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
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