i recently asked if anyone knew why a brand new Hyundai sonata ltd would only be getting about 13-14 mpg vs. the advertised 26mpg/city? The answers were numerous but none seemed to apply, including their service dept’s. i would now like to contact Hyundai management since customer service is giving me a run-around. Does anyone know how to find email or even street address info for Hyundai in L.A.? I’ve scoured the internet but cannot find it. Thanks
Have you tried looking in your Owner’s Manual?
Every manual with which I am familiar contains contact info for the corporate offices.
Thanks, but that’s for steel and electronics division. I’m looking for automotive.
Thanks but the address they have is for consumer information. I’ll try it again but I have a feeling it will be rerouted to Consumer Affairs. I’d like to address a real person in upper management to inform them of this problem and who can actually respond rather than kick it to Consumer Affairs - again.
Hyundai America Technical Center, Inc.
6800 Geddes Road
Superior Township, MI 48198
Phone: (734) 337-2500
Fax: (734) 337-3168
Hyundai Motor Manufacturing Alabama, LLC
http://www.hmmausa.com/
700 Hyundai Blvd.
Montgomery, Alabama 36105
(334) 387-8000
A couple of thoughts.
Car manufacturers are huge, HUGE origanizations. If management is doing their job right, when you contact consumer affairs, they should be able to route your question / complaint / whatever to the right part of the organization - and that part of the organization ought to be able to deal with it. The key to all of this is precision. You need to decide what you are trying to accomplish by contacting the management at Hyundai and be able to describe that clearly.
Do you want to get your vehicle fixed? You’ve already contacted the right part of the organization - the dealer. I forget the details of your experience, but if the dealer was not able to solve the problem - assuming there was a problem - then you should have arranged to contact the district service engineer. If he wasn’t able to solve the problem, then a letter to the consumer affairs is the right course. Explain the details. Who did you talk to…when…what happened. Be sure to include enough detail so that they can look up the records (VIN number!)
Letters have much more impact than emails. And the better written the letter is, the more impact it is likely to have. The OP has some missing capital letters and punctuation - IF YOU WANT TO BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY do not use caps like I just did. Also don’t use abbreviations (like I just did!).
Do not expect to be able to call and talk to management. Their job is to manage the people. They should have hired people whose specialty is to properly deal with these situations.
But if your letter is to complain about how the situation was handled (as opposed to “It wasn’t fixed!”), then a letter to the management is very appropriate.
I this a case of “nothing we can do if there is not a code”? I do wonder just what action a manufacture or Dealer is required to take when there is no code. I have never seen a program at a Dealership that was certified in making a conclusion in regards to mpg.
Thank you for your thoughts. The problem is that on a 6 week old car I’m getting 12.8 mpg, about half of what it’s supposed to be.
Thus far I have talked to the dealership, had the car “diagnosed” at the service dept. (who said I have to drive it 10-15,000 miles before the real mileage kicks in!!!), talked to Customer Service who then called the same service department and got the same answer, sent an email to Customer Service who will also call the service dept. Now I’d like to write to a real person with real responsibility to let them know what has transpired and find a remedy for the horrendous mileage I’m getting.
If you, or anyone else, knows who to write to and their address, I’d be very appreciative.
That’s exactly what it is - a “no code” situation. The only thing the service manager can tell me is to keep driving and it will eventually “break in” (after about 10-15,000 miles). In the meantime I’m spending about $55-60 every week on gas as it “breaks in”. It’s going to break me.
I’m not familiar with your original post, but one suggestion I have for you is to see if you can exchange your car temporarily for a similar one and see if it does the same thing. If it does, the car is not the problem and it is probably your driving environment. My parents live in a small town, and my father’s car usually gets 14-15 mpg if he is just putt-putting around town in it, worse in the winter time. If he hits the highway to travel somewhere, he gets nearly 40 mpg. There is nothing wrong with his car, it’s the way he’s driving it most of the time. By the way, the advertised city mpg is assuming a large city environment, in which you can drive at sustained speeds of 45-55 mph for a couple miles or two between lights or stop signs. If you are driving a few blocks here, a few blocks there, and hitting a lot of stop signs less than half a mile apart, you will get significantly worse gas mileage. My sister gets worse average mpg out of her Grand Am than I do out of my Windstar, but I do a lot more highway than she does.
