2022 Nissan Kicks vs. 2022 Honda HR-V: Price, Features, and Fuel Economy Compared
These two subcompact crossovers make for efficient family-hauling at an attractive price.
Honda/Nissan
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With the price of the average new car well into the $40,000 range, you might wonder if there are attractive buys at the affordable end of the new-vehicle market. Luckily, the subcompact-crossover segment is alive and well, with options from nearly every major manufacturer. Both the Nissan Kicks and Honda HR-V are decent picks, offering reasonably good fuel economy and seating for five. One tries to impress with optional all-wheel drive while the other comes in with more standard equipment at a lower price.
Honda
Price
The HR-V starts at $23,095; that’s for the front-drive LX trim. Adding all-wheel drive on any model is an additional $1,500. Every version of the HR-V uses a 141-hp four-cylinder. The $25,045 Sport trim adds wired Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, a larger infotainment screen, and an upgrade from 17- to 18-inch wheels. The next-step-up EX starts at $26,295 and brings a lot of the goodies customers may look for in modern vehicles, such as a sunroof, heated front seats, an upgraded stereo, and the Honda Sensing safety suite — including automatic emergency braking, road-departure mitigation, and adaptive cruise control. Honda reserves leather-trimmed seats and an automatic-dimming rearview mirror for the top-of-the-line $27,895 EX-L.
The Kicks, powered exclusively by a 122-hp four-cylinder, starts at $21,025, or $2,070 less than the base HR-V. All-wheel drive is not offered here. Moving from the base S model to the midlevel SV costs $1,850 more and adds adaptive cruise control plus a 7-inch digital gauge cluster and an 8-inch touchscreen in the center stack (up an inch from the Kicks S’s infotainment display). At the top of the lineup, you’ll find the Kicks SR, starting at $23,565. It features niceties like a 360-degree camera and LED headlights.
Nissan
Features
Even though the Kicks starts below the HR-V, it includes more standard equipment, including smartphone mirroring, lane-departure warning, forward collision mitigation, rear automatic emergency braking (and parking sensors), and blind spot monitoring. The HR-V doesn’t even offer the last two of those features as options. As mentioned above, the HR-V does have optional all-wheel drive, while all Kicks models are front-wheel drive.
Nissan
Fuel Economy
The Kicks gets a solid 31 mpg in the city and 36 mpg on the highway, per the EPA’s methodology.
The HR-V doesn’t perform as well as the Kicks. In front-drive form, it returns 28 mpg city and 34 highway. You’ll sacrifice a bit of fuel economy by opting for the heavier all-wheel-drive model, which sees up to 27 mpg city and 31 highway.
