Kia Carens Clavis Review: Blending Practicality Of MPV With Feel Of SUV
Kia Carens Clavis: Price, Positioning
The Clavis and older Carens will co-exist. Kia India has kept the entry-level trim of Carens on sale, and will mostly be bringing in the CNG kit with the same in months to come. The Carens Clavis, on the other hand, will operate in the premium end of the spectrum, offering several powertrain options. Kia Carens Clavis will be launched by the end of May, and its electric version will make its way in a couple of months. We expect the Clavis to command a Rs 1.5 lakh premium over the corresponding Carens trims.
Kia Carens Clavis: Design
It's an evolutionary design update to the Kia Carens Clavis. The fascia reminds us of Syros and partly Kia's global EV portfolios. The grille is upright than before with sleek DRLs wrapping the triangular LED headlamp cluster. The face is flush, and the lower half has got new satin-finished skid plate. Key highlight on the side has to be the new 17-inch alloy wheels, which appear to be more EV-centric in design. A strong shoulder line across the length, roof rails and contrast-colour plastic cladding increase the SUV-stance. The rear is also new now. A connected tail LED strip, skid plate and vertically-positioned tail lamp complete the revised look.
Kia Carens Clavis: Interior Layout
Carens Clavis maintains the upmarket appeal in the cabin. There are plenty of new features and aesthetic changes to look forward to. It continues to 6- and 7-seater options. The captain seats are limited to range-topping trim. Starting with the dashboard, there is a new 26.6-inch, free-standing, dual-screen setup, which is bigger than the Seltos. The seat fabric is new, and the driver's perch is electrically-adjusting, albeit the height fix is manual. The touch-operated AC panel is new, and a switch to music control at the touch of a button. The central well is redesigned with a decent amount of storage space. Expect features like wireless charger, panoramic sun roof, Bose speakers, and front seat ventilation in the top-end variants.
No mechanical changes were made to Carens Clavis, and hence the wheelbase stands at 2,760 mm. The second row seats are moderately large and supportive, and offer adequate leg room. Passengers can throw the co-driver seat forward using the boss mode function. When seated in the second row, the passengers can use the foldable table, USB charging points, a cooled bottle holder and curtains for privacy. We expected multi-zone AC and rear seat ventilation in the Carens Clavis. The third row seating is tight and best suited for short journeys. Third row seats come with bottle holders, AC vents and USB charging points. The boot space with all three rows up is 216 litres, making way for two medium-sized bags.
Kia Carens Clavis: Engine, Gearbox options
Kia India is offering three powertrain choices with the Clavis. The 115 hp, naturally-aspirated petrol engine is mated to a 6-speed manual gearbox. The 116 hp, diesel engine is paired with a 6-speed manual and torque converter automatic gearbox. The 1.5-litre turbo-petrol engine offers most choices. The most powerful engine of the trio, generating 160 horsepower, comes with a 6-speed manual, 6-speed iMT and 7-speed dual-clutch automatic transmissions.
Kia Carens Clavis: Drive Experience
We could sample the 1.5-litre turbo-petrol engine with a dual-clutch gearbox and not much changed at the driving seat. There is a good mid-range performance, ensuring sailing on the highways is a breeze. The straight-off-the-line acceleration is decent, and the pull from the engine is strong. The DCT allows the driver to take control using paddle shifters. Flooring the pedal and holding a gear turns the engine noisy, and often overtaking in city traffic can be unpleasant in the cabin. For the most part, the gear shifts are smooth and seamless. There are three drive modes, which alter the engine mapping, throttle and steering response. Carens Clavis, however, misses out on traction modes, which Seltos has.
Triple-digit highway speeds are effortless. The view from the driver's seat is more commanding than before. With high seating, the driver can view the edges of the bonnet. The steering wheel is a new unit - one that's shared with the Syros. It's chunky and premium to hold. The handling is largely neutral. City manoeuvres are light and predictable. There is decent body roll in the corners, and the seats lack support when driven spiritedly. Carens Clavis comes with all-disc brakes, and they instil confidence in anchoring. Level 2 ADAS (advanced driving assistance system) is also introduced with the Carens Clavis now, which improves the overall safety aspect.
