Blutos after the fourth week.

Following on from my previous summaries of the experience of driving my new Seltos for the first couple of weeks, I thought I would add a few things I've experienced in the fourth week. As a reminder my car is :- Kia Seltos PE GT-Line AWD 2023, 1.6 l turbo, 8 speed automatic, Neptune Blue.

First off, economy. Another week with similar driving trends using the Eco mode and refueling with  ULP91. A trip to the Gold Coast from the Sunshine Coast and then back again. Also including a trip up into the Sunshine Coast Hinterland and some short around town driving. All up about 540 Km with about 100 Km range left according to the computer. After refueling the calculated economy was 7.1 l/100 Km and better than 7.7 l/100 Km last week. I am unsure why it was 0.6 l/100 km better this week as I don't think I did anything different. 

Wireless CarPlay Adapter - Not long after I purchased the car I decided that the lack of wireless CarPlay needed to be remedied. I noticed a roughly half price deal with free shipping for a CarLinkit CPC200-2AIR 5.0 Wireless Android Auto Apple Carplay Kit from an online store and and ordered it for around $70, down from $140 or so. (https://www.lightinthebox.com/en/p/carlinkit-5-0-carplay-android-auto-wireless-adapter-portable-dongle-for-oem-car-radio-with-wired-carplay-android-auto-2023-newest-cpc200-2air_p9543179.html?prm=1.5.1.1)  Reviews I had seen on CarLinKit gear suggested it was an ok brand. It arrived through the week so I installed it, very easy, just a matter of plugging it into the CarPlay USBA port on the Seltos, letting it power up and then connecting to it via Bluetooth from my iPhone 13 Pro. It works just the same as the wired CarPlay connection with the screen responsiveness being about the same. The only minor glitch with it is that the logo on the device is actually a light which indicates the various stages of connection. Unfortunately when the phone is connected this is a fairly bright flashing green light which is quite distracting when driving at night. The simple solution is to leave it face down in the Centre console. When I get into the car it seems to take about 20-25 secs before the phone screen shows up on the car display. But this isn't too much of a problem as it usually takes me that amount time to get the car out of the garage, make sure the garage door is closed, put my seat belt on and generally get ready to drive off. The phone can now sit on the wireless charging pad to keep it charged up while driving. The phone got a little warm during a two hour trip but nothing close to causing it any problems. So all up I'm very happy with it. I'm not sure I would pay the full price for it as there seem to be reasonably rated products on Amazon for roughly $80-$90. 

Tyre Pressures - I got out my trusty old tyre pressure gauge that I use when I go beach driving in my 4WD Ute camper and checked the Seltos's tyre pressure after 24 hr of sitting in the garage, so as cold as they were going to get in a SEQ winter. The pressures were all around 31-32 psi, then I checked using the built in TPMS in the car and it showed they were at 32-33 psi, which is close enough for me. The recommended cold pressures are 33 psi for a lightly laden Seltos (according to the tyre placard on the drivers door sill). After an hour of highway driving at 100-110 kph the pressure rose to 35-36 psi and stayed there. This seems about right and what I would expect. 

Miscellaneous - The Auto Hold handbrake function only works in Drive not reverse. Tried it when reversing out of a slightly steep car park and found it wouldn't engage. I drive quite a bit at night at the moment and have the dash lights as low as I can get them and this seems to work quite nicely, except for the little red and blue coloured arrows that set the temperature for the interior. These are almost invisible at these light levels, now I know where they are I can adjust the temperature without needing to see them. 

My Seltos is booked in for its 3000 Km checkup next week and by the time I drop it into the dealer it will have done about 2600 kms. All seems good so far and no issues to report to them. Hopefully all the future services are similarly boring. 

Bye Jeff.

Sent from my iPad

Blutos after the third week.

Following on from my previous summaries of the experience of driving my new Seltos for the first couple of weeks, I thought I would add a few things I've experienced in the third week. As a reminder my car is :- Kia Seltos PE GT-Line AWD 2023, 1.6 l turbo, 8 speed automatic, Neptune Blue.

This week I got the Seltos very dirty. I was wanting to try out the Centre Diff Lock button and see what it did. I found a gravel road out the back of Caloundra and went for a little drive, the gravel turned into a dirt track with potholes so I clicked the Centre diff lock button and continued. The potholes were pretty full of water from recent rain and then it started to get muddy. It was at this stage that I decided that a modicum of discretion was in order so rather than playing around in the mud as there was no one about and I wasn't carrying any sort of recovery equipment, I did a quick multi-point turn trying to stay on the track as much as possible so as not to encounter any unseen muddy areas and headed back to civilization. At no stage was I really experiencing any problems with the Seltos, it was handling it quite well, the extra bit of clearance being nice and the tyres and drive system were gripping quite well. I've had a lot of experience driving a 4WD as my other car is a "Proper" 4WD which I use for camping, beach driving and outback touring but I wasn't prepared to risk the new car. I need to find a nice dry track with moderately testing wombat holes to see how the Centre diff lock goes managing different tyres lifting off the ground and reducing traction and forward progress. 