I’m comparing my brand new Hyundai Sonata Ltd. with the 1999 Camry which I replaced. The Camry was getting 19-21mpg in the city - and that’s on a 12 year old car driving under exactly the same conditions. Wouldn’t new technology have improved mileage instead of worsening it?
“No code” simply means the “check engine” light is not on. I am not commenting on history codes at this time. By my thinking a Dealer would not be in error in saying “other factors besides failures in the cars systems will influence your actual mpg, since your car does not display any codes and I have no reason to believe there is a failure in the failure reporting system I conclude it is factors other than operation or control of the cars systems that are causing the mpg you claim the car is getting”
The service manager, if he actually said that, is lying to you.
The Sonata and Camry are similar in size (I think the Sonata is bigger), but the Sonata may weigh more, considering it’s a limited and presumably fully loaded, and if the Sonata has a V6 and your Camry had a four cylinder, that will cause lower fuel economy in the city. I still say try exchanging it for a similar car with the same engine and transmission and see if another one performs the same.
He did say that and every person involved
in and knowledgeable about cars say the
same thing - he’s lying. I wonder if he’d say
the same thing to a 6’ tall, 200 lb. man
who came in with the same situation.
What type of gas mileage does your car get on highway driving?
Since you live in and around San Francisco, you have varying driving conditions, that include everything from sea level, to hilly driving. And you also have California’s crap-tastic gasoline.
I would love it if you could do a simple highway mileage test.
Fill up your car at a gas station next to a highway entrance, hop on the highway when they are empty and free of traffic, and drive 50 miles at the speed limit, turn around, go back to the same gas station, top off, and calculate your actual gas mileage.
If your car then gets close to the EPA recommended fuel mileage, then chances are its your driving style and the environment that you drive in that is getting you the extremely low gas mileage results in stop and go driving.
Your car uses a reasonably new technology for gasoline engines called Direct Fuel Injection. This technology allows fuel to be sprayed directly into the combustion chamber, which allows the engine to not only run really lean in low demand situations, but extremely rich in high demand situations. They also tend to run really rich during cold starts.
Since you never really responded in the original thread to some requests for information, we really couldn’t find out if your car actually had any driveability issues.
Here’s another idea:
If you believe your car isn’t getting the proper fuel mileage, then that means that it is probably running really rich.
Take the car to an emissions testing facility, and see if they would be willing to run your car on the dyno, and print out the results. If it fails the emissions testing, then you can force Hyundai to look carefully at the vehicle. You would have just proven that the car has a major issue. Plus, then you could get California to step in, too.
BC.
I’ve been getting 18mpg on the highway and it doesn’t seem to matter if I’m using Arco or 76, mileage is the same. Gas in CA is different from everywhere else? I just thought it was more expensive than any other place in the country.
I’ve also been doing the mileage test each time I fill up and the results are always the same: 13 mpg combined. Most of my driving is in the city. The tank will be ready for refill in a few days and I’ll try the highway test.
Which “original thread” did I not respond to?I thought I had answered each of the responses.
What’s a dyno? Is it different from a regular emissions test?
Thanks for all your input - I’ll be following up with you.
The dyno I refer to in this case is part of the emissions testing equipment.
The drive the car onto it, and then spin the tires as they go through a preset “course” where the driver adjusts the speed of the drive wheels inside of a targeted range.
While that is done, there will be a sniffer in the tail pipe of your car.
As the car revs up and down, the sniffer will pick up how much HC, CO, CO2, and NOx that your car is emitting as it drives through the course.
If your car is out of spec, emissions wise, this test will give you a print out that you can review, and bring to your shop.
Something has to be drastically wrong with your car to get such dismal mileage on the highway. Can you take it to an independent shop and have them just check it over to make sure a brake isn’t dragging?
BC.
Could the dealership be making an effort to get rid of you because they think the claims are exaggerated? Customer service often gets faced with some no win situations and they have developed various sand bagging methods to wear down the complainer, hoping they will give up. If you are totally honest and accurate in your figures and your driving conditions are not extreme Hyundai should make an effort to satisfy you. Hyundai has a great reputation locally because their service department is excellent but I don’t know how they would deal with your complaint. The 15,000 mile break in is not a reasonable explanation though.