We can’t all be mpg stars. That’s the unfortunate reality with our long-term 2017 Kia Sportage EX AWD, a compact crossover equipped with all-wheel drive and fuel economy that underdelivers. It’s unfortunate, as the Sportage has a few great advantages to offer crossover consumers. After testing the Sportage and most of the rest of the class with our $150,000 gas analyzer on a set testing route for Real MPG, here’s what we found.
Our 3,616-pound Sportage with its 181-hp, 2.4-liter inline-four earned a Real MPG rating of 19.4/28.5/22.6 mpg city/highway/combined. That’s well short of the crossover’s AWD EPA rating of 21 mpg in the city, but it’s also impressively above the 25-mpg highway rating. Unfortunately, an increasing percentage of the driving many of us do is in traffic or in the city … or on the highway at city speeds. Even if you don’t live in perpetually congested Los Angeles, city mileage is important—consider that the EPA’s annual fuel cost calculator is based on 55 percent city and 45 percent highway driving.
If you’ve seen our enormously helpful Big Test of NINE five-seat crossovers, you may have noticed that even the 271-hp, six-cylinder Jeep Cherokee outperforms the four-cylinder Kia Sportage in Real MPG for the city and combined ratings with 21.7/28.1/24.2. Don’t get too excited about that Jeep, though, as it placed last out of nine crossovers in our consumer-focused comparison. (The all-wheel-drive Nissan Rogue, for comparison, achieved 18.4/28.6/21.9 ratings in Real MPG testing.)
The Sportage’s EPA ratings aren’t the best, either, at 21/25 mpg. Anyone comparing 2016s of anything to 2017 models should know that the EPA has made the testing procedures more stringent, so a car with no changes might still get a revised rating for 2017. Having said that, the all-wheel-drive Sportage’s ratings fall below other 2017s that have been rated so far, including the Hyundai Tucson’s 24-25/28-30 mpg, the Ford Escape 1.5’s 22/28 mpg, and the Chevrolet Equinox’s 20/28 mpg. The Equinox will be replaced by a more efficient model before long, however, and the Subaru Forester is good for a very respectable 26/32 mpg. Front-drive Sportages perform better at 22-23/29-30 mpg, but even that might fall to the lower half of the class once the EPA rates every compact crossover competitor for 2017.
The bottom line is that you’re not going to get as much out of every gallon of fuel in the Sportage as you would with many others in its class. And that subtly affects the long-term costs to own whatever car you’re considering. Further, a more efficient car with a decent-sized fuel tank will allow you to drive by the gas station more often, and yes, there’s also that thing about it being better for the environment.
The Sportage does offer a cool multimode driving system I really like, but the Eco mode not only affects the accelerator pedal’s sensitivity (good) but also reduces the weight of the steering too much (not so good). The mechanically related Hyundai Tucson gets better mileage from a turbo-four/dual-clutch automatic setup, but I’ve found that combination also has a few driving dynamics limitations in the real world.
So mileage on our all-wheel-drive 2017 Sportage EX—whether using Real MPG or the EPA—isn’t exactly a class-leading feature. If I were in the market for a $25,000-$37,000 crossover, it’s definitely one consideration that would move it lower on my list. Even so, there’s much more to this Kia crossover than just that, so stay tuned as we comprehensively explore the Sportage over the next few months.
More on our long-term Kia Sportage right here:
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