Fuel Economy - Once again no surprises this weeks fuel economy is coming in at 7.7 l/100 Km for close to 500 Km with still more than 100 Km showing on the fuel gauge. This brings the car up to about 1500 Km and half way to the 3000 Km first service and checkup. So I've booked it in for a few weeks time since there is a bit of lag in ringing up and getting booked in. 

After leaving the car in the sun for about three hours on hotish SEQ winter day I returned to a very warm car. I used the seat cooler for the first time and it was great. Used on low for about 15 min until the car cooled down then didn't need it anymore. This will be great on the hot summer days. 

I played around with the Auto hand brake function and it seemed to work quite well. As soon as you start to accelerate it takes the hand brake off and puts it on once you are stopped again. The light shows green when it is braking and white/grey when not braking. I did notice that it doesn't feel quite right when parking as I was expecting it to creep a little bit as you take your foot off the brake. Not sure I'll use this feature but it does seem to work as advertised. 

Played with the sunroof and worked out how to fully open it as well as just tilt it. Nice on a sunny winter day if the sun isn't shining directly in. After tilting it I thought that it didn't close properly but it did. 

All up I'm still really enjoying driving the car and still liking how quiet and smooth it is.

Bye Jeff.

Sent from my iPad

Blutos after the second week.

The Second week. 

 Following on from my summary of the experience of driving my new Seltos for the first week, I thought I would add a few things I've experienced in the second week. As a reminder my car is :- Kia Seltos PE GT-Line AWD 2023, 1.6 l turbo, 8 speed automatic, Neptune Blue.

Fuel Economy 

Essentially the economy ended up very close to what I saw in the first week with just over another 500 Km driven and about 100 Km remaining according to the car computer. The fuel was ULP91 and I  left the car in Eco mode. The car computer said the economy was 7.5 l/100 Km and after refueling I calculated it to be 7.8 l/100 Km, compared to a figure of 7.6 l/100 Km after the previous weeks refuel. 

Very similar driving except I added a nearly 100 Km road trip to the Sunshine Coast Hinterland around Maleny. For the past 15 years or so I have owned and driven diesel cars (Pajero, Bt-50 and i30 diesel) and the extra torque from the diesel engine means they generally handle hills pretty well so I was unsure how the Seltos would perform in the steeper terrain. In fact it did quite well, simply changing down a gear and not struggling at all on the steep sections. It was quite fun to drive in some of the tight, twisty sections. I'm still really impressed with the quiet ride and smooth handling of the Seltos. 

Speedo Calibration 

In a series of unscientific tests I used both my iPhone and iPad and their built in GPS systems to check whether the figure reported by the car's speedo is close to accurate. I was pretty surprised to find that at all the speeds I checked 50, 60, 80, 90, 100, 110 kph the car speedo was different to the GPS speed by 2 kph. For example if the car Speedo showed 100 kph then the GPS showed 98 kph and if the car speedo showed 50 kph then the GPS showed 48 kph. This is very different to what I was used to with my previous cars where the difference always seemed to be a percentage of the speed. For example in the Pajero if the car speedo showed 100 kph then the GPS showed roughly 94 kph, a difference of 6% then when the car speedo showed 50 kph the GPS showed 47 kph. So a constant percentage in the older car whereas the Seltos shows a constant amount which is 2 kph. I guess this has to do with the digital display system for the Speedo. Note this is on the GT-Line with 18" tyres it may be different on the models with smaller tyres. 

Miscellaneous 

A couple of times when I was connecting my iPhone via the wired CarPlay the music would switch from the Bluetooth connection to the CarPlay connection and it sounded much deeper and fuller. I am not anywhere close to being an audiophile and really don't generally notice these things but the music did sound much better using CarPlay. I suspect this may be due to the amount of compression needed to get the music transmitted over Bluetooth.

I also used the sunroof (just opening the cover) a little bit but I'm still getting used to it. Having that extra image of the sky in the corner of my vision was a little distracting at first but I think I got used to it.  Maybe next week I'll actually open up the sunroof and see how windy it is. 

Bye Jeff.

Sent from my iPad

New Kia Seltos after a week

Just thought I would jot down a few experiences of owning and driving my new Seltos for about a week or so now. I haven't had a chance to try everything out yet but hopefully you can get a feeling for the car and what it's like to own and drive. 

Kia Seltos PE GT-Line AWD 2023, 1.6 l turbo, 8 speed automatic, Neptune Blue.

I picked the car up from the dealer about a week ago and after signing the paperwork and handling over the keys to my trade in, the salesman spent about 10 min giving me a rundown on using the car and some of the features. Then after confirming my insurance I headed off to drive home. 

The very first impression I had was that this car was quiet. Virtually no engine noise and at around town speeds the tyre and wind noise were minimal. Once warmed up the automatic is extremely smooth shifting and I can't tell when it changes gear. I generally try to be a fairly smooth driver so I'm not really into fast acceleration and the Seltos took off from the traffic lights very nicely and you don't really notice the turbo. However, if you do want to accelerate quickly then it can do that as well. 

