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Comments
Average 29.67 mpg
Worst 21.29 mpg
Best 40.79 mpg
I have a 2012 SX with approximately 15,000 miles and my results are similar but not identical.
Average: 30 mpg
Worst: 22.3 mpg
Best: 39.1 mpg
I usually get around 24-25 mpg during strictly stop and go traffic but that changes with heavy traffic and/or frequent stops for red lights.
I usually get between 37-38 mph on strictly highway (no stop and go at all). I never reached the magical number of 40 mpg. I thought that would happen on my two FL trips but my mileage actually went down in FL which was a major surprise.
And I used to average close to 31 mpg but now I'm down to about 30 mpg in combined driving. I think that number dropped because I'm spending more time at red lights.
BTW, I read that Florida's E10 requirement was repealed last month.
I'm happy with 34.2 mpg in that kind of driving; it's about 10% better than my traded 2010 Sentra with CVT, and only 2 hp less in the Rio. The Rio is a peppier car, more fun to drive than the Sentra which had a slushy CVT and slushy steering. Will be interesting to see if mpg improves with more miles; just under 800 on the car now.
I was very impressed with the seat comfort of a 3 or 4 dr hatch I sat in last month. It was one trim level up from base base. (had air, keyless entry and cruise I think, my two must haves)
Cdn car so might be optioned differently here..
For a small car it would be one of the ones on my short list..opinion reserved tho until after I drove it of course. Will get the 6 sp auto, which ends an era for me.
I'm one of the rare people that actually would prefer a crank window, but that said, the handle and gear ratio has to have some thought put into it. I was sitting in a crank window Yaris last winter and the handle felt like it would break off in my hand. I'm sure the flexibility had something to do with crash design, but it sure didn't inspire much longevity confidence.
I commend Kia for not going the CVT route. The car wouldn't be in my sights if that was the only type of auto it had.
What other cars did you rule out during your search process?
Other automotive sites have this feature and makes it so much easier to answer questions and carrying on conversations. Saves a lot of repeat questions in trying to clarify things too. Come on Edmunds get up to date!
Let me repeat what I've said earlier in this thread. I was on I-95 earlier today driving to and from the airport with a friend. On more than one occasion I had to slow down because I was doing over 80 mph but didn't realize it because the engine is so smooth and quiet on the highway.
On the downside, the one and only problem I've had with my 2012 SX RIO in 20 months is wind noise from the passenger side. All of the gaskets were checked and they're fine. The KIA service manager advised it's an issue with some KIAs where wind noise goes between the side view mirror and the passenger or drive window, depending on the car. Per the service manager, there is no solution for the problem.
My car has those dang window vents glued onto it (I didn't buy the car new). I am reluctant to remove them cuz that 3M tape that is used is pretty powerful stuff...not sure if paint would come with it Certainly there would be sponge leftovers if the paint stayed.
Those window vents add a lot of extra noise, to an already fairly noisy car. Noise is one reason I am prepared to pay more for my next vehicle...assuming more $ equates to less noise and usually that is the case.
I plan to drive the Rio and see for myself. I am all over the place though as a big part of me wants to own a diesel again, and if I went that route, I want to stick with AWD too, and there are only high enders that offer such a combo. That will be the case I guess until Mazda puts the diesel in the whatever it is called...5 SUV.
I think I would like to have the vents on the back doors that would still vent the car and yet maybe not create as much noise, and if they did create noise, at least it would be behind you rather than right there at your ear.
I will mention another aspect of these vents that add daily to my frustration with them. Mine are smoked, as are most I have seen, and on the drivers side A pillar they add so much extra width to that pillar that it is a safety/stress issue when turning left at busy intersections with lots of pedestrians etc. And is made worse if it is at night, and worse again if raining. it is hard to keep an A pillar sized down so that it does not obstruct your view out, yet retain the ever increasing crash standards that we expect from our cars.
So again, if the vents were only on the rear doors, the obstruction issue would also be solved. Not sure how it would look tho.. might be fine or might look very unbalanced..hard to say.
And another thing I could add..although probably more influential with the smaller the engine and smaller/lighter the car, (Rio then) is that these vents could upset aerodynamics more than one might think, which could either lower, but more likely.. raise fuel use.
FE broke down like this (all based on trip computer, which I've found is ~3% high):
* 42.0 mpg on the outbound leg
* Dropped to 39.0 mpg overall after driving around my destination for half an hour
* Final average mpg: 41.3, thus return leg achieved a bit over 43.6 mpg! (I suspect because it was a little more downhill than the outbound leg.)
So it appears the car's fuel economy is improving with some miles on the engine, just as I have experienced with the Hyundais I've owned over the years.
I think a big reason I did so well on this trip, besides keeping to speed limits, is that I kept an eye on the instantaneous mpg readout almost the whole trip. I noticed a significant difference in highway mpg with only a very slight change in pedal pressure. I've seen that with other cars, but it illustrates how important a light touch on the gas pedal is for achieving excellent FE numbers. And explains why I always get better FE on my cars than my DW does--she doesn't pay any attention to how much pressure she puts on the gas pedal. She drives like a granny, but that by itself doesn't help her get high FE numbers.
My mileage has also steadily improved over the 20k+ I now have on the clock. Regarding watching the real time MPG display, I sometimes manually select a higher gear on a half mile hill I encounter a lot while watching the display. When the car was new the MPG would actually drop when I did this. Now, however, the MPG increases. Finally I can brag that I'm smarter than the car's computer. Hey, it beats listening to the crummy radio stations they have around here.
I never paid so much attention to fuel economy until I got my Rio SX Five Door. Backy talked about driving habits and I quickly learned how much they impact fuel economy.
