The 2022 Kia Carnival Is a High-Tech Luxury Minivan

this is the new 2022 KIA Carnival and it's the latest minivan you may know the Kia minivan as the Sedona but for 2022 that's gone Sedona out Carnival in the sticker price of this Carnival is almost 50 Grand and it has a lot of luxury family friendly features and today I'm going to review this van and show you everything [Music] before I get started be sure to check out cars and bids which is my Enthusiast car auction website for cool cars from the modern era we've had some amazing sales recently on cars and bids including this Ford Raptor which sold for sixty thousand dollars this manual transmission Porsche Cayenne one of my favorites which sold for just over thirty two thousand dollars and this great E46 BMW M3 which sold for just over eighteen thousand dollars if you're looking to sell your cool car from the 1980s and up cars and bids is the place to do it and if you're looking to buy a cool car from the modern era we have daily auctions with amazing selection at carsandbids.com so let's talk KIA Carnival Kia's first minivan came to the United States almost 20 years ago and it was called the Sedona but everywhere else in the world it was called the carnival so for 2022 Kia is redesigning its Minivan and they finally decided to give it the carnival name here in the United States just like everywhere else on the planet now the new Carnival is the latest minivan to enter a very competitive space the Chrysler Pacifica and Toyota Sienna have both been recently updated and I reviewed both within the last few months of course there's also the Honda Odyssey which is a very popular van although it's starting to become a little outdated in the face of its newer Rivals there's nothing outdated here though the new Kia Carnival has some great new technology and some excellent family focused features that make it a serious minivan competitor this is the top trim KIA Carnival the SX Prestige model with a sticker price of just under 50 Grand that's a lot of money for a minivan but then this has a lot to offer and today I'm going to show you everything first I'll take you on a tour of the new Kia Carnival and show you all of its interesting quirks and features then I'll get it out on the road and drive it and then I'll give it a Doug score all right I'm gonna start the quirks and features of the carnival on the outside which is surprisingly quirky in recent years most automakers have realized that people think minivans are boring and dull and there's a stigma around them so a lot of automakers have done some weird things on the outside of their minivans to make them more interesting and that's certainly the case here one good example is this silver pillar back here by the rear window you can see it has this kind of elevated hexagon pattern has no purpose just sort of looks cool and makes it a little bit more interesting than a regular van you can also see this van has black wheels that is how you know a trend is dead the black wheels trend has spread to minivans it is no longer cool but they're trying to make this van a little cooler by catching on to the black wheels next up the attempt to make this van more interesting than a typical minivan continues up front with the Grille which as you can see far more expressive than a typical minivan Grille with all these like squares and rectangle sort of floating in place intended to be bolder and more exciting than your typical van Stranger than that though is the lighting up front the regular headlights are here in this tiny little light housing but when you turn on the headlights you can see there's no room for the high beams the brights so where are they they're here integrated into the grill and not actually next to the regular headlights they're sort of in the middle of the car when you flash the brights they turn on in the grill for a very strange piece of design maybe even stranger is the front turn signal but on the turn signal you can see it's not just a flat line or a rectangle like most cars it's this bizarre design that goes up from the grill and then sort of kicks back and it's a very strange turn signal pattern in this car again trying to make this just a little more exciting than your typical boring stigmatized Minivan and next up speaking of weird Lighting in back you have a light bar going across the entire rear end to capitalize on this new trend of light bars on vehicles especially the luxury three cars well it's on this minivan too but you can see when the headlights are on the tail lights light up they have kind of a weird pattern in the light bar it's not just a straight Flat Line instead it sort of goes up to give it a little more definition and excitement stranger though back here is the turn signals they are not integrated into this light bar instead they're in the bumper you can see them all the way down here so even though you have this massive light bar going across the entire vehicle it doesn't have enough room for the turn signals and they are down below sort of an afterthought in the bumper kind of strange also on the outside of the new Carnival worth pointing out this is the first vehicle I've seen with the new Kia logo which prominently displays that this vehicle is made by K backwards and but anyway next we move inside the new Carnival