Kia Sportage - MPG, CO2 and running costs

​With mild-hybrid petrol, full-hybrid and plug-in hybrid power all on offer, both family buyers and business users should be able to find the right Kia Sportage model to suit their driving needs.

The 157bhp 1.6 T-GDi petrol returns up to 44.1mpg on the WLTP combined cycle and emits 149g/km. Although these figures seem reasonable in isolation, they can’t compete with the more economical full-hybrid and plug-in hybrid variants. It’s worth bearing in mind that improved overall efficiency comes at a price, and the cheapest PHEV model — in GT-Line trim — is around £9,000 more expensive to buy than the equivalent petrol model.

The full-hybrid starts from around £35,500 in GT-Line trim and, depending on specification, manages up to 51.4mpg and 132g/km of CO2.

Company car drivers will find the plug-in hybrid the most appealing due to its low Benefit-in-Kind (BiK) tax rate — although an electric car will be far lower still. CO2 emissions of 25g/km and a fully-electric range of 43 miles mean that the PHEV falls into the 8 per cent BiK bracket. When testing the plug-in hybrid Sportage, we only achieved an average of 44.6 mpg, which was a bit disappointing. Using a 7.4kW wallbox charger at home, it’ll take around two hours to charge up the battery.

Insurance groups

Insurance premiums for the Sportage shouldn’t be too expensive. Entry-level petrol-powered Sportages in ‘2’ trim start in insurance group 17 out of 50, while the range-topping GT-Line PHEV four-wheel drive sits in group 24.

None of these insurance groups is alarmingly high for a car in this class, but the closely related Hyundai Tuscon is actually cheaper to insure than the Kia, as this starts in group 12.

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Depreciation 

Our data suggests that the Sportage should hold onto a decent chunk of its value over a typical three-year/36,000-mile ownership period. On average, you should see around a 47 to 56 per cent return on the original list price after this time, with the petrol mild-hybrids being the best performers. In comparison, the Hyundai Tucson is just behind the Sportage in terms of residual values, retaining around 47-50 per cent.

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