Highway Driving - I did about 380 Km of highway driving (Sunshine Coast to Gold Coast and back) in normal mode, on the first tank of fuel, which was provided by the dealer, I'm assuming it was ULP91 but could have been E10 if they were being cheap. 😊

The car computer reported the fuel economy for this to be 6.3 l/100 Km which is pretty good. It cruises on the highway at 100 and 110 kph very nicely and the Lane Keeping and Adaptive Cruise Control both work pretty well. You can feel the steering wheel keeping you within the lane if you stray too close to one of the white lines. It was still very quiet with minimal tyre and wind noise. 

Media Centre - This is the first time I've had a car with Apple CarPlay and using an Apple USB to lightning cable worked perfectly to connect my iPhone 13Pro. I found I really only used this when going on a longer drive, otherwise I simply rely on Bluetooth to play music and podcasts for shorter trips as my phone can stay in my pocket. It really doesn't make a lot of sense having a wireless charger then requiring a wired connection for Apple CarPlay as the wired connection will charge the phone. Getting the phone in the right spot to enable the wireless charging took me awhile to work out as you need to have the car on and both front doors closed. As I had been experimenting with a few things I had one of the doors open and initially couldn't get the wireless charging to work. 

I played around with positioning where the sound comes from and set it for roughly the drivers seat but found I could really only hear anything from the front speakers. So I reset it to the default position in the middle of the car and I sounds much better with sound coming from around the whole car. 

I thought the mood lighting was going to be a fairly wanky feature but it is fairly subtle and quite soothing when driving at night. 

Cruise Control - As I said earlier the Adaptive Cruise Control works well in the traffic on the highway. On long hills e.g. coming down the Gateway Motorway Bridge the car sticks pretty much to the set speed maybe 1 kph over but no more. On short sharp hills around town it is more prone to going over the set speed by 3-4 kph but not more than that. Seems to be that the car speeds up to get up the hill then takes a bit to realize it is then going downhill and needs to slow down. I think the most I saw was 4 kph over the set speed. 

Fuel Economy - Refuelled after nearly a week with 467 km on the Odometer and the car computer showing approximately 147 km of driving still to go with an economy of 8.3 l/100km. This included about 380 km of highway driving (economy shown as 6.3 l/100km), the rest around town, all done using the Normal mode. When I did the fuel economy calculation using the actual number of litres used for the km travelled I was surprised that it was less than the reported figure and came in at 7.6 l/100km. I'm unsure what grade of fuel the dealer used but I have used ULP91, so I'll see how that goes. This second tank of fuel I'll also leave the car in Eco mode to see if it makes any difference.

Seats - The seats are quite comfortable and adjustable. I haven't had a chance to try the cooling seat functionality as it's winter in South East Qld. Also, I haven't needed the seat warming functionality as it's winter in South East Qld. 😊 The seat moving to make it easier to get in and out is something I've not experienced before and it is quite nice. One of the reasons I changed to a small SUV from my old i30 is because my knees are getting old and creaky and the i30 was too low to the ground to get in and out of easily. 

Kia Connect - According to the brochures and advertising I get 7 years of Kia Connect service. I created an account through the app relatively easily but then had trouble linking it to my car. I was trying to do this while the car was in the garage and I kept getting a car has unstable signal error message. I remembered seeing a post somewhere that Connect uses Optus's mobile network so a day or so later I tried to connect while out and about and had no trouble. So the car is now recognized and linked to the phone app. It reports I am covered until 2030. Not sure I'll need this but maybe nice to have. One quibble, on the Home Screen for the car it shows an image of a Seltos but it is a Pluton Blue colour not the Neptune Blue colour it actually is. I can't find a preference to change this. 

Intelligent Speed Limit Assist - Whoever named this feature must have done so with a large dose of irony, as it is so not fit for purpose as to be almost comical. The camera and computer software that performs this task really struggles. In addition to having problems with school zones out of hours, it also occasionally picks up the speed signs on slip roads next to the highway, has trouble with road works signs  and every so often simply ignores the quite visible speed sign. The salesman said that Kia Australia were aware of the problems and were working on a fix, this can't come soon enough. Something this annoying has to be correct 100% of the time or it causes more problems than it is trying to solve. In the meantime I guess I just have to manually switch it off each time I go for a drive. 

Miscellaneous - There is no hard copy of the manual. I downloaded a pdf onto my iPad and found that works pretty well as it is easy to search. To get my car in the garage I have to reverse down the driveway and then a tricky angled reverse into the garage. All the parking sensors get a good work out during this process. The reverse camera is pretty good as are the mirrors for these close encounters but I would like to have a top down view utilizing the existing cameras in the car. I really appreciate having a full sized spare tyre, especially for out of town trips. There is quite a bit of room around the spare tyre for storage. I currently have a battery jump starter pack and a small tool roll and will eventually fit a small first kit as well as a few other sundry bits and pieces. 

All up I'm very pleased with this car as it's one of the easiest to drive and most comfortable cars I've owned. 

Bye Jeff.

Sent from my iPad