Kia SUV Range

In the good old days, cars had a wire (cable) linking the accelerator to the engine. When you stood on the throttle pedal, the cable tightened and pulled open the engine’s throttle. It was too simple to last, of course.

Now, in the interests of emissions and fuel economy, most cars use what’s called throttle-by-wire technology. In this case, the throttle pedal sends an electronic signal to the car’s computer, and the computer then sends a message to the throttle to physically open. If any tiny thing goes wrong with the sensors, wiring or computers that operate this system, you wind up with the very problem you’re seeing.

The good news is that this should be covered by your new car warranty and, therefore, is Kia’s problem to fix.

It all depends on how you define long and bulky. But no seven-seater is going to be exactly small, is it? That’s because, to accommodate the third row of seats necessary to seat seven a vehicle physically has to be a certain length and there’s just no getting around that.

But I take your point; a lot of the seven-seat SUVs out there do seem pretty big. Again, however, that’s not a bad thing if you plan to fill all three rows of seats and still have some room left for luggage. The smaller seven-seaters aren’t all that good at this as the third row gobbles up the luggage space, making these cars best for those who only need seven seats on an occasional basis. If that’s your situation there are lots of mid-sized seven seaters around, but they’re pretty much all SUVs.

And while it goes against your preference for a smaller vehicle, the very best seven-seaters aren’t SUVs. They’re usually people-mover vans such as the Ford Tourneo, Kia Carnival and VW ID. Buzz. In fact, some of these even seat eight. They’re also a lot better for accessing the rearmost row of seats and they’ll still have lots of luggage space even with all seats occupied. And, yes, they look big, but that’s physics for you.

In the meantime, you could look at slightly less bulky options including the Hyundai Santa Fe, Kia Sorento, Mazda CX-80 and Toyota Kluger. There’s also been speculation recently that Subaru’s seven-seat Tribeca might make a return to the Australian market.

It doesn’t sound right, does it. And why would Kia even include a low-beam light indicator if it wasn’t to show that the low-beam lights were, in fact, on?

You should be able to figure it out by looking at the owner’s manual for your car. I managed to find such a thing online for your model Sportage, and it shows only a high-beam indicator light and a lights-on warning which covers both parking lights and low-beam. That suggests that your dealer is correct.

The other question, however, is what you’re looking at that makes you think it’s a low-beam warning light. The answer could be that there are two high-beam indicator lights, one for the manual high-beam operation and another for the automatic high-beam if your vehicle has that fitted. Perhaps it’s the fog-light indicator you’re seeing. Again, your owner’s manual should spell it out for you.