Kia Carnival 2025 review: GT-Line Hybrid long-term | Part 2

Another month with the Kia Carnival GT-Line Hybrid has passed and there’s a lot to report back to you.

We’ve now moved beyond the “OMG-we-have-a-family-bus” phase of living with an eight-seater people mover and have now moved into the “just-get-in-the-car-we’re-going-to-be-late” phase, which really just means life is back to normal.

This return to normality means we can now clearly see what the Carnival does really well and what it could do better.

We’ve covered 1400km this month and I’m still impressed by how far the Carnival can travel between fill ups. Currently we’re getting about 820km between fill-ups. That is a big thing for parents who not only don’t have much time for petrol station visits, but also know the difficulties of refuelling while babies and toddlers are onboard. Yep, it means taking them out with you.

Our fuel economy has also been exceptional given the type of driving we do. Measuring at the fuel pump our consumption was 8.4L/100km. The month prior the fuel consumption was 8.5L/100km.

2024 Kia Carnival GT-Line Hybrid

In a super nerdy way I love the consistency here - we’re getting the true efficiency over thousands of kilometres of real-world driving. Also, while this efficiency figure is higher than the 5.8L/100km Kia says you should get, the fuel economy of 8.4L/100km is still excellent.

Just to put that in perspective, most large petrol non-hybrid SUVs I've had as family long-term test cars average about 12L/100km doing exactly the same kind of duties. So the hybrid powertrain in the Carnival absolutely saves fuel, money and time.

2024 Kia Carnival GT-Line Hybrid

We’ve used this Carnival like a pair of jeans this month and I don’t mean because we haven’t washed it at all, but we’ve worn it everywhere: doing the school and daycare runs, the trips to the grandparents and all over NSW for work and leisure trips. 

The only disappointing aspect to the driving is that the sophisticated powertrain can get caught out if I’ve braked and then gone to accelerate immediately. There’s a moment of hesitation and a lack of power before the engine, motor and transmission seem to work out what to do. That pause in power isn't great when turning at a busy intersection when you need to move quickly.

2024 Kia Carnival GT-Line Hybrid

Still the Carnival is one of the most enjoyable and easiest cars I’ve driven - yep even at 5.2m long and 2.0m wide. We live in the inner suburbs and I’ve held my breath down narrow lanes, navigated steep winding streets and parked all over Sydney and thanks to the outstanding visibility, high seating position, light steering and great pedal feel, the big cruise ship is easy to pilot.

Also making life easier is the Carnival’s practicality. Even before we started this test we knew it was spacious with loads of room and enormous cargo capacity, and we’ve put that to the test with seven people on board, trips to buy tall plants and picking up a bookshelf for our daughter’s room. 

2024 Kia Carnival GT-Line Hybrid

It’s not all perfect. See while the Carnival is a warehouse on wheels, there needs to be more small cabin storage areas - more trays, more pockets, more hidey holes. There are no shelves, drawers and other clever storage areas that we see in a Volkswagen Multivan, for example. 

In the second row the two cup holders in the back of the centre console are too far away for my kids to reach them when they’re sitting in their seats. There is a fold down section in the second row with cup holders but it’s actually the back of the middle seat and that means items from the row behind or boot can fly through the gap if we were to stop suddenly.

But the large automatic sliding doors are great. These are simple to operate for the kids and in car parks there’s no risk of them banging into other cars when opened in parking spots and getting in and out is easy, even in tight spaces.

If the parking space is ridiculously tight the Carnival has a remote driving function operated via the key fob that allows you to pull the car out of spaces. I had to do this legitimately for the first time this month and it worked perfectly and spookily.

Okay then, that’s it for this month. Next month is the school holidays that’ll test the Carnival... and me.

Acquired: August 2024

Distance travelled this month: 1398km

Odometer: 2667km

Average fuel consumption this month: 8.4L/100km