Kia Sorento Road trip demonstrates our Sorento’s ef ciency and practicality
Our hybrid large SUV demonstrates its fuel efficiency and load-lugging ability on a run to Canterbury
Mileage 2450 List price £39,100 Target Price £37,489 Price as tested £39,505 Test economy 45.0mpg
IN THE PAST few weeks, I’ve been better educating myself about hybrid technology, and, in particular, the way it works on my Kia Sorento. And I’ve been using that information to improve fuel efficiency.
The basics are that the car uses the electric motor when you pull away and up to around 16mph, as long as you’re not too heavy on the accelerator. That should make it really economical around town. Then, when you’re accelerating at higher speeds, it uses the engine and electric motor together to provide optimum power. It switches to engine power alone for fast cruising, and when you’re decelerating it turns the engine off and uses regenerative braking to replenish the battery. You can change all of this, though, using the Sorento’s different modes to maximise either electric or engine use.
There’s a dial in the instrument panel that shows me when the battery is being charged, when the car is being driven in an eco-friendly way and when it’s using maximum power. There’s also a small EV (electric vehicle) mode indicator that tells me when the car is running on electric power alone.
On a recent 100-mile motorway drive to Canterbury, I found that if I was gentle on the accelerator, I could get the Sorento to switch to EV mode for much of the time, even when cruising at 70mph. The benefit of this became apparent when I brimmed the fuel tank the following day and found that I’d managed to achieve 45mpg on that trip – around 4mpg better than the official average economy figure.
That same trip also confirmed just how cavernous the Sorento is. I was collecting my daughter from university, and once we’d folded the second and third rows of seats down, we were easily able to pack in everything that she’d spent months accumulating in her student flat.
Both fully laden and empty, the Sorento was eminently comfortable on the motorway. The suspension is forgiving and the relatively small (17in) wheels of my 2 trim car are ideal for coping with most potholes and bumps. Even the often unbearably noisy concrete sections of some motorways make very little difference to the Sorento’s comfort and noise levels.
The only limiting factor that became apparent while driving around Canterbury was that the Sorento was a little large for some of the narrower lanes. That said, I managed to squeeze it into Beer Cart Lane for a quick photo outside The Chaucer Bookshop, a beautiful 18th-century building that has a wide range of books – including The Canterbury Tales.