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.

Jordan Golson | 

Apr 15, 2022 | 2 min read

Honda/Nissan

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.

Jordan Golson

Jordan Golson is a transportation reporter covering cars, trains, planes, future cities, mobility and more — basically, if it moves and doesn’t go to space, he's on it. He is especially interested in the intersection of transportation and technology, and that means he goes deep into electric cars, autonomous vehicle tech, sensors, safety, connectivity, and similar topics.