Kia has been quietly involved in a hybrid vehicle development program for a while, providing hundreds of hybrid vehicles to the Korean Ministry of the Environment as a real-world test fleet. To celebrate a huge expansion of the program—an additional 3,390 hybrid vehicles over the next two years—Kia unveiled a gas-electric version of the Kia Rio sedan at Geneva’s 77th Salon de l’Automobiles.
The Kia Rio Hybrid sedan pairs a 1.4-liter, four-cylinder gasoline engine with a high-torque 12-kilowatt electric motor, all matched to a Continuously Variable Transmission (CVT) gearbox. The electric motor is mounted between the engine and transmission, and assists the gas engine when starting, accelerating, and climbing grades. During steady cruising the electric motor switches off to conserve power, and the Rio Hybrid also saves energy by using a computer-controlled stop/start motoring system, which switches both the engine and electric motor off whenever the car comes to a full stop for more than a few seconds. And when the vehicle is decelerating the car employs regenerative braking to store all that energy which normally goes to waste, using it to recharge the battery pack. The engineering innovations extend beyond just electronics with the use of special lightweight components to cut the vehicle’s weight by 485 pounds.
The Rio Hybrid accelerates from 0-100 kph (about 62 mph) in 12.2 seconds and can reach a maximum velocity of 180 kph (about 112 mph). As you’d expect, this hybrid is a true fuel miser, yielding 53.4 miles per gallon in testing, a 44-percent improvement over the already frugal gasoline-powered Rio. At the same time, the Rio Hybrid’s emissions are reduced by 37-percent compared to a gasoline-only Rio sedan.
Although production plans for the Rio Hybrid have not been announced, the, the future looks just a little brighter.