and that means starting in the back seat because after all this is a minivans the back seats are a big Focus they're especially a big Focus here because this Carnival is equipped with the van's new VIP lounge seat that's what Kia calls this seat and that's because it can fully recline you press this little button on the side of the seat and then the seat will go all the way into sort of a reclined sleeping position like a first class aircraft seat if you're sitting in a plane you can have that in the back of your Kia minivan so your kids will be the ultimate Envy of their classmates driving around in boring siennas and Odysseys they'll be sitting in their VIP lounge seat in the back of the carnival by the way Kia gave me this little instruction sheet telling me how to use the VIP lounge seat and you can see when the seat is reclined Kia refers to this as the premium relaxation position which is kind of stupid but that is a pretty good description for what this actually is and and by the way this seat also has a power foot rest you press a little button on the side of the seat and you can see the foot rest automatically extends to make even your feet comfortable when you are sitting in your premium relaxation position so you can Lounge in luxury back here never seen this feature in a minivan before not sure how many parents are going to want it for their kids but it is available and there's a lot more cool stuff in the back of the new Carnival rear seat passengers have their own climate zone you can see the controls here that's not all that uncommon and you also have charge ports back here you can see there's a USB port on the side of either front seat and you have a household style outlet and a cigarette lighter style Outlet so you can plug in all sorts of stuff back here you also have heated and cooled second row rear seats which is a pretty impressive feature very luxurious for a minivan but things get even crazier from there the rear seats in this van have their own sunroof and not just a little sunroof where you can open the sunshade and look out you can actually fully open the sunroof stick your hands out get some Breeze through the roof a second row opening sunroof haven't seen that in another minivan yet but frankly my favorite thing back here is actually the screens for the rear seat passengers they're mounted on the back of the front seat very easy to use touch screens pretty simple but the coolest part is they have built-in apps for YouTube and Netflix back here so you don't have to like hook up your own device then mirror your screen whatever these screens have built-in apps for those things that you know everybody's going to want to sit in the back and watch your kids YouTube Netflix it's already on these screens that's pretty amazing but if you want a more calming listening experience back here you also have sounds of nature built into these screens you can turn on Sounds of Nature and listen and there are new sounds of nature key and Hyundai models have had this feature for a while but here are a few new ones you have calm see waves you have a rainy day you can also listen to Cricket conversations unfortunately this also go through headphones which I can't show you but new sounds of nature in the back hopefully we can hear them up front too and another amazing feature of these rear screens there's even a kid's theme you press this little button the bottom right and you move over to the kids theme or you have like baby shark and YouTube for kids availability again built right into the screen so you don't have to Fumble around try to connect it to a device or whatever all this stuff YouTube Netflix baby shark is built into your rear screens that is a pretty cool feature one other pretty cool feature back here the rear seat passengers have access to the voice control system in the car you press this little button on the ceiling and then voice control is active and you can say like turn up the temperature or whatever just like the front seat passengers have been able to do in a lot of cars for years that is a pretty nice touch also something I don't like back here though the rear seat passengers have access to control the position of the front passenger seat these little buttons on the side of the front seat you can press them and move the front seat forward or backwards that's not an ideal thing you want rear seat passengers to be able to do in a vehicle where you'll be having kids coming you know they will press those buttons all the time and things will get annoying not sure if you can disable that feature but frankly in a minivan be better if that feature didn't exist at all and next up I want to talk about the third row and specifically getting into the third row which isn't really ideal in this version of the carnival it starts out promising enough you have some cool features here on the second row there's a little latch that allows you to move the second row seat all the way forward if you want which makes it easy and you also have a little latch here that lets you move the seat from side to side which isn't a feature I've seen in most other Vans I think the Honda Odyssey has this but the other ones don't and that is also a nice useful feature creates a little bit more room on the sides or in the middle if you want them the problem becomes