2023 Nissan Ariya: The Ups and Downs of Driving the EV in Jolly Old England
• A road trip in and around London in a 2023 Nissan Ariya was a perfect opportunity to see how Europeans experience the EV, hum, experience.
London, England – Planning a trip to London England to watch a historic football match with my youngest son was the closing of a father-son family loop: both my sons grew up playing and watching soccer, eventually becoming bigger fans than Dad (though Mom may argue it’s still neck and neck). I had even taken our oldest son for a bucket-list-worthy trip to London five years earlier for a game at the famed Wembley Stadium, the 80,000-seat-plus mecca of football, in the spiritual birthplace of the sport.
So when my similarly soccer-crazed younger son’s beloved team – Manchester United – ended up playing Dad’s favourite team – Manchester City – in the winner-take-all FA Cup final game at Wembley Stadium in June, it seemed perfect timing to balance the soccer trip scales with son number two.
And, of course, enjoy some good-natured ribbing of each other’s team, while hopefully managing to keep things civil enough to enjoy the rest of the trip. Because no matter who ended up winning the second-biggest prize in English soccer, only one of us was going to leave that stadium happy.
Unlike my last time in London, however, this trip I’d actually have a vehicle to drive through its famously traffic-choked streets. Driving in London is notoriously difficult, and though I had driven on the left side of the road in less chaotic conditions in the UK and Japan years earlier, driving through multiple areas of the mega-city is a whole other level. This would be like the busiest low-speed driver’s ed course that, once traffic magically cleared up, rapidly escalated to FIA super-license levels.
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