Kia Soul mileage is terrible

[MissDee]

My 2012 Kia Soul is getting less than 17 mpg and it's supposed to average 26.9. I drive basically 10 miles to work round trip each day, but it's a lot of stop and go traffic. I'd expect to get a little less than average but not this much. Anyone else experiencing mileage this poor? Thanks.

[pb]

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.

[MatrixDom]

Give it some time so the engine can break-in. After that, you SHOULD see up to 20% better fuel economy.

[MissDee]

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.

[Draigflag]

Is it petrol or diesel, manual or auto?

[baldmosher]

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!

[MissDee]

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?

[Ciderbarrel]

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.

[ScottMann]

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!

[MissDee]

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.