the backrest with these VIP lounge seats there's no latch you can push to just move the backrest forward instead you have to reach into the power operated backrest and just sit here and wait while it slowly and automatically words forward and makes it easier to get into the third row as a result third row access not that easy and Carnival models equipped with the VIP lounge seats if you're going to be getting into the third row all the time might not be ideal to get these second row seats with that said you can move the second row seats to their furthest like outboard position and then walk between them to get into the third row with that said once you're in the third row of this van nothing particularly interesting back here just looks like a fairly standard minivan third row has some good cup holders good storage and you have USB ports on either side of the third row which is useful you also have sun shades back here which is pretty nice you can put up the sun shade on this little third row window and then the sun won't come in which can be a problem for infants having too much sun exposure the problem is accessing these third row sun shades is pretty difficult you have to reach way in latch them in place power operated third row sunshades would be pretty nice I know that's asking a lot it's not a feature that's getting used all that often but it would make things a little bit easier if you actually wanted to use this sun shades and next up we move on to the cargo area in the carnival which is quite large even with the third row seats in place you have a lot of space back here there's good room between the third row and the bumper but also it's a deep low cargo area so you can get a lot of stuff in here even if you have the seats maxed out now with that said if you lower the third row seats you obviously gain more overall cargo space but you do lose some of this lower floor space because that's where the third row seats go when they're folded down now to fold them down it's pretty easy you just pull on this big latch in the middle of the seat and then it folds down into the cargo area and you can see you have a larger cargo area as a result you can do it over here same deal pull it fold it down and it's down not all that difficult so as you can see getting the seats down in place is pretty easy and when you do you have a fairly flat load floor here with a larger cargo space than you would if you had the third row in place now with that said putting the seats back up is a little bit more challenging than it is in some of the other Vans you start by pulling on this latch but you have to sort of be at the right angle and then the seat goes back up to this position here as you can see the then you pull on this strap here and then that gets the seat back into place not really all that challenging only takes a couple of seconds pretty easy although it is worth noting that even in this High trim nearly 50 000 version of the carnival you don't have power operated third row seats you're doing it yourself with these latches but this is a lot quicker than sitting there pressing a button and waiting for the seat to automatically rise up other items worth noting in this cargo area over on the left side you have two rows of smaller item storage in case there's something you don't want rolling around the cargo area you can stick it in here lower and upper and over on the right side you have power ports you have a cigarette lighter style outlet and a regular household style Outlet so you have two of those household style outlets in this van one in the cargo area and one in the second row there's good power back here in the cargo area and next up we move up front in the carnival the least important place where the adults sit to merely drive around their children but there are some cool features worth noting up here now a few of these I've covered before for instance passenger talk which is a feature that lets you speak up front and then your voice is Amplified or projected using a microphone into the back seats so you don't have to turn around and yell at your kids or speak loudly or whatever you can just use your normal voice and they will hear you back there that's pretty cool you also have a feature called quiet mode if you turn this on it turns off all the rear speakers and only allows you to adjust the front volume up to a very soft level you would use this if you're driving your kids home they've fallen asleep in back but you still want to listen to music up front you can turn on quiet mode and listen to your music without waking up your kids that's a pretty cool feature too another cool feature up here I've mentioned before is sounds of nature which allows you to listen to various nature sounds while you're driving along instead of a music or a podcast or whatever it can be very calming unfortunately the sounds of nature up front are not the new ones that the rear seat passengers have access to these are the usual Kia and Hyundai sounds of nature we have heard them all before nonetheless you can take a listen to one of the sounds of nature [Applause] the theory there is supposed to provide calming sounds instead of your usual sports or talk or music or whatever that you would hear from your infotainment screen now one new feature worth noting in this car is