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Re: New to kia

Posted: Sun Oct 21, 2018 7:36 am
by deguy
You have to be a Which? subscriber to look at the results online, but i took a look at their site and they seem very keen on explaining how they do their "more realistic" motorway test.

In my opinion when people buy a hybrid, it tends to be quite targeted to a specific use case, and I'm not sure that lots of motorway driving is one of those use cases. Certainly I only do a few motorway trips per year, the rest is largely 20km commute to work on B roads and out of the city.

But the cold starts are infuriating in their inflexibility - at least on the HEV you cannot make use of good battery charge to go electric out of a residential area until you hit the main road, for example (not that that would help emissions figures, but desirable in the real world).

Re: New to kia

Posted: Mon Oct 22, 2018 11:02 am
by jerrytaff
I agree about the use case. I used to have plenty of work related 250 mile round trip motorway journeys - my previous car was diesel.Great for the long journeys, not quite so efficient for my regular commute (30 miles each way on fast roads) due to the time it took for for it to get up to temperature, and absolutely hopeless for short journeys around town (as well as being polluting and a pig to park). My circumstances have changed,and those short journeys now dominate. However, I will be doing a 100 mile round trip several times a month, and will also intend to go on the occasional much longer journey. My PHEV is ideal. Easy to drive around town (and to park), giving me infinite mpg. Yesterday I did the 100 mile round trip on a mixture of EV and HEV modes. 101mpg out, 77 mpg home - at night, with heating and in heavy traffic due to motorway accidents.

I don't know how that will change as we get into winter, but it is frustrating that I can't pre-heat the car while it is on charge, and my understanding is that I will be running the engine to heat the cabin, even if only doing a short journey with plenty of electric power to spare. I had hoped my car would be fitted with the 220V inverter so I might be able to find a low power fan heater I could use, but sadly my car isn't equipped with it. Does anyone know which models have it? The spec sheet which gives all the features and options for the range does not mention the inverter.

Re: New to kia

Posted: Wed Oct 24, 2018 10:55 pm
by r whinnie
Re Which emissions comments, I don't think they give any details as to levels, but what occured to me was the Niro was the only hybrid mentioned with high emissions, no Toyota or interestingly Hyundai