Kia Carnival Camper (Sedona)
A big and comfy car that eats a lot. Kia Carnival is for you if you are looking for lots of space and a comfortable ride and don’t mind paying more on fuel. New models tend to cost a lot more than your typical MPV, but it should be possible to find a used one for a good price.
NimbleCamper rating: 4/5
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Key information
| Body type | |
|---|---|
| Make | |
| Boot length (cm) | 244 |
| Boot length (inches) | 96 |
| Boot height (cm) | 122 |
| Boot height (inches) | 48 |
| Boot width [wheel arches] (cm) | 120 |
| Comfort rating | |
| NimbleCamper rating (out of max 5) | |
| Consumption l/100km | 12 |
| Consumption MPG (UK) | 24 |
| Consumption MPG (US) | 20 |
| Available in | |
| Engine type | |
| Average used price, GBP (2015) | 5697 |
| Boot door type |
Used price range (2010-2020): € 2,500 – € 10,000
Cool features
- two roof windows
- open chosen / all rear doors (incl. the tailgate) with a long press of a button on the key fob
- built-in sunshades
- middle rear seat serves as a table and can be easily removed (all middle row seats are easily removable – great for camping, then clip them back in if you’re picking up the extended family from somewhere). You can also turn the middle rear seat around.
- 7 seats
- huge storage space behind 3rd row of seats (low boot floor – if last two seats are not folded into that space though. You will probably remove them for camping.) See this part of the video.
- single person camping – you could sleep comfortably by removing just one of the middle seats, without having to rebuild much – a no build camper 🙂 See this video or here too.
- you can fit a 200x120cm bed in the boot!
Standard reviews (not focused on camping)
HonestJohn.co.uk rating 3/5 • Autoexpress.co.uk rating: 2/5 • Carbuyer.co.uk rating: 3/5
Average rating: 2.7/5
How to sleep in a Kia Carnival, DIY camping conversions & other posts
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Some images in the gallery are of Kia Sedona – but that’s ok – they are very similar in size, mostly differ in engine or comfort specs.
Some images come from this forum – check it out for a more detailed Kia Sedona DIY camping conversion photo documentation.
1 review for Kia Carnival Camper (Sedona)
- Average used price, GBP (2015) – I use Carsite.co.uk‘s price aggregates from 2015 (or the nearest possible year if not available), or, if not found, from autoscout24.com. For new cars, I specify the closest possible match (i.e. if released this year, it’s the new price, if released two years ago, it’s the 2-years old price etc). It’s here to give you a benchmark comparison (- a like for like, an apple with an apple) of the value of each car and for filtering purposes. It’s not meant to be used as an accurate estimate of used car value – it is updated once a year, so make sure you know what the car should cost at the time of purchase if you decide to buy one.
- Boot dimensions – taken from various sources across the web, starting with official, supplemented with other reliable websites (like ridc.org.uk), supplemented by user-generated content – images of measurements from forums or social networks. It’s also used for filtering, comparison and to give you a good idea of the car’s suitability for camping.
- Comfort rating – a benchmark used to simplify the car’s comfort & driving score based on equipment, furnishings, handling, safety, and costs ratings from external sources like whatcar.com, carwow.co.uk, autocar.co.uk etc. It gives you an indication of whether the car will drive and feel like a van (low rating) or offer better interior & handling (higher rating). A simple van-like car, for example, a Renault Kangoo is 0.5, a well equipped and comfortable car like a Ford S-Max is a 2. No hard math behind it, just an indicator, f.e. 0.5= basic car that does the job, 1.5 = hey, that’s nice to have!, 2 = oooh, comfyyyy.
- Consumption – I take the average 2017 consumption or closest match from Fuelly.com, or if none is available, from other sources like honestjohn.co.uk. If there are not enough cars for a single year, an average for several years is calculated.
- NimbleCamper rating – a weighted score of boot length (45% weight), boot height (40%), consumption (10%) and comfort (5%). The logic of weighing length & height higher than consumption and comfort is – headroom is important when you sleep in the back of the car, so is the length. A comfy ride is a factor, but you can sleep in a big car that’s not that comfy, however, it’s much harder to camp/sleep in a comfy car that’s too small. Read more about the NimbleCamper rating and criteria here.
- a note for EVs (electric vehicles) – for consumption, I am using the Fuel Equivalent Consumption estimate by ev-database.org. It is usually much lower than combustion engines, giving EVs an advantage – which I think is fair. They do have a small disadvantage in terms of having to plan your trips around charging stations + longer waiting time, but that will get better over time. More charging stations, faster chargers and better batteries. Therefore I am not adjusting the calculation for EVs in any way.
- In short: a litre of petrol contains about 8.9 kWh of energy. If we divide the energy consumption of an EV by this (f.e. 16 kWh/100 km divided by 8.9 kWh/litre), we get equivalent fuel consumption of 1.8 l/100 km.
- EV stats – taken from ev-database.org
Lukas –
NimbleCamper rating: 4/5 – Kia Carnival is for you if you are looking for lots of space and a comfortable ride and don’t mind paying for twice the typical MPV consumption + a higher price for the car too.