Kia Soul EV vs Nissan ARIYA

The Nissan ARIYA is £295 cheaper to buy. Running costs are almost identical - about £160 a year either way, at 8,000 miles on an off-peak home tariff. Add 5 years of charging and the two land within £255 of each other - effectively the same to own. These figures cover list price and home charging only - insurance, servicing, tyres and depreciation will move the real total.

EVcarsguide estimates a real-world motorway range of about 234 miles for the Kia Soul EV and 209 miles for the Nissan ARIYA - both below their WLTP figures, because sustained high speed is the hardest case for an EV. The Kia Soul EV goes roughly 25 miles further between charging stops. A rapid charge to 80% takes around 47 minutes in the Kia Soul EV and 30 in the Nissan ARIYA, so the Nissan ARIYA loses less time at each stop. So the Kia Soul EV stops less often while the Nissan ARIYA stops for less time - pick on which you would rather do.

The Kia Soul EV is the easier car for tight UK car parks: it is 50 mm narrower than the Nissan ARIYA. In a standard 2,400 mm bay that leaves about 600 mm of total clearance for the Kia Soul EV and about 550 mm of total clearance for the Nissan ARIYA. The Kia Soul EV also turns in a 0.9 m tighter circle, which helps with U-turns and multi-storey ramps.

Over a 8-year ownership window EVcarsguide's degradation model projects roughly 84% battery health for the Kia Soul EV and 84% for the Nissan ARIYA. That is close enough that capacity loss should not decide between them. Both use NMC-type cells, so for daily use keep the charge limit near 80% to slow degradation.