On the highway, I normally drive around 75 mph and often have to slow down as I wind up doing more than 80 mph because the RIO engine is so smooth and quiet on the Interstate, I don't realize how fast I'm actually going. On average my highway only mpg is between 37 and 38, but usually closer to 37.
However, on those rare stretches of highway where I forced myself to do only 65 mph, I noticed how quickly fuel economy would go up. Unfortunately I never have enough self-discipline to maintain that slow 65 mph pace for long, but I learned how much that impacts fuel economy during highway driving.
Driving habits and road conditions are even more significant for city driving where one's habits can result in a wide array of city only mpg ratings. Do you accelerate rapidly at red lights like I do? Are your car windows open? Do you have numerous traffic lights where you drive locally? Do you drive in heavy traffic every day?
You get the idea and that's why I don't believe there's any way of coming up with a meaningful city mpg rating for a car.
No, usually I accelerate slow and steady, trying to keep the revs down--especially when there's no one behind me. A couple of times I've punched it to see what it would do, and that's fun--but I'm at the age where paying less for gas excites me more than rabbit starts.
Are your car windows open?
Whenever possible, I have windows at least partly open as I love fresh air vs. AC. But in summer and winter, they're usually closed.
Do you have numerous traffic lights where you drive locally?
Sometimes I do, when I need to go downtown, but more often than not my "city" driving is in inner-ring suburbs with their share of lights, sometimes long ones, but not every block as you might find in a large downtown area.
Do you drive in heavy traffic every day?
Not every day, maybe 2-3 times a week on average, as I work from home thus can usually avoid the worst traffic in the morning and evening. But sometimes I get caught in bumper-to-bumper, stop-n-go stuff. And I watch the average mpg plummet.
I agree that coming up with a meaningful standard "city" mpg rating is nigh impossible, given the huge variation in city driving conditions. I've been averaging over the EPA overall mpg rating on my Rio5 in daily driving (around 33-35 mpg on each tank), but as you can see, my "city" driving is not the same as the city driving for many people.
I'd say you are taking a huge risk. Sirius could come along 2 years from now and bill you all those missed months PLUS cumulative interest and late fees until you cancel the pre-authorization and get a receipt (a reference #) for the request.
Nonetheless, my fuel economy in FL went down slightly the past few months and I couldn't figure out why until yesterday. I was filing my invoices and noticed the new FL dealer used 5W-30 oil instead of the preferred/recommended 5W-20 oil. This is the first time a KIA dealership (where I go for all my oil changes) did NOT use 5W-20.
The 30 weight oil is slightly heavier and I think it explains why my mileage has dropped by about 1 mpg.
A quote from the last test update in the January issue:
The Rio's fuel economy is holding steady at the pre-revision 34 combined mpg mark. Do I have to send Kia the difference in unspent gas?
PS: If you feel (guilty) about your Kia Fuel Rebate, simply send it as a Donation to your favorite Charity, or you can send it to the Fund to compensate the majority of Kia Rio Owners that were deceived to begin with. My old 2006 Kia Rio5 got better MPG with its antiquated 1.6 (non-GDI) Engine with a 4 Speed Automatic Transmission. Explain that, please?
It's hard to understand why someone who's so concerned about a few mpg will spend twice as much money on that car versus the RIO. Can you please explain?
What a winter! The coldest one in the Twin Cities since 1978-9 (I was here for that one, too). But it was a good lesson of the effect of cold weather on fuel economy. I made several trips from the Twin Cities to Rochester this winter, about 170 miles round trip. Almost all of them were in my Rio5. Most of the miles are on a 4-lane highway with a (mostly) 65 mph limit. I don't stray much from that, especially in winter. I saw a huge difference in FE depending on temperature. On this trip in the summer and fall, I got a bit over 40 mpg. But when the temps were cold, i.e. below zero F, I could only manage low-to-mid 30s. When temps were in the teens, mpg went up to upper 30s. Then recently the cold spell finally broke and we saw some 30s and 40s, and I was back to 40+ mpg again. Similarly, in around-town driving, I was getting low-to-mid 30s this summer and fall, but that dipped as low as the mid-20s in below-zero weather--which we had a lot of this winter, over 50 days of it. Now that temps are warmer, 20s-40s, the around-town average is slowly creeping up and is at 31 mpg today, rising steadily as the temps have gone up.
Just another example of "YMMV". Winter in MN is a lot different than winter in, say, San Diego.
I agree with Phill1 about fuel economy of 2012+ Kia Rio 5. Fuel economy is not what Kia had advertised. I usually get 25-26 MPG city and 32-35 MPG highway. Average is somewhere around 30-31 MPG. It has been driving me crazy for the first 12 months of ownership; however, I try not to think about it anymore. The car is well built and has lots of upgrades (I have the SX model), and This makes up for the bad gas millage.
If I have to buy another Kia, I might wait and think very hard about it because there are so many other good choices right now-maybe middle size car would be better considering that it is bigger and has better gas millage than the Rio.
Just enjoy your cars guys and spend your money on other things in life.
P.S.
The car has been very reliable, and I hope it stays the same way !
Did a road trip Monday-Tuesday, 80 miles each way, in my 2013 Rio5 AT. Outbound was under nearly ideal conditions: ~60 degrees, light wind, dry. Kept speed at just over 65 mph most of the way with a few slower stretches for construction and a couple of stops. FE was 42.9 mpg. The return was another story: strong headwinds, ~50 degrees, and I went a little faster, up to 70 much of the way. Also more stops as I went a slightly different route the last 20 miles. FE was only 37.9 mpg... but still over the car's EPA highway rating.