After 8 Months, Is Our Kia Carnival More Endearing or Enraging?

Falling in love with a sexy new vehicle is easy. Just ask my colleagues who fell hard enough for Kia's fetching new Carnival SX Prestige limo-like minivan to name it a comparo winner back in June of 2021. This grizzled veteran of the minivan-engineering team at Chrysler was a tougher sell, but when we invited a 2022 Kia Carnival for a yearlong test, we spec'd a much more minivan-ish EX grade with eight-passenger seating that either folds away or comes out when you need to use it, you know, like a van. I've since spent most of a year logging about half of those miles myownself, filling a Siri-notes file to the brim. Here are the pros and cons of owning a Kia Carnival.

We were well into our third trip before we thought to avail ourselves of the Passenger View system's fisheye camera above the second row. It can see kids' faces in forward- or rear-facing child seats while also catching a glimpse of the third-row passenger faces too. Whenever that image is live you also get the opportunity to engage Passenger Talk, which broadcasts front-row voices through the rear speakers, so they need neither shout nor turn their heads to be heard.

Here lies a huge opportunity for improvement, come mid-cycle refresh time. Long days in the saddle during our cross-country drive revealed pressure points on both front seats that had us squirming, and after a recent 5-hour ride home from Chicago to Detroit in the middle row, I found these seats to be no better. The experience back there is made worse by a suspension that bottoms out way too easily on freeway overpass transitions, each of which delivers an unwelcome tailbone jolt—even when carrying only three or four passengers plus overnight luggage. That recent ride had me Googling options for an aftermarket load-leveling shock-absorber upgrade. Stay tuned.

Our aftermarket JBL audio upgrade has the system sounding fabulous, and we've generally had good luck with the Apple CarPlay functionality following an over-the-air update that fixed some intermittent connectivity and blank-screen issues. Since that upgrade, however, we have gotten a few fluky messages warning us of battery discharge from stereo use—with the engine running(?). We do however wish the wide screen could multi-task, and show us something alongside the CarPlay screen. It would also be nice if the driver-info display in the cluster offered a screen showing audio track information (as is, it briefly flashes up a new track name when it first comes on, then disappears). We also feel the volume and track up/down buttons are positioned close enough to confuse.

The slot for the phone charger is perfectly positioned to prevent a phone from sliding out during acceleration, braking, or cornering. Sadly, we often found ourselves having to adjust the position of the phone to initiate the charging, and it sometimes seemed to add more heat to the phone than charge (these are iPhones wearing thin Spigen covers).

Seems like everyone offers an auto brake-hold function with a button on the console to activate it. Mercedes-Benz does away with the button and auto-holds "automatically" whenever you come to a stop and then give the brake another stab of pressure. Our Carnival mixes the strategies. You must press the button for it to work, after which a firm brake stab will set the hold function, but light pedal pressure allows you to stay out of auto hold if you prefer. If it would remember your auto-hold button setting after a reset, it'd behave just like a Mercedes.