2025 Kia Carnival Hybrid First Test: Better Than the Original?
Kia adds a hybrid as part of the minivan’s midcycle update.
Pros
- Looks more SUV than minivan
- Alleged hybrid efficiency
- Sumptuous interior
Cons
- Touchy brakes
- Heavy and hard-to-move seats
- Hybrid performance underwhelms
The Carnival is Kia’s non-minivan minivan that adds a hybrid power option for the 2025 model year. Kia doesn’t like to call it a minivan and styles it more like an SUV, an effort made stronger by the 2025 update that grafts the front-end design of the Kia EV9 and Sorento SUVs onto the Carnival’s face. It’s a successful attempt to duck the minivan stigma and make this midcycle update look even more like an aspirational family utility vehicle.
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The regular Carnival has a 3.5-liter V-6, but the hybrid uses a 1.6-liter turbocharged I-4 and pairs it with a couple of electric motors. There are many vehicles where the added power and efficiency of a hybrid powertrain makes that version the more desirable choice, but is that the case with the Carnival?
Lovely Interior
Our $56,990 test vehicle arrived with an attractive navy and white interior with white perforated leather seats trimmed in blue, a blue leather steering wheel, and pretty white doors with touches of blue, glossy black trim, and chrome handles. It has a large curved screen, a good layout for phone charging, power and USB outlets with a diagram to show if it connects and charges or just charges, knobs for volume and tuning, and buttons for heated and cooled seats, heated steering wheel, and camera views. It’s easy to pair a phone and connect Apple CarPlay but hard to find your way back to the home screen once CarPlay is enabled.
The hybrid Carnival has the same basic layout as the non-hybrid, but it has a different gearshift. The hybrid has a dial with the park button in the middle, located in the glossy black center console along with the drive mode, auto hold, and parking brake, instead of a traditional shift lever.
About Those Seats
The Carnival has a high floor and low roof, which was especially noticeable in the second row, which was—at least in our loaded-up test example—is a bit tricky to get into, with the screens on the front seat backs looking great but also impeding ingress. The biggest problem is the extremely heavy and hard-to-move seats. The levers and tabs to recline, tilt/slide, and fold them are hard to distinguish and easily confused. The fore-aft adjustment lever is down by the outboard seat track, and its black handle makes it tricky to find.
Access to the third row is a bit tight for adults but shouldn’t be difficult for most children. The space at the back can feel claustrophobic due to the pinched window line.
You can remove the middle seat in the second row, but it’s hard to put back into place. You must push down on the tab inside the rail with your finger, align it manually, then slot the seat into its anchor points. It took many attempts, amid fears of injured fingers while trying to release the sliders and get the seat into the tracks again.
Second-row passengers have a huge fold-down center console, power outlets, USB ports on the sides of the front seats, which is our favorite placement, and climate controls. There are air vents in the ceiling for both second- and third-row occupants. Again, this all looks fantastic, but functionally it’s not nearly as successful.
How Does the Carnival Hybrid Drive?
The Carnival not only looks like an SUV, it drives like one, which means it can feel heavy at times, while exhibiting some body roll and harshness over rough surfaces. The hybrid is heavier than the non-hybrid, and it feels it on the road with a less nimble experience.
The available power is good, and it feels like it has a V-6’s might without sounding or feeling like one. The hybrid generates less horsepower but more torque than the non-hybrid, with 177 horsepower and 195 lb-ft of torque from the engine. Add the two electric motors for combined output of 242 hp and 271 lb-ft to push a vehicle weighing 4,900 pounds. Power is plentiful for highway driving and passing. It’s when you need a burst of speed, especially up a hill, that the Carnival can feel underpowered. And the engine can get buzzy at wide-open throttle.
Objective testing figures reveal the hybrid to be slower than the regular Carnival, needing 7.9 seconds to reach 60 mph and 16.0 seconds for the quarter mile, and the powertrain gets more lethargic with each acceleration run as the battery runs low. The regular Carnival posts faster 7.5- and 15.7-second times.
We have mixed reactions to the brakes. In testing, the brakes exhibit good progressive feel for a hybrid, halting the Kia in 118 feet from 60 mph, much better than the regular minivan’s 132-foot stopping distance. But the brakes can be touchy, more so than in the conventional Carnival.
Steering weight and precision are good on the figure-eight handling lap test, and the Kia’s electrically assisted setup does a good job of imitating a more natural-feeling hydraulic system. We prefer the steering on the hybrid to the non-hybrid, but some feel the steering is too heavy in real-world driving. The adaptive cruise control and lane keeping assist features are excellent.
Is the Hybrid Better?
In many respects, the regular Carnival with the V-6 is the better experience. It feels lighter and sprightlier and accelerates better and exhibits smoother brakes. Yes, the hybrid is more efficient, at least on paper, but even there its fuel economy doesn't wow at 34/31/33 mpg city/highway/combined. The front-drive Toyota Sienna hybrid gets 36/36/36 mpg. Then there’s the Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid, a plug-in hybrid, which is the real efficiency star at 82 mpg-e and with 32 miles of EV-only range. Yes, the Carnival hybrid is much better in city driving than the non-hybrid at only 18 mpg. But the gap narrows on the highway where the regular Carnival gets 26 mpg, and in our hands, we rarely saw fuel economy figures on the dashboard readout that bettered the V-6.
Often a hybrid, with its extra power and efficiency, outshines its non-hybrid counterpart, but that’s not the case with the Carnival, where the conventional and more affordable model may be the more desirable one. Here the hybrid’s extra efficiency might not be worth the several-thousand-dollar price jump, a rare miss for an automaker known for providing value.
Alisa Priddle joined MotorTrend in 2016 as the Detroit Editor. A Canadian, she received her Bachelor of Journalism degree from Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, and has been a reporter for 40 years, most of it covering the auto industry because there is no more fascinating arena to cover. It has it all: the vehicles, the people, the plants, the competition, the drama. Alisa has had a wonderfully varied work history as a reporter for four daily newspapers including the Detroit Free Press where she was auto editor, and the Detroit News where she covered the GM and Chrysler bankruptcies, as well as auto trade publication Wards, and two enthusiast magazines: Car & Driver and now MotorTrend. At MotorTrend Alisa is a judge for the MotorTrend Car, Truck, SUV and Person of the Year. She loves seeing a new model for the first time, driving it for the first time, and grilling executives for the stories behind them. In her spare time, she loves to swim, boat, sauna, and then jump into a cold lake or pile of snow.
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