Economy driving: Hyundai i30
15 Sep, 2008
42 Comments 
The SR version brings chrome and matt silver blended wheels, side skirts, spoiler, in-dash 6 CD MP3 stacker, ESP, TCS and different trim. Speaking of trim, Hyundai has sorted one of the bugbears of small hatches - the rear seats. How it manages to make them comfortable, supportive and spacious is truly a mystery, considering the combination of those three qualities seems to elude manufacturers who have been around a lot longer than this South Korean.
But I digress. With a 53-litre tank, the i30’s combined cycle is a respectable 7.2-litres/100km. But we’re not interested in the combined cycle. We’re going for worst conditions possible.
You could argue that city driving is about as bad as you can get. Stop-start conditions, with traffic lights, give-way signs, idiots who pull in front of you, road works, traffic jams, and that’s before I get out of my suburb. No kidding.
So to get an idea of the worst possible scenario, we drove around deliberately avoiding all A-roads. Yes, that’s right - it was B-roads, or less. So, no freeways, highways, or other high speed/low-fuel-useage runs. To make things really interesting, every single road that we took was 70km/h or less. We even threw in a couple of drive-through situations - well, a guy’s gotta eat, doesn’t he?
Again, we took on the challenge of trying to squeeze as much mileage (or should that be kilometreage?) using clever driving techniques. So rather than fitting special tyres, stripping out interior furniture, and going on a crash diet, it was decided that we would again load up the car with cargo and keep everything as standard, as per our previous attempt in a Peugeot 308.
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September 15th, 2008 at 6:29 pm
It would be the icing on the cake of diesel was actually cheaper than petrol in australia.
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September 15th, 2008 at 6:57 pm
Tom, diesel is not cheaper than petrol anywhere, except in NZ, where there is no tax on diesel at the pump but they get it back in the Road User Charge, which is paid seperately.
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September 15th, 2008 at 7:25 pm
Please show us the figures that made you arrive at the 10 months figure. I find it hard to believe plus your methodology is deeply flawed.
You should be comparing a a Diesel against a petrol SLX or SX
Not an SLX against an SR
The SLX diesel costs $2500 more then a petrol version. That would be the closer to the TOTAL cost fuel for the year not the difference.
10 months? 15000km per year, no way!
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September 15th, 2008 at 7:27 pm
Having owned a mazda6 diesel for 1 1/2 yrs I will never buy a petrol engine again…I would miss the grunt that a diesel turbo has!!
IMO the turbo diesel is by far the best engine type for daily driving in traffic or on the freeway (manual or auto - although manual is better by far and the grunt of the engine allows for less gear changes).
Sucked in to the folk who still think a diesel is smelly and dirty and so they dont choose this engine type over the petrol variant….poor choice. Try it….you won’t go back….especially in a small car you would be nuts not to go for the grunt, it makes it so easy to drive…
yes I could go on…I’m so stoked by these engines…sorry :)
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September 15th, 2008 at 7:42 pm
man i like these cars!
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September 15th, 2008 at 8:05 pm
I agree diesel is the way to go & in the i30, the base SX T/D manual model is the best buy in my opinion. For some reason, I think the SX interior looks better than the SLX, but overall, it does not matter whether you buy the petrol or diesel i30 as they are both great cars.
Cheers !
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September 15th, 2008 at 8:15 pm
Karl, One of your tips for saving fuel was “drive down hill in gear” don’t you mean neutral????
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September 15th, 2008 at 8:25 pm
Not, if you coast down a hill in a lower gear, the motion will keep the revs above idle, and no fuel will need to be used to keep if from stalling. If you flick it into neutral or hold the clutch in, the engine will have to use a little fuel to keep from stalling, as if it was standing still.
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September 15th, 2008 at 8:25 pm
Captain Mainwaring said
“diesel is not cheaper than petrol anywhere…”
Check your facts before making such blanket statements. I live in Spain and currently diesel is CHEAPER than petrol, which explains why almost 80% of new car sales are of the diesel variety.
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September 15th, 2008 at 9:07 pm
SamR: Fair point on the models. Comparing the SLX petrol to SLX diesel, the $2500 difference can be made up in under 3 years of urban driving based on an average 15,000 km per year at today’s petrol and diesel prices.
But if you are an efficiency minded driver and opt for the highest model diesel available, then you will come out in front after only 10 months. Comparing apples with apples is hard when you aren’t given the chance to compare them.
