Hyundai & Kia make a mess of U.S. fuel consumption figures

Hyundai and Kia has admitted to mistakes in their fuel consumption figure in the U.S. and are set to compensate owners.

Official fuel consumption figures are, at best, a guide to relative fuel consumption between different cars. Beyond that they’re pointless. But it seems Hyundai and Kia in the States have got their collective knickers in a bit of a twist and managed to overstate the frugality of their cars.

As a result, after an investigation by the EPA (Environment Protection Agency) in the US, both Korean companies are adjusting the fuel consumption figures for their cars and paying compensation to owners.

We’re not taking silly figures here – the odd one or two mpg is all it is – but it’s still going to cost Hyundai/Kia a few bob. They’re paying owners the cost difference between the revised figures and previous figures based on their mileage and adding 15 per cent for good measure.

But what all this does is show the stupidity of the current measure of fuel consumption, where car makers follow a formula laid down by legislators to come up with an official figure. And in case you didn’t realise, there’s no testing for CO2 emissions, just a figure cobbled together from the official mpg.

It’s good that Hyundai/Kia are biting the bullet, apologising for their cock up – ‘Procedural Errors’, apparently – and making owners’ ‘losses’ good. Not that they had much choice.

But isn’t it about time car maker had to submit every model for official real world testing by an independent body?