Hyundai's Smallest CUV Probably Out-MPGs Your Car

The Hyundai Venue, a bottom-rung, A-segment crossover of such a diminutive size that you’d be forgiven for thinking it showed up in the wrong market by accident, has undergone testing by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Stretching one inch less than a Kia Rio hatch when measured stem to stern, the Venue is part of Hyundai’s effort to eliminate white space in its U.S. lineup while providing young car buyers with an attainable place to start climbing the Hyundai product ladder. These buyers, the EPA confirms, will not have to worry about lofty fuel bills.

Offered only as a front-drive runabout (can you hear the Venue’s siren song, urban Millennials?), the Venue’s fuel economy is pretty much what Hyundai engineers predicted when the Venue rolled into this year’s New York Auto Show.

When equipped with a continuously variable automatic (which Hyundai calls an “intelligent variable transmission”), the Venue earns a rating of 30 mpg city, 34 mpg highway, and 32 mpg combined. Outfitted with a six-speed manual (yes, you read that right), MPGs fall to 27 city, 35 highway, and 30 combined. The Venue’s EPA numbers were first noticed by Autoblog.

Overall, the Venue is clearly Hyundai’s answer to the low-priced, FWD-only Nissan Kicks, which landed on the scene last year with a starting price under $18,000. Well-appointed and offering all the tech goodies and niceties a twentysomething iPhone devotee could desire, the Venue draws its motivation from a Smartstream 1.6-liter four-cylinder that’s good for an estimated 121 horsepower and 113 lb-ft of torque.

A powerhouse it ain’t, but Hyundai engineers have spend a great deal of time optimizing this mill for greater efficiency. The same goes for the IVT gearbox. In base SE trim, the Venue tips the scales at 2,557 pounds, rising to just over 2,700 lbs in uplevel SEL guise, so there isn’t a massive amount of bulk to haul around.

Indeed, the Venue only suffers in terms of aerodynamics when compared to low-end Hyundai vehicles. Its combined fuel economy is actually 2 mpg higher (when equipped with IVT) than a manual-transmission Elantra, and only 1 mpg less than a stick-shift Accent. While the larger Kicks earns a 33 mpg combined rating, other import subcompact crossovers can’t match the Venue’s thriftiness.

We now know what to expect from the Venue in terms of efficiency, but its pricing remains a mystery. Not for long, though. First-drive reviews are coming out, and details on dollar figures should arrive in advance of the model’s late-2019 on-sale date.

[Images: Hyundai]