And I’m guessing that with diesels becoming fairly popular in the next few years, the resale value of the diesel will stay a bit higher percentage wise than the petrol, putting you further in front.
What I want is a series turbo diesel hybrid (1.0L or smaller) in a size comparable to a Liberty wagon. I’d happily trade the spare in and use run flats if more room is needed for batteries. Diesel achieve their best efficiencies at max load so none of this tootling around business. Run it fully loaded for minutes at a time for maximum charging, then switch it off. Probably isn’t that simple but I can hope :)
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September 15th, 2008 at 9:07 pm
diesel is cheaper than petrol in many asian countries too.. though probably a hell lot dirtier.
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September 15th, 2008 at 9:08 pm
i dont see how driving down hill in neutral or in gear makes any difference.
the fuel being injected into a motor is controlled by the throttle percentage not the revs of the engine.
if you have zero percent throttle the only fuel entering the motor will come from the idle jets. these jets give a constant flow.
the motor doesnt know whether or not the clutch is in.
Quote……..
“and it’s a fair pointer that diesel is leading the way when it comes to fuel saving.”
does this mean savings in litres or our hip pocket???
sorry, but LPG is by far leading the way when it comes to fuel savings.
sadly i must part with my LPG vehicle at the end of this month because ford doesnt offer their current E-Gas in manual anymore :(
Thats right Carl,
im leaving the LPG club :(
i will forever stay an ambassador though….
i still laugh at the consumption for a small petrol car only being a litre or so more than a big falcon or commodore.
who would trade for a ricer to save 1 litre or so???
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September 15th, 2008 at 9:14 pm
I don’t really care that much about consumption, diesels are way more fun to drive
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September 15th, 2008 at 9:15 pm
I guess if this website was all written in spanish the statement may have been incorrect, but its an Austalian website so nobody really cares about the price of diesel in Spain. Don’t they run their cars on olive oil anyway? LOL.
And one of the annoying things about having to fill up a Diesel car/truck is the filthy state of many service station diesel pumps, covered in a film of fuel and concrete so blackened with spilt fuel that its almost inevitable that some will end up on the inside of your car/truck. But i guess most servo managers are more interested in the fuel price gouging and rip offs inside the store.
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September 15th, 2008 at 9:42 pm
Hi Andrew M……sorry to hear your leaving the LPG club but i hope you enjoy your next drive anyway after all variety is what makes life worth living!!!
Cheers Mate
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September 15th, 2008 at 9:50 pm
“if you have zero percent throttle the only fuel entering the motor will come from the idle jets. these jets give a constant flow.
the motor doesnt know whether or not the clutch is in.”
Wrong on both counts actually.
Most fuel injection systems will reduce fuel use to zero if the engine is above idle speed, throttle is closed and in gear.
Yes, the ECU does know when the clutch is in. And yes, it also knows what gear you are so the fuel mappings are modified accordingly. The Mazda 3 MPS reduces the amount of torque produced by the engine when in 1st and 2nd gear to reduce the effect of torque.
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September 16th, 2008 at 1:58 am
Dlr1 said
“Don’t they run their cars on olive oil anyway? LOL.”
You are unquestionably the funniest person on these forums, your level of subtle wit would leave BlackAdder shrivelled up in a corner, clearly outdone by immense ability to entertain. But you don’t need me to tell you that, because your laughing at yourself.
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September 16th, 2008 at 6:00 am
I simply cannot unserstand why diesel is dearer than petrol in Australia… In NZ diesel is $1.60/litre and petrol is around $2.00/litre and there is a huge shift toward diesel engines now. The road user charges end up costing approx 1c per litre. I’ve shifted to a Mazda 3 MPS to get a torque figure close to my old Hilux 3.0 TurboDiesel. It’s the torque that makes the difference to the driving experience.
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September 16th, 2008 at 9:42 am
Hello people..
im preparing to buy a medium size car and wondering if
diesel is the way to go from home to work.
in a few months later ill be moving really close to work.
3 mins roughly it would take to get to work.
Will there be any issues if i use a diesel engine car to work everyday but for only 3 mins distance? i havnt owned a diesel engine car yet so i dont know if there would be any repercussions. M not a mechanic so can i pls get good advises from real diesel owners? Thanks
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September 16th, 2008 at 11:05 am
Running a car non-stop in ambient temp of around 20 will give misleading results as to its actual economy in REAL LIFE.