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Timothy McLaughlin: So you have these hills, these very, you know, dramatic hill slopes with these pools kind of midway up the hill. So there's like, kind of a lattice work of pipes, that's laid over, bore holes. So yeah it is sort of industrial and, and dystopian, but also set in a very remarkable, very beautiful part of the world. Ha: Timothy McLaughlin is a journalist and a freelance contributor for Bloomberg, based in Singapore. He says Pangwa and the surrounding region of Kachin state have come into the spotlight lately, because the ground there is rich with precious metals – rare earths – that are in high demand right now. McLaughlin: Myanmar is hugely significant in the rare earth's industry. It is the third largest producer of rare earths globally behind the US and China. Ha: These rare earth elements are worth billions of dollars – they're key components in your iPhone, your electric vehicles and even missiles used by the US military. And Myanmar isn't just any producer of rare earths. It's a crucial supplier to China, accounting for more than half of the country's total imports last year. But the region around Pangwa has been disrupted by a long-running conflict between Myanmar's military junta and a rebel group, the Kachin Independence Army, or KIA. McLaughlin: The current junta took power in 2021, and it has been a very tumultuous, bloody period for the country for the past couple years. It's important to understand that Myanmar already had a large number of armed groups who were fighting the central military primarily for greater autonomy for their ethnic groups. And so the past four years have seen a massive surge in fighting. You know, the military has been able to hang on to most of the middle of the country, but their control over the periphery of the country and the borderlands has suffered quite a bit. Ha: Pangwa is part of that embattled region. The KIA took control of the area late last year. 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But they're almost never found on their own in nature. The minerals are mixed in with other elements in the ground, and often at low concentrations – and that makes mining them a complex process. In Myanmar, rare earths are usually extracted from the soil on hillsides. McLaughlin: So you have these very dramatic hill slopes with these collection pools that are sort of at the bottom, midway up the hill. The collection pools, they're lined with tarps. So the water tends to have this kind of turquoise color to it. Ha: And to get these rare earth elements into these vast collection pools, a process called in-situ leaching comes in. McLaughlin: It's sort of like an IV drip for a hillside, you're dripping this leaching agent into the hillside. So there's like, kind of a lattice work of pipes that's laid over, bore holes, and then there's little taps. And so this is just going down into the ground and then later, towards the bottom of the hill washed out. And what comes out at the bottom is this mixture of rare earths water leaching agent that's collected in large pools, sort of like concrete industrial swimming pools. And the rare earth sludge settles at the bottom. The water is drained off, uh, and that sludge is then baked in the big furnaces that look like massive pizza ovens and the resulting product is a rare earth oxides. Ha: When demand for these metals began to take off in the mid-2000s, China was by far the biggest miner of rare earths. It accounted for nearly all of the world's mined rare earth supply and was also the biggest refiner. But around 2010, China began shutting down many of its small-scale mines. McLaughlin: China started to see the environmental impact it was having, pumping millions of liters of this fluid into the ground had enormous ecological impact, especially in watersheds and riverways. Ha: The wastewater that's full of chemicals and toxins is typically directed right back into the nearest river. 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McLaughlin: You're seeing people and other groups realize that there is a huge amount of money, huge amount of demand. We're gonna see these mines expand probably outside of Kachin state to places that are controlled by other groups who think that they have similar geology. And they can also kind of cash in on this, you know, rare earth gold rush at the moment. But I think the environmental impact is probably the most pronounced right now. You're seeing the rivers and streams that are very important to the way of life for small villages and cities and towns in this part of the world getting totally ruined. And it is also becoming a cross border issue because these watersheds run through Southeast Asia. And so some of this stuff is now flowing into Thailand. And so you see the Thai government, Thai civil society becoming concerned about this. There's also concerns about the structure of the mines, the safety. You could imagine, pumping millions of gallons of liquid into the side of a hill makes it inherently unstable. Often people are getting trapped in tunnels or killed by landslides. So yes, overall environmentally and labor regulations wise, very much sort of the wild west at the moment. Ha: And while mining companies have been tearing up the ground in search of rare earth minerals, the region around the mines is being torn by a bloody conflict between the government and rebel groups. After the break, the crucial supply of rare earths in the hands of a rebel army – the risks for China and the world. For years, the town of Pangwa in northern Myanmar was under the control of a warlord allied with the country's military junta. The rare earths mines in the region were operated by Chinese companies, and the shipments of the precious metals ran like clockwork. Reporter Tim McLaughlin says the Chinese government generally sees Myanmar's military regime as a stabilizing force along its border. McLaughlin: Beijing's