Minivans

You probably don’t remember the Kia Carens. It was last sold in August 2010 due to MPVs being unpopular in the United States. The Carens still went on sale as the Rondo in Canada, but only until the 2017 model year, yet again a victim of SUVs and crossovers.

Toyota is announcing a recall for the 2022 model year Sienna. The recall involves an issue with its seat belts, which might not be able to do what they are supposed to do in the first place. To be precise, 2,259 units of the 2022 Toyota Sienna are affected by faulty seat belts. Affected vehicles have outboard second-row seat belt assemblies that were manufactured with an incorrect D-ring, which leads to the directional low-friction insert facing the wrong direction.

Just two weeks after we saw the ID.5 GTX being tested in the wild, Volkswagen revealed the ID.5. Today, we’re looking at the production version of the ID. Buzz with nearly no camo yet still a bit different compared to the original 2017 ID. Buzz concept.

In the same time with the launch of the new-generation Fiesta, Ford added a new model to the lineup: the new Fiesta Van. The new model was built on the three-door Fiesta passenger car, but it offers extra load volume, making this the perfect grocery carrier in busy, European cities. The 2022 Fiesta Van will be offered in two trim levels: Trend and Sport, and first deliveries will be made in early 2022.

““The”” Mini Vision Urbanaut is not really a new concept as the design of the vehicle was first showcased back in November last year. The Vision Urbanaut concept has now been ultimately realized from those 3D mockups and can be experienced at BMWs Design studio in Munich, come July the 1st.

The Kia Carnival name might sound new to you, but Kia has been using it for this exact minivan in various markets since its introduction since 1998. Up until this point, you’ve known it as the Kia Sedona, but with the transition into the fourth-generation – which has been on sale in South Korea since September 2020 and in parts of Europe as of March of 2021. It will hit the North American market in July of 2021, but we managed to get behind the wheel of the new Carnival beforehand. This is what you need to know about the 2022 Kia Carnival.

Okay, so I’m quite conflicted about this idea. An off-roading minivan sounds pretty cool, but I don’t want to see it happen. It’s like machines and AI taking over the world; I want to know how it would be in reality, but I don’t want it to happen. Anyway, I digress.

Some renderings of a pretty cool off-road Jeep minivan surfaced on the internet sometime back and it became the talking point for a lot of folks. It looked so ridiculous that one could see the automaker get behind this idea. Jeep, however, dismissed the idea of coming up with a minivan anytime in the future, no matter how off-road-centric it could be. Ugh, that’s disappointing. Or wait, am I happy about it? I don’t know!

Gabriel “Fluffy” Iglesias is known far and wide as a great comedian, but he’s also established himself as a connoisseur of all things related to Volkswagen’s iconic Bus. The 44-year-old comedian owns a collection of classic VW Bus models amounting to $3 million. He keeps them in his personal museum, which was designed to carry a passing resemblance to Volkswagen’s production facility in Wolfsburg, Germany.

Try to predict what mobility will look like in the next 15 or 20 years judging by the current prototypes from a couple of companies and if your imagination allows it, you’ll be looking at a very diverse environment.

I mean, Uber wants to take ride sharing to the skies, flying car startups are slowly making headway, and pretty much every carmaker out there has some sort of self-driving prototype in mind. And most often than not, these contraptions are designed like mobile living rooms or work spaces on wheels. Another thing in common is their promise to cut down on dead time since they ditch the human driver in the first place.

Honda just redesigned the Odyssey minivan in Japan and it comes with two cool and useful features that we wish we would get in the United States. The JDM-spec van is now available with gesture control power sliding door and reservation lock, two systems that make operating the van while having your hands full of groceries much easier.

In an attempt to milk the popular Kia Carnival — it’s the Kia Sedona in the U.S. — Kia is finding new and inventive ways of offering the minivan in different shapes and guises. Fresh from mixing SUV styling to the minivan’s aesthetics, Kia has taken the unconventional step of adding another version to the Carnival lineup, this time of the limousine persuasion.

Say hello to the 2021 Kia Carnival Hi Limousine, a retooled version of the luxury minivan that comes with a higher roof and plenty of new creature comforts to justify its billing. Somewhere, the Toyota Alphard must be shaking in its boots.

In an interview recently, Ford’s CEO, Jim Farley said, “There’s been a lot written about the electrification of our industry and Ford’s bet is different. We’re betting on a full lineup of commercial electrified vehicles.”

Well, it looks like the company has started its journey in the segment by unveiled the electric version of the world’s best-selling cargo van, the E-Transit. The van comes with connected services, an on-board generator, a range of 126 miles, and most importantly, a starting price of under $45,000. Will the E-Transit be as successful as the standard Transit?

Porsche recently unveiled several concept cars that it has kept out of sight over the last 15 years. Among them, there’s the Vision Renndienst, an all-electric van that pays tribute to the old vans that Porsche used as support vehicles for its racing program back in the 1950s and 1960s. They were mainly first-generation Volkswagen Microbus vans, usually painted red and labeled "renndienst," which is German for "racing service." The van concept looks surprisingly hot, and given that Porsche already built something similar in the past, maybe it’s time Stuttgart rolls out a production van. Of the high-performance variety, of course.

Porsche’s “Porsche Unseen” campaign is the gift that keeps on giving. We’ve already seen two teasers of models that never made it to production, and now, the German automaker has dropped the third teaser of what looks to be a concept that goes against everything we thought Porsche stood for. The teaser doesn’t do much in showing the actual car, but a quick edit of the image’s brightness and exposure reveals a car that Porsche describes as a “futuristic vehicle with an autonomous driving mode.” It’s not exactly a pillar of everything that Porsche stands for, is it? There’s more to the teaser, too, specifically what the image editing reveals about its interior. Of all the teasers that Porsche has released for its Porsche Unseen campaign, this one is undoubtedly the most curious of them all.

When Chrysler introduced the Pacifica Hybrid, it rattled to ever-shrinking minivan segment to its core. Not necessarily because it offered some new, ground-breaking technology but because it’s quite literally the only hybrid minivan on the market – at least until the Toyota Sienna lineup goes hybrid for the 2021 model year. Until then, however, the Pacifica gets to wear the crown. We drove the Pacifica just a year ago and we had somewhat mixed opinions about it – has anything changed this time around? Let’s find out!

Discontinued in 2010 after 18 years of the market, the Hummer nameplate returned in 2020. But this time around, it’s not a standalone brand, but a model sold under a GMC badge. The even bigger news is that it’s fully electric. Set to go into production in 2021, the truck version will go against the spectacular Tesla Cybertruck. But does it have what it takes to compete with Elon Musk’s oddly-shaped hauler? Is it powerful enough, does it have enough range, and is it actually a proper successor to the original Hummer design-wise? Let’s find out in the comparison below.