In real life, the majority of cars owned by urban dwellers will only travel a few kilometres from cold start, be turned off, and be driven home again from a cold start. The first 10km from cold start uses far more fuel than the next 10km, and the amount used on a cold Hobart morning is way more than you would ever use in Cairns, where it doesn’t get cold enough to qualify as cold :)
I’d be interested to know if a diesel fuels as rich as a petrol from cold start, and which one fuels rich for longer, which would help to determine which is really more economical for daily use.
Highway travel, of course, the diesel wins easily, but those who have had to repair a fuel pump in their diesel due to crap fuel, will argue about the diesel being cheaper to own, and those who have experienced the need to use low ash engine oils in said engines will wonder what happened to the cheap grease & oil change.
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September 16th, 2008 at 11:12 am
Ho Fo Show, im not a diesel owner (maybe in the near future) but if i lived only 3mins drive from work i would definately use my bicycle.
I too am pretty interested in getting a family diesel vehicle, but i keep getting conflicting advises on which is the better choice. On one hand some ppl say that because of the higher purchase price of a diesel vehicle (over its petrol equivalent) and the higher price of diesel fuel that its not worth it, as it would take too long at recoup any advantages gained from better economy. On the other hand this article says you can theoretically recoup the higher costs within a year and has better resale etc etc. So…what gives?
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September 16th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
I love my I30 CRDI SLX but if i was only doing 3 km each way to work and back I would probably go the petrol I30 as the diesel is quite noisy until it warms up. Then it’s brilliantly quiet….
For more opinions go to…
www.i30ownersclub.com
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September 16th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
Well, I’m another owner of the CRDI that can vouch for it. I have the SX Manual, and recently drove to Qld and back for a holiday, using only 260 litres for just under 5200km! The worst consumption was 5.25L/100km throughout the trip and even 10 days of zipping round traffic in Surfers Paradise only averaged 5.18! And returning via the Newell Hwy, it held up very well to some high speed running (120-140+) :)
The car is an absolute gem, and driving the 30km to work and back every day, I have sneaked it under 5L/100km a few times, and I dont really baby it all that much - I’ve given up changing up as early in the rev range as I used to, but dont rev the guts out of it either.
Can heartily recommend this car!
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September 16th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
SuperCujo,
hey mate.
firstly i must say im happy to be proven wrong (unlike some)
i see what you are saying,
but the way i see it the idle jets will always remain open.
sure there may be a few vehicles that show exceptions to that, but generally speaking i would believe the idle jets would remain constant.
take a basic carby motor.
how do they register when the clutch is in and what gear it is, and why would it want to limit fuel flow in certain gears???
the throttle controls power in each gear.
perhaps there is something that closes the idle jets in these new fandangle cars, but i dont see what the benefit of such a feature would be.
and also what happens after you have cruised down the hill with zero fuel the chambers would run dry??? Yes???
and wouldnt that mean a flat spot when you want to get on the juice again???
im happy to be proven wrong,
and look forward to hearing your thoughts…..
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September 16th, 2008 at 5:05 pm
Years back (and I cant substantiate with references) I read an article that stated the federal government was keeping diesel at a premium over petrol due to the fact that Diesel exhaust is a carcongenic in high UV environments (read: Australia and the US). I have done some googling which seems to back this to a point but it is not totally conclusive.
Personally I’m not a fan of diesels.
BTW No-one ever seems to mention the higher service costs associated with oil burners.
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September 16th, 2008 at 5:22 pm
Fenno, you raise a valid point about being exceptionally more toxic to humans than petrol exhaust, but I was under the impression a Diesel is cheaper to service because it is a simpler, more reliable design with less maintenance…. ? No?
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September 16th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
generally closer service intervals with a diesel too
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September 16th, 2008 at 6:37 pm
Andrew M, there aren’t any idle jets per se in modern electronic injection cars. The computer controls a single set of injectors and gets inputs from many sensors throughout the vehicle to decide what to do.
As SuperCujo said, the computer knows when you are in gear and which gear you are in. It decides how much fuel and ignition timing it needs based on fixed tables of data.
When you close the throttle, the computer knows that the car is in gear and will -potentially- reduce fuel injection to levels BELOW what is required to idle the engine.
You, of course, feel this because the engine is trying to stop spinning (no/low fuel) but because it is still connected to the wheels it doesn’t just stop but applies a decelerative force. This is commonly referred to as engine braking.
