Kia Carnival 2026 News

Car makers are always coming up with new features in the name of making our driving time more comfortable, convenient or safe but sometimes the result is the opposite. Yep, as car reviewers there’s a list of well known, very annoying features that we could really do without. So here’s a quick collection of the most annoying new car features... and please feel free to add your own to this never ending list.  Massive glass roofs look amazing in a car dealer’s showroom but on the road during an Australian summer they make you feel like a rotisserie chicken - not to mention the dangers of sun exposure in this part of the world. Thankfully some roofs have retractable shades and some have decently thick ones to cut down the light and heat.  The Tesla Model Y has an expansive fixed glass roof and no screen to shield its occupants from that furnace in the sky. This sounds super irresponsible to anybody who hasn't experienced the nightmarish intrusiveness of modern safety alerts that are supposedly designed to reduce speeding and distraction, but trust us.. We’re talking about speed warning alarms, which activate at 2km/h over the posted speed limit (often falsely), distraction alerts that are triggered by the driver looking out for pedestrians and overly aggressive lane keeping assistance that feels like a sudden arm wrestle. The systems in our opinion become potentially a safety issue in themselves. Kia and Hyundai have been criticised in the past especially for over zealous safety alert systems, but pretty much every new car now has them - some worse than others. Do you know how many people used to say, “I wish my car’s door handles weren’t so easy to use, I want something that’s awkward and confusing to operate, something so flimsy it feels like it might snap off in my hand”? I’ll tell you - nobody. With the advent of electric vehicles came door handles that retracted flush with the car’s body to improve aerodynamics and in turn energy efficiency, which is all very good but it came at the price of functionality. Is it really necessary - I mean you can’t tell me regular door handles create that much drag?   Possibly the worst door handles I’ve ever encountered are on the Cadillac Optic. They’re as thin as a pencil and make opening the Cadillac super heavy doors ridiculously difficult. Another case of re-inventing something that wasn’t broken, the camera wing mirror is more a case of car designers saying "look at what we can do" rather than actually improving upon the simplicity and effectiveness of a piece of shiny glass. Hyundai's Ioniq 5 and Gensis GV60 can be had with camera mirrors - yeah, no thanks! Can’t wait for my bathroom mirror to be replaced by a camera and a screen. Anyone that’s needed to get something from the boot in a hurry because it's raining but had to stand there getting soaked waiting for the electric tailgate to slowly open, will tell you that it would have been quicker to open it themselves. And as for the gesture tailgates that require a swoosh with your foot top open - they seem to work about 50 per cent of the time.   An all-time low for me and gesture tailgates was when I was trying to take a Christmas tree out from the boot of a Mazda CX-70 and somehow my moving foot told it to start shutting without me realising it until it closed down on me. The car basically ate me alive.  Car companies have tried to integrate digital assistants into their cars to carry out functions such as opening the windows or lowering the cabin temperature. The problem is getting the voice assistant to listen to you, understand you or even do anything is almost impossible which is a lot like being the parent of a teenager. Myself and the rest of the motoring media are to blame for encouraging car companies to do away with easy-to-use buttons and dials and move all the functions to a screen that forces the driver to step through three pages of a menu just to turn the climate control down.  Yes, for years we praised cabins with “minimalist interiors” and “cleanly designed, button-less dash boards”. Well careful what you wish for, because now all I want is a knob for the stereo volume.   The Geely EX5 has a very cleanly designed button-less dash, which isn't a good thing after all. Some cars play little musical greetings when you sit down in the driver's seat. I find these as enjoyable to listen to as those birthday cards that play songs. As with door handles and wing mirrors, steering wheels never needed re-inventing but again and again car companies try to do so. Peugeot, Subaru and Geely have dabbled with not-round steering wheels but the worst we've seen is possibly the yoke in the new Lexus RZ550e F Sport. Seriously car companies - stop it.  Ok there’s so many more features I loathe but let's end on a really good one - tyre puncture repair kits. These usually involve a small compressor and canister of goo which is used to fill a flat tyre sealing the puncture and have you on your way. Sounds great, but it isn't. I’ve been on the side of the road in the bush with a puncture and used the repair kit only to watch all the good squirt out through the hole in my tyre sealing nothing but my opinions on how useless these devices can be.

Kia’s head of global product planning has fired a cheeky shot at rival brands, said he believes no brand is as well-prepared as Kia for the world’s unpredictable automotive market. Spencer Cho, Kia’s Senior Vice President and Head of the Global Business Planning Subdivision, said it’s impossible to know what the industry might look like in the future, but being prepared for as many possibilities as reasonable is the best answer. Speaking with Australian media at the launch of the new-generation 2026 Kia Seltos, Cho said that he thinks no one can know how global events will affect the industry. Trying to predict the events that might change the way brands need to operate is impossible, he said, but understanding what needs to be done to respond can’t be known until after the fact. “Let me put it this way. If I can say that I can expect everything… that's not possible,” Cho said. The US-Israel war in Iran and the effects it has had on global oil shipping is front-of-mind for Cho. “No one can expect this kind of war will happen, and also a couple years ago for Russia and Ukraine, no one can expect that kind of thing.” "But what we are doing is we carefully monitor the market demand or market changes. And development of product takes quite some time. We should create very sound product strategies, and we have to maintain those strategies in a consistent manner.” Rather than scrambling to respond to changes in the industry, Cho said Kia has built enough options to be able to react quickly in a ‘here’s one we prepared earlier’ manner. “Thankfully, we studied the EV transition quite earlier than any other brand. There are also some ups and downs, but the transition and the trend stays the same, just the differences are a little bit of this slow down. So speed might be the difference.” He says the key is not drastically changing for short-term gain, rather slightly adjusting without removing options for the future. Essentially, giving EVs a boost shouldn’t mean forgetting to continue ICE development, he said. “But we stay in the course to maintain the development of the planned EV models entering each global market, step by step. Yet we're still developing the all new ICE models as well as you see in the new Seltos.  “So one of the key strengths we have is all the technologies, the diesel or gasoline or hybrid and plug-ins and EVs.” “So we have all the options in our hands.  “Certain market ups and downs… hybrid is rising, we can provide hybrid models. If EV is coming, we can provide EVs. So thankfully, we have all the technologies in our hands, and we have the all the product lineup as well.” Cho took a cheeky swipe at rivals, too, rare for a senior executive. He said Kia’s strength globally is its range of cars available from the budget end, Picanto for example, through to hybrids, plug-ins, and more expensive performance cars or large electric SUVS. “So that's probably one of the strengths Kia has compared to other brands. I don't know whether you can name any other OEMs better than us in the case of the product line-up as of today.”

Australia's ever tightening emissions regulations have taken another scalp.

Don’t hold your breath for the next-generation Kia Telluride. Plans for the rugged-looking, three-row, monocoque-bodied big SUV that saved the company (and its dealer network) in North America seem to have permanently stalled for Australia, and for the second time since the series’ debut six years ago. But why the rejection?