something called passenger View and if you access that you can see it is showing an image of the rear seats in this van that's because there is a camera mounted on the ceiling above the rear seats and it is projecting its image what it sees into the infotainment system that way you're driving along in your van you don't have to turn around and look to see if your kids are hitting each other they drop something or whatever you have a camera that can look for you and you can even use this camera to zoom in so you can see individual seats in places in case you want to see what's going on in the back and speaking of cameras and zooming this van offers a neat feature with the exterior camera system it lets you zoom in or out on this bird's eye top down cam camera system view you can go further in or further out which is something I haven't seen in any other car offering levels of zoom on this view from the camera system now since I'm talking infotainment let's talk about this system itself it's pretty good although not my very favorite it is very responsive and Incredibly intuitive although I wish the home screen were a little bit better A lot of cars have like a three panel home screen that provides certain important information like the current song you're listening to music map whatever this the home screen is more all of these little icons which isn't really that useful and if you want to go see your current radio station or media you can do that but you can't also see like the navigation map or whatever it's a little bit of a drawback of this infotainment system but it is easy to use Simple to touch and easy to figure out and you have these sort of capacitive touch buttons in the middle of your center console below the screen here you can tap on each one and it will take you to all these individual things map navigation radio media Etc instead of having these in the screen itself these buttons are always here so you can always go where you want that makes things kind of easy but I do wish for a better home screen I have some similar wishes for the gauge cluster you have a full screen gauge cluster in here which is nice that's what more cars are going to but you can't really do all that much with it it's not very configurable you can really only change this Center display panel and even then you can't change it to do all that much it won't show you a navigation map it won't show you what song you're currently listening to it has a very limited range of what it can show you and that's just kind of a shame why bother going to the trouble of making a full screen gauge cluster if you're not going to let it change all that much with that said it does change with the drive mode when you change the drive mode of the van you press this little button in the center console so go through the drive modes and then the gauge cluster will change you can see right now it's in normal mode but if you press it and go into Eco you have this sort of futuristic display with like this old school clock font it looks kind of strange press it again to go into Sport and you now have like a sporty display in your Van's gauge cluster so then you know you're in the sportiest mode code possible in your minivan other interesting quirks in here for one on the dashboard you can see this silver trim mimics what we had on that panel on the outside that I showed you before this sort of silver elevated trim trying to make it look cooler and more exciting in here than your typical van next up another feature I've mentioned before in Hyundai and Kia models but worth covering again is the turn signal cameras you're driving along you put on your turn signal and then a camera appears in your gauge cluster and shows you what's in your blind spot in the next Lane this is incredibly useful it works on both sides left side or right side you can see the camera illuminates whatever is in your blind spot frankly when I drive around hunting Kia models with this feature I find it to be better than using your traditional mirrors it shows more and it gives you a better field of vision exactly where you can't normally see it is a fantastic feature and I'm glad they're including it on more and more vehicles and next up we move up front in the carnival where you can see the engine all U.S Carnival models will have a V6 with about 290 horsepower and that makes the carnival the most powerful minivan although just barely The Odyssey is at like 280 and I think the pacifica's at like 287. so this is just slightly the most powerful van now interestingly Toyota decided with the new Sienna to forget about making the most powerful van and instead go for the most efficient van so all new Sienna models have a hybrid 4-cylinder with only about 245 horsepower it doesn't feel very fast but it gets around 36 miles per gallon on average this thing gets like 22 23 miles per gallon that is a big difference so if you prioritize power maybe this is the van for you but I suspect most minivan Shoppers don't really care that much if their van is fast they want better gas mileage and in that case the Sienna has a real benefit over its gasoline-powered van Rivals which have more power but don't have anywhere near the same gas mileage and so those are the quirks and features of the new 2022 Kia Carnival now it's time to get it out on