2023 Kia Seltos Facelift Review

Hyundai and Kia exactly know how to win over the hearts of Indian customers!

All insurance companies have a list of cashless garages available on their website, (the same way as they do for cashless hospitals).

The My Convenience Plus package consists of 5 years of pre-paid maintenance coverage (service), which would have cost around Rs.30699 for diesel and Rs. 28699 for petrol cars. The extended warranty with 5-year coverage costs around Rs. 26533 for Diesel and Rs.23878 for Petrol. To add to this you get 5 years of Roadside assistance too.

You get a complimentary wheel alignment, wheel balancing, and tire rotation for every 10,000 km service till 50,000 km, along with tire alloy protection in the initial year, along with an Additional 10% discount for other car care services during the program tenure.

You also get an upfront value benefit which can be chosen (Preventive, Fresh, AC, or Hygiene Care). Along with this, you don't have to bear the cost of inflation as well.

Now, the extended warranty and 5-year service for petrol cars itself cost Rs.52577 whereas My Convenience Plus package costs just Rs.46995, in diesel the same costs Rs.57232, whereas the Convenience Plus package costs only Rs.51995.

So, it is definitely worth considering if you want to cover all your costs for 5 years at the time of purchase. I certainly recommended the same (My Convenience Plus for Carens and Seltos and My Convenience for Sonet) to all my more than a dozen friends and family members who purchased a Kia car and all of them have taken the package and are happy with it.

The sage green interiors in the Xline looks great. Much better and fresher than the black interiors of GTX+. I hope more colour options on the Xline trim are introduced. An X line in pewter olive is what I desire.

<RANT>

Since I am in the market for an SUV, I am seriously considering Seltos and Elevate and closely following both the threads.

I understand that no car is perfect; no car can satisfy everyone, whether it costs 10 Lakh or 1 crore. However, I tend to think that Seltos is simply winning because of its looks and the long feature list. When you start looking below the skin, there are many imperfections, as I can read from the personal experiences of those who have driven the previous and current generation Seltos:

1. The ride quality is just okay - Livable.
2. Seats - front and back - support and comfort is just adequate. 6 footers are not going to feel comfortable either at the driver seat (footwell design has its flaws) or at the rear seats (average under thigh support). An SUV that does not make tall drivers or passengers happy.
2. DCT is good. but not as good as VW's DSG. DCT is as unreliable as a DSG.
3. DCT is confused in low speeds - not recommended for those who drive mostly within city limits in bumper to bumper traffic. But hey, not everyone can have two cars - one for the city and the other for the highway runs. Many use the same car for city/office commute as well as for the long family trips.
4. If I want to look beyond DCT and still enjoy the Turbo Petrol - a powerful engine that can do 0-100 in about 9 seconds - I have to pick only an iMT transmission, which is neither here nor there. There is no option of a true manual transmission with this turbo engine.
5. So, if I have to choose a Petrol engine that is reliable with a straight forward manual transmission or an IVT (CVT), I have to choose only an NA engine. But if I choose this engine, I cannot enjoy the endless list of features on offer.
6. If I want to look at the diesel, it has its own share of DPF issues. A suggested solution is to simply drive the car at high speed in an open stretch every week. So, if you are someone who is not hitting the highway every week, you have to spend 30-45 minutes and burn 5-10 Liters of Diesel every week, so your car stays clear of any DPF issues
7. Safety rating is ~3.

Please pardon me if any of these observations are different from your personal experience. It is strictly based on what I have personally experienced or read in Team-bhp forums and other media reviews. I have nothing against Kia or Seltos!
Seltos is still in my consideration because I know I have to choose a car that satisfies most of my non-negotiable criteria!

</RANT>

This , pretty much sums up the entire thing! In this open market of cars with varied options (or even limited in some segments) , it all boils down to pick one that suits ‘your’ requirement to the T.

Your points regarding the Seltos are pretty much valid, but than no car is perfect like you just said. There are so many offerings in the CSUV segment, yet there is something or the other missing in each !