I’m not sure about individual cars, but theoretically I can see how this could use less fuel than idling the engine down hills.
How much difference though? Anyone’s guess, but every one of the techniques helps a little.
Still, if you REALLY want to save fuel, buy a Diesel.
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September 16th, 2008 at 7:08 pm
^^ Thats pretty much right, the issue with fuel injected engines is that a lot of these potentially fuel saving techniques have to be programmed into the ECU, thus for the coasting downhill example, it will save fuel in gear IF the ECU is programmed to register that the car is in gear and the throttle is closed, then it can decide to cut fuel injection. Now obviously its more complicated than that, you don’t want to experience full engine pumping loss everytime you close the throttle, as that wouldn’t be very smooth, so you’d program the ECU to gradually lean the mixture and continue to monitor car speed and only if the car deceleration was within a certain level would the ECU fully cut injection, or at least reduce it beyond idle.
The point is fuel injection systems allow all this, but it must be programmed, so not all cars would do that. With carbs the minimum amount of fuel used is controlled by the idle jets and the throttle, but as you can’t have no air going through the carb you can’t completely stop fuel be evaporated into the intake air from the idle jet, and so in that instance being in gear or neutral has no difference. With fuel injection, you can stop fuel being added to the intake charge, and hence if the ECU can measure that car acceleration due to gravity will equal or overcome pumping losses from the engine, then it could stop injection, until the throttle is opened slightly or the deceleration of the car is too high, which would indicate that you’ve reached the bottom of the hill.
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September 16th, 2008 at 7:17 pm
Tom,
thanks for that mate.
i realise that modern engines dont have idle jets per se, i was saying that in taking it back to a basic motor form (carby sort of era).
the way i see it is some fuel would always have to be entering the engine.
and at the end of the day how much are you going to save reducing the idle suirt from full idle to half idle??
most of these tactics are a bit of a w*nk really.
who would take a car out of gear going down hill anyway??
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September 16th, 2008 at 7:22 pm
Either way this is a classy little car.
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September 16th, 2008 at 7:23 pm
i know fords 5sp auto has an engine brake where if it senses acceleration under zero throttle, it will hold in gear.
like just said, this tactic wouldnt apply to all vehicles, only those with the tech to adjust that.
my example of the carby was to show not every car would benefit even if some do. (now i understand some would)
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September 16th, 2008 at 7:57 pm
My Mazda 6 Diesel will say 0 L/100km on the dash when I leave it in gear down a hill….but….if its wacked into neutral going down a hill it gives a reading of 0.1 L/100km on the dash computer.
I was told that its better to leave the Mazda in gear when going down hill as it totally shuts off fuel into the engine….
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September 17th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
Ho Fo Show you could just push the car to work - then you’d be Slow Mo Fo (sorry couldn’t resist that one).
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September 17th, 2008 at 5:04 pm
Techno,
the main reason to leave it in gear going down hill is so that you actually have control of the thing.
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September 18th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
do all diesel cars should be driven beyond a certain time/distance so the engine could properly warmed up and
have a longer lifespan?
and does condensation happen inside the engine if its not driven too long?
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September 18th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
*warm up (typo)
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September 19th, 2008 at 3:15 am
The great advantage of a diesel is the high torque at low revs. I recently towed an AVan Aliner with a Peugeot 307 HDi 2.0L turbo-diesel from Dalby to Coolangatta via Ipswich Rd, Brisbane. My fuel consumption when I re-filled the tank was 6.4L/100km (44mpg) with the cruise-control set at 90kph. You can’t do that with a petrol engine.
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September 19th, 2008 at 8:10 pm
Diesel is cheaper then petrol in India. Very good tips about fuel economy.
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September 20th, 2008 at 4:13 am
I have an i30 SR auto,has 14000km on the clock now, my avarage fuel consumption is around 580 km per fill up (about 42 litles)according to the trip computer. Last time before I filled up, checked my trip meter it was driven 520 km and it still had 70 km for distance to empty.
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September 30th, 2008 at 9:53 pm
Genie, pumping losses are reduced by using EGR (Exhaust gas recirculation)
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October 31st, 2008 at 12:37 am
Can anyone tell me how the i30 1.6 CRDi goes with short running? Some of the turbo diesels don’t like only being run for a short time. Is it ok to run them for about 5km at a time, but also give them a good run once a week or so?
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