(JOHANNESBURG) 18 November 2020 – The team from popular local television show, Wild in SA, recently challenged the KIA Seltos CRDI to an ‘Epic Economy Drive’. The idea was simple: start off with a full tank and then hit the N1 highway from Johannesburg to Cape Town, and see how the Seltos goes.

n this exercise, presenter Tumelo Maketekete, decided to do the ‘Joe Soap’ test and drive the vehicle as it would normally be driven: sticking to the speed limit and overtaking when neccesseary, with the aircon at full blast in the heat of the Karoo

Tumelo comments, “By the time we reached Bloemfontein, at about 380km, the fuel guage had not budged. We had quite a bit of road traffic, so it wasn’t just one smooth drive, and it was unbelievably hot! So definitely not perfect test conditions for fuel consumption, but definitely perfect test conditions for local drivers, which is what we were trying to show.”

For the Epic Economy Drive, Tumelo was in a Seltos 1.5 CRDI EX, which is the entry-level version with six-speed manual gearbox. The 1.5 litre diesel engine delivers 86kW and 250Nm of torque. The team were impressed with the vehicle’s standard specification ranging from air-conditioning and cruise control to the ability to use Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.

“Once in the Karoo, our quest for minimal fuel use was put to the test,” says Tumelo. “Not only was it boiling hot, but we were battered by some proper crosswinds and headwinds for quite a while. Which is exactly why we love doing local tests such as these, because we can give our audience a much more realistic view of how cars perform on South African roads.”

At around 1,078km into the trip, the Seltos CRDI showed it had a range of about 60km to go. Luckily, the team were only 30km from Laingsburg, so they weren’t too worried about about running out of fuel in the middle of nowhere.

In the end, and to avoid damaging the engine, Tumelo stopped just short of running the tank dry. The results were astounding: the KIA Seltos CRDI achieved a fantastic 4.37-litres/100km. This is a brilliant result, especially considering that no special ‘fuel saving’ measures were used – it was just a normal drive.

You can watch the full episode here, or tune in to Ignition (DSTV Channel 189) at the following times:

Wednesday, 18 November at 19:50

Thursday, 19 November at 15:50

Friday, 20 November at 08:20

Saturday, 21 November at 09:50

Sunday, 22 November at 17:50

Monday, 23 November at 20:50

Tuesday, 24 November at 11:50