On a side note seems like Honda have woken up and the Elevate media drives are starting tomorrow. The reviews should be out in a week maybe.
This will atleast give an idea as to how the car is. The next big thing will be the prices, which I’m pretty sure are being worked upon by them after the shocker pricing by Kia !

Neither Kia nor Hyundai are first in this.

The Honda City is the first car that got the Adaptive Cruise Control for mass market cars.

Link -

Thanks.

For petrol warranty cost is 19101.
They are not offering unlimited km warranty with my convenience pack but 1.2Lakh limited cover.

Do we need to lock in the specific Authorised Service Centre (ASC) to purchase this package? If so, it might become a liability if the ASC does not provide a good service or if you need to move to a different city.

I have bought an Annual Maintenance Package of 6 years for my Honda Highness bike, and it is mandatory to lock in the ASC while buying this package. Now I realised that the ASC is incompetent, and I can't go to a different ASC unless I am prepared to shell out excess money.

Superb review as usual Team-BHP. It is good that Kia is offering multiple trim line along with interior options to choose from. However, I don't like that there is no proper manual transmission option in the turbo petrol or the diesel.

Other members, how has been your experience with the iMT?

I quoted this post above. Gearshift is little slow only when repeatedly upshifting at 4K + rpm. Otherwise even with aggressive driving it's been great and shifts precisely.

Hope it helps.

I took a short TD of the IVT HTX model last evening along with my wife. It was a short 2 km ride with the wife driving out of the showroom and me on the return.
I sat behind to gauge the hardness which is talked about but could find any specific flaws with the suspension. Asked my wife to speed over speed breakers to feel the stiffness but nothing out of the extraordinary was noticed. Wife liked the fact that she could see the ends of the bonnet which is when the SA commented that the dashboard has been brought down due to feedback from previous gen owners.
When I was driving I liked the IVT transmission vis-a-vis my 2017 City CVT, BRV and also the Glanza CVT. No complaints in the transmission. No jerking no lag when raced from standstill at the signal. But then I don't feel it on my City or BRV either.
Interiors were amply loaded and fancy ( again as compared to my current cars). The side shades were the deal maker and we would 99.99% go ahead with this in Green over the Elevate (just for a change of Manufacturer).

I forgot to check the boot as it got late by the time we got our TD ( there were 3 others trying the IVT before us). The plastic on the back seats wasn't removed so couldn't try the arm rest and I kept on slipping too. Someone had mentioned that the slider on the sunroof makes noise and it did indeed but then my City's sunroof also makes noise while opening or closing.

Finally, I may choose this over the Elevate just for a new Manufacturer in my stable as I wasn't totally convinced that this car is worth the 20 Lakhs I am dropping on it.

You've misinterpreted what I meant.

I meant that a few years down the line, Hyundai and Kia would equip their best movers (e.g. Creta, i20, Venue, etc.) with ADAS just like they offered several first-in-segment features with their other cars. e.g. Verna was the first C2 sedan with ventilated seats (the current generation Verna has heated seats - another segment first feature), Grand i10 was the first hatchback to get rear AC vents, the i10 was the first hatchback came with a sunroof, the i20 was the first hatchback to get rear disc brakes (which Hyundai dropped in the later versions and generations), etc.

Point is, today ADAS is marketed as a premium feature limited to the top-end variant of a 20+ lakh car just like normal cruise control was few years back; today even the Grand i10 gets it. With economies of scale, 3 radars, a front facing camera and the control unit will trickle down to these cars.

And just for the record, the City isn't a mass market car; Honda's sales have been dwindling as there are barely any takers for sedans. The XUV7OO sells 2-3x more units than the City month-on-month and was equipped with ADAS much before the City facelift arrived.

Agree with this statement. The hardware/software itself is easily adaptable to any car and doesn't cost much to implement it. Same with the newer infotainment systems. You can pretty much use the same with different screen sizes across models.

Have dealers started getting the Turbo Petrol for test drive or any tentative timeline? I see media drives were focussed a lot on Turbo Petrol so hoping they are all on the way from that event to various dealers. Also, any clarity on price protection for people who booked by 14th July?

Does the 360 degree camera, blind spot camera, all ADAS functionalities work when ORVMs are folded?