — towards the interior — so the reclined seat back clears the wheel wells. The problem is that, while the rest of the adjustments are electrically-operated, the side-to-side and back-and-forth operations are mechanical. And, as Nadine said, they’re heavy and reluctant to move; she couldn’t do it by herself. Oh surely, someone will write in that if you perform such-and-such trickery, it gets a little easier. But, as my thoroughly frustrated wife — she was the one who read the owner’s manual — said, if you need instruction to move seats, someone screwed up something.
Those same seats also make ingress to the back seats a little problematic which is also kind of frustrating because the Carnival’s third row seats are really quite impressive. Easy to both lift and lower, they are also surprisingly roomy and comfortable.
Our recommendation? If you’re looking for the full three-row utility — as in all three rows of seats will be frequently occupied — opt for the lesser LX with a bench in the second row. That said, if you’re looking for a really roomy luxury minivan with minimal use of the third row, I think the 2025 Carnival SX+ is an excellent choice. If you need that third row of seats, opt for the LX. The bottom line is that this new Hybrid version of the Kia is an attractive proposition. If it boasted all-wheel-drive, I suspect it would be even more competitive with the few minivans still on the market. And Kia could make an even better case for its faux-by-four minivan.
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