the road and and see how it drives all right driving the KIA Carnival and it drives about how you might imagine which is to say like a minivan uh you know these reviews it's important to talk about the Driving Experience of a car but it's always less important to do it when the car you're talking about is a minivan um this car drives like they all do to be honest it's reasonably comfortable it has good room as all minivans do including for the front seat passengers and for the rear seat passengers and that's about it it doesn't feel very fast the steering is not particularly connected it's not very exciting or thrilling or whatever it is a people mover a people hauler more than any other thing and that's just sort of that now with that said there are a few things that are worth noting even on a minivan review one is road noise that sort of thing and in that sense it feels fine actually like you'd expect it's no better or worse than its rival minivans Honda Odyssey that sort of thing they all feel about the same in terms of how they sound and and what the road noise is like on the inside and this fan is not really all that different ride quality ride is the same about what you'd expect not incredibly luxurious or smooth or whatever feels just fine um similar to other minivans honestly they they don't really drive all that differently with the exception of the Toyota Sienna and that's probably the most important comparison Point here because Toyota has pursued a different thing in the minivan World they decided not to go after the acceleration that minivan buyers are used to and instead they went after fuel economy so how does this van stack up against that one that is a good question the answer is this feels faster it feels more muscular and more powerful but the fuel economy difference is huge now this does feel faster and more muscular than the Sienna there's no question that feels a little gutless but you're driving a minivan you probably don't care about it all that much and so to me the Sienna with its Hybrid engine that's a really big benefit and a fuel economy is important to you even a little bit I think that that puts the Sienna at a big advantage over the Odyssey and over the carnival I think that the you know the Chrysler Pacifica offers a plug-in hybrid version which counteracts it a little bit but the Sienna has a big advantage in terms of Powertrain over its minivan Rivals it's not that much slower but it does offer a lot better gas mileage so this is a good van great in every way good technology good features good equipment good room drives like every other van blah blah blah it's just down on gas mileage to this Sienna and I do think this van is a little cheaper than the Sienna probably two or three thousand it has a few extra interesting features the Toyota doesn't have which are going to be benefits and so there is definitely an argument to getting this van over the Sienna and I personally think this minivan has some great technology better than probably all the other minivans or at least on par it's just down a little bit on gas mileage for the Sienna but you do make it up a little bit in price and performance and those things are important so I think this is a great van and a great effort from Kia the new Carnival and so that's the 2022 KIA Carnival this is a great van but then they all are Pacific Sienna Odyssey and choosing between them is legitimately difficult but this van makes a pretty good case for itself anyway now it's time to give the new Carnival a Doug score starting with the weekend categories and styling the carnival is fine looks like well a minivan and it gets a 5 out of 10. acceleration is also fine normal for a van and it gets a one out of ten handling is again normal for a minivan and it gets a 3 out of 10. fun Factor same deal normal for a van not very fun at all and it gets a one out of ten and lastly cool Factor again minivan easy one one out of ten for a total weekend score of 11 out of 50. basically every new minivan gets this same score next up are the daily categories and features the carnival has a lot of great modern tech and it gets an 8 out of 10. comfort is normal for a van it's reasonably comfortable so it gets a 7 out of 10. quality is pretty good it's not quite on the level of the Chrysler Pacifica Pinnacle in terms of interior materials but it is nice inside and it gets a 7 out of 10. practicality is huge like all Vans and it gets a 10 out of 10. finally value and this offers a lot of features Rivals have and more for a little less money so it gets a strong 8 out of 10 for a total daily score of 40 out of 50. I added up and the Doug score is 51 out of 100 which places it here against minivan Rivals and relevant crossovers the carnival wins overall as it's slightly cheaper than Rivals with slightly more Tech and Equipment but truthfully the new Sienna Pacifica and Carnival are all great choices and I'd buy any of the three the only one I'd maybe avoid is the Odyssey which is getting dated in terms of Technology though it's still a great and practical van that does nearly everything the carnival does [Music]

Channel: Doug DeMuro

Views: 2,256,694

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Id: Fn_htHFC4cw

Length: 23min 57sec (1437 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 13 2021