Kia Soul mileage is terrible
January 26, 2012 4:51 PM 
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You only have two fuel-ups right now—I'd give yourself some time to track before you start making changes based on the numbers you see here at Fuelly. We've found that vehicles with less than three fuel-ups are either extremely high or extremely low so we don't even show them in public browsing.
Once you have a good number of full fuel-ups you'll have a better sense of where you're at.
Give it some time so the engine can break-in. After that, you SHOULD see up to 20% better fuel economy.
Thanks, I'll try to be patient. Just did another fill up and I'm up to 19.3 mpg. I have had the Eco feature turned on hoping that will help.
Is it petrol or diesel, manual or auto?
Your car will barely warm up until you have done 2+ miles at over 2000rpm, and stop-start traffic is by far the worst for fuel economy. Enough said - I think 66% of book in those conditions isn't bad!
Gas, automatic.
It seems to be going up a little. Today's fill up clocked in at 19.9 mpg. I'm using 87 octane - any thoughts on whether the higher level would increase mpg?
Higher octane gas will not improve the MPG. Higher octane means higher ping (knocking) resistance. If your car does not call for anything higher than 87, and you haven't re-flashed your car's ECU to take advantage of a more aggressive tune, then you are throwing money down the drain using the premium gas.
I have a 2012 Soul+ with the 2.0 liter engine. Had it less then a month and am a bit disappointed with my mileage also. The lowest for me was 23.5 so nothing as bad as yours and the best it did was 26 MPG. I know about breaking in and all but I do think it should at least be able to reach there low figure for city with no lame excuses!
Mpg is down with my last fill up. The car has 2775 miles on it, I would think the engine is broken in by now. The first week I had it, we took a 700 mile round trip that was mostly highway miles. Now I'm pretty much stop and go city driving. This is getting frustrating. Time to take it back to the dealer to get some answers.
Stop and go driving is not going to lend to great gas mileage. Known fact.
Look at my Caravan in my profile. Since the other half has been using it only in the city with NO highway driving, the mileage has dropped to half of what I was getting when driving it mostly highway. It went up some the last two tanks, due to a trip in the middle, but it still had a lot of city mixed in.
Personally I don't think you are having a mechanical or electrical problem, I think its reflecting your current usage. But that is my perspective.
Unless you had some proof (ie gas mileage logs) from your previous car on the same commute, that proved your last car did not grossly fail at achieving EPA ratings, taking it to the dealer is not going to get you anywhere. They're just going to give you the runaround and then try to get you to trade in for a hybrid at a huge loss. By driving poorly enough anybody can make their car perform that bad.
Where are the gas mileage logs from your 700 mile trip? What do those say?
My bet is poor/aggressive driving combined with extremely short trips and pure city environment.
Or rather, where are the mileage logs from the other 2000 miles on the car. You only have 710 miles logged but say there are 2700 on the odo. I sense the missing data may have some answers. Are you skipping fillups or did you just not start logging until there were 2000 miles on the odo?
Sandy, did you have any improvement with your car?
I also have a Kia Soul and I´m having the same problem.
I think you guys have to accept the fact that you drive a Kia ...
Your next car needs to be a hybrid or electric if your commute is that short.
Vehicles have a natural limit somewhere MatrixDom, but everyone can improve their mileage through maintenance, tracking, and careful driving.
Ugh, I know that but I've heard too many stories of people driving their brand new Kia off the lot and having something go wrong with the engine or anything and not being able to drive their car again for months... I'm glad I convinced my mother to get a Mazda 3 and not a Soul with the 1.6 engine.
Kia as a brand are supposed to be good for reliability & have good reviews. Never driven a Kia myself so I can't comment. The Kia Soul itself is too new to have much reliability data available.
http://www.honestjohn.co.uk/carbycar/kia/soul-2008/
My mother was looking at one 2 years ago... Base 1.6 manual everything.. And she went for the Mazda when she realised how better it was in every way.
I give my thumbs up to Hyundai though. They're lineup seem better for today's society. Kia seems to be their brother or cousin who's trying too hard to be as successful as Hyundai.
Nevertheless, I hope you guys figure out the problem with your new cars. I would be outraged if I was in your position.
Kia make some pretty efficient cars now. They actually produce the most fuel efficient car on the market at the moment (excl dodgy stats from plug-in hybrids) - the Rio 1.1TDI. May not be available in the US, though.
That TDI Rio will never come out in the US. Other than VW, auto companies have been reluctant to make a diesel option.
Ciderbarrel tells the truth, although Mazda IS looking to bring over their Skyactiv-D engine to North America which consists of a 2.2L Diesel with a boatload of torque.
This really doesn't apply but I'll note, my wife recently bought a Kia Rio5. Automatic.
Her first fill up got her 36 mpg.
I was seeing this same problem with my 2012 Subaru Forester. I was under 17MPG at first and then all of a sudden I was in the high 20's. Give it time.