greatest fear is that the country would splinter apart and there would be some sort of Syria type situation right on a huge border that they have. And so they sat on the fence for a while and then when they saw the Myanmar military started to struggle last year and maybe losing some key strategic outposts, they really kind of, came off the fence and threw their support behind the Myanmar military, not because I think there's any deep love there. I think it's because they really fear the country just crumbling and they think, much like the Myanmar military does, that they are kind of the glue holding this all together. Ha: But that changed late last year, when the KIA, the armed ethnic group battling the military junta, advanced on Pangwa. McLaughlin: The Kachin Independence Army is fighting a larger, decades-long struggle against the Myanmar military for greater autonomy for the Kachin ethnic people. Late last year, The KIA started fighting their way towards this point looking to capture not just Pangwa, but capture all of Kachin's special region one and kind of take it as their own. Ha: The KIA took control of Pangwa, along with the hundreds of valuable rare-earth mines. Overnight, that made the rebel army one of the largest players in the rare earths industry. But Tim says this change of control in Pangwa has put China in a difficult position. Its border with Myanmar is long, so it needs to secure the cooperation of the military junta. But it also needs the rare earths that are now controlled by the rebels. McLaughlin: The KIA is complicated because they are fighting the Myanmar junta, and so Beijing and Chinese companies are now buying rare earths from them, so funding them, but then they're also supporting the Myanmar military, the junta. So they are on both sides of this fight. And they, they have voiced their displeasure to the KIA. They've also closed the border on occasion to try to sort of force their hand. So we did see the mining shut down and saw the border close for a long time. It is since reopened, because we could see the exports going out of Myanmar into China now. So an agreement of some sort between these companies, between the KIA, between China has been reached for now. But like many things in Myanmar at the moment, how long it will last, how steady it is is an open question. Ha: By purchasing the rare earths mined in Myanmar, China is effectively funding the KIA – perhaps the military junta's greatest and most long-standing enemy. This puts China in a pickle, and that's why it's now looking for other suppliers of these in-demand elements. McLaughlin: You'll see much more coming from Laos. You'll see, mining start up in parts of Myanmar where Beijing has better relations with the armed groups, that have closer relations to Beijing. And so you know the big official Chinese companies could go in and operate. You're not relying on this kind of ragtag middlemen to kind of do this stuff. Ha: As China tries to find other places beyond Myanmar for rare earths, the US is also scrambling to find its own alternative to China. Last month, a rare earth mine opened in Wyoming – the first in the US in more than 70 years. At the same time, the US is also tentatively eyeing Myanmar for rare earths. McLaughlin: There's been some interest from State Department and other groups about kind of sussing out and getting a feel for the current situation and what it's like on the ground. Right now the US has very limited engagement with, uh, Myanmar. Myanmar is massively unstable at the moment. You know, you have the junta fighting armed ethnic groups. You have them fighting smaller pro-democracy groups that popped up after the coup. The Junta is starting plans for an election, which I think could be very destabilizing. And then of course you see the military running a really horrific campaign against its own citizens. Ha: And Tim says there are more than just political and humanitarian considerations for the US to factor. McLaughlin: There's just really, really, really huge logistical issues. I mean it would take moving tons of rare earths material from a sort of undeveloped, far remote corner of the country, and then you'd have to move it across a country that's covered with hundreds of warring ethnic groups and, uh, armed groups to a point of exit. Then the question is, where do you bring it to refine it? And the answer to that question is you bring it to China. Because China's the only place that has the capability to refine this stuff. So now we're back where we started. Right? And that is, assuming that Beijing would allow this. Why would China allow any US firms or companies or linked people, come into their own backyard and take what they have obviously deemed a national security asset from them? So there's a myriad of issues. There's obviously the sort of moral issues of the country and, and dealing with various militaries, but just the logistics, the geopolitics of it alone, makes it sound almost inconceivable. Ha: And now you have this rebel army added to the geopolitical mix – it's such a wildcard. McLaughlin: Yeah, I mean I don't think there's another situation that ever reached sort of the geopolitical tension that we're seeing now between the US and China with rare earth in the middle. And so you have these big superpowers and these big tech companies and huge investments. And then when you drill down, one of the key players here is this group that really was born out of a anti-colonial struggle against the Myanmar government. And then I think the other thing, kind of wild card here is, technology and the advancements. Maybe, rare earth magnets will be innovated out of existence. You already see some companies touting that they're running their EV motors with batteries that don't have rare earth in them. Maybe we're not talking about them in the same way, whether it's in 10 years or 15 or 20 years. So there's also this other kind of unknown as to kind of where this whole industry goes.
