2021 Kia Sportage Rental - Surprisingly efficient

[serialk11r]

Well a lady pulled out from a parking spot on the side of the road in front of my G35 as I was completing a lane change and I crashed into her car, so that car is now gone. Geico gave me an Enterprise rental, and unfortunately since there's a car shortage these days they only had a Jeep Compass and Kia Sportage, so I went for the Kia Sportage as it was a 2WD (no snow right now, want the higher mpg).

I was a little upset there wasn't a more fuel efficient car because this thing is really, really tall, and I expected the highway mpg to be not so stellar. However, I was very pleasantly surprised after driving it about 250 miles:

Positives:
-6th gear is VERY tall considering the engine is 2L NA pulling a fairly big car: 2000rpm@65mph
-Aero drag is actually pretty low, cruise control and 65mph was about 35-36mpg. The rear window is pretty small, they did some boat tailing at the end and the cabin slopes downward a bit.
-Instant mpg gauge reacts very quickly, makes it easy to drive with the engine at efficient load.

Negatives:
-Automatic transmission likes unlocking the torque converter which tanks the mpg
-Pedals are way too sensitive, very difficult to control the engine.

I managed to average 34.5mpg including about 1 hour of heavy crawling traffic without shutting the engine off at all going from the SF Bay Area up to Auburn, then I averaged 32.2mpg going from Auburn up to Reno (net altitude gain of 3800ft), average speed a little over 60mph.

Glide downhill in neutral when engine load drops below 30% in 6th gear, climb hills in manual mode to lock the torque converter (had to alternate between 5th and 6th because the car doesn't have enough power to go up a hill in 6th). I think I can get about 1mpg more now that I have more practice getting the torque converter to lock.

I have to say I'm pretty impressed by this car; Road noise is very low, wind noise is tolerable, mpg is very good, the lane assist and sound system work very well considering the price. That said, I still wouldn't buy one because the driver controls are way too twitchy.

[ksa8907]

I recently rented a kia k5 with the 2.5l turbo, i was surprised by the torque as well as excellent mpg. I should probably start considering hyundai and kia as a legitimate car company I suppose.