A review of the Hyundai Creta
I borrowed a friend’s Creta 2022 S+ Knight Edition (with a 1.5-liter petrol engine and a manual transmission) for a fortnight, and here’s how it fared compared to my Maruti Ritz VXi, petrol, 2012.
High-speed Driving
The Creta is a joy on the expressway. On the Bangalore - Mysore expressway, the car felt stable at speed, unlike the Ritz, which feels like it’s bouncing on the road and might topple over any second.
The engine still had a few thousand revs to go before it redlined, while the Ritz was close to redline. This is because the Creta has 6 gears vs the Ritz’s 5.
The Creta also accelerates fast, which again makes it fun to drive. Going from 0 to 100 kph is quick and effortless.
Safety
The Creta is equipped with rear disc brakes1, anti-skid braking, electronic stability control, electronic brake force distribution, airbags (including side and curtain), and a seat-belt pretensioner with a load limiter.
It has a Tyre Pressure Monitoring System. It showed low pressure, so I filled all four tyres. Before filling, I noticed that the front right wheel had a pressure of 26 psi according to the nitrogen pump at the fuel station but 31 or so according to the car. This made me doubt the TPMS. Anyway, I filled all four tyres to the recommended 33 psi. The TPMS showed that the pressure now is approximately 33, but the low pressure warning did not disappear:
(Ignore the numbers in this photo — the photo was taken on another day.)
I ignored it and drove to Mysore.
Late at night, as I was driving, I suddenly heard a chime and the check engine light came on. In addition to the TPMS warning, which never disappeared. I was concerned because early the next morning, I was scheduled to drive to return to Bangalore via the expressway. I was concerned whether the tyre will burst on the expressway, risking me and the people I was with. Or if the engine shuts down, forcing me to pull over onto the shoulder and exit the car. People drive on the shoulder at 100+ kph, and if we’re out of the Creta and hit by a vehicle at that speed, there’s a high chance we’ll die.
It turned out that that the TPMS was faulty. The owner told me he got TPMS warnings 10-12 times, so he told me to ignore it and drive. In fact, it was showing me a warning that the tyre had a low pressure of 33 psi, but when I opened the driver’s door to check the sticker, it said that 33 was the correct pressure. And the check engine light was on because of the TPMS. It was all a false alarm. Indeed, the car worked perfectly at high speed, and for days afterward, till I returned it. But this incident chipped away at my trust in the Creta and in Hyundai.
The ABS works excellently. You should familiarise yourself with it: find an empty road, accelerate to 60 kph, and press the brakes all the way in. You’ll hear a thumping sound coming from the front wheels. This is the ABS repeatedly engaging and disengaging the brakes. The reason you should familiarise yourself is that otherwise, in an