2023 Nissan Ariya First Drive Review: Welcome to the Jungle
Auto123 gets in a first drive of the 2023 Nissan Ariya.
Nashville, TN - After some bumps on the road, namely delays caused by the pandemic and shortages of microchips and other components, the long-announced Nissan Ariya is here. Nissan’s next EV has been long in coming. The customs agent before me, as I mentioned I was heading to Nashville to drive it, said simply, “so they’ll have something other than the LEAF!?”. Yup.
We’ve known for some time what the Ariya looks like, and first concept then preproduction versions have been presented here and there. But this was our first occasion to get into it, settle in, and then take it out onto the road. And this we did.
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The Empower+ version we drove on this warm and sunny fall day was actually itself still a preproduction model, and in fact the version – a larger-battery format with front-wheel drive – won’t even be offered in Canada. But we couldn’t find much indication of its embryonic status – no creaks, no loose panels, etc. – and this version will have rough equivalents in the Canadian lineup, so the exercise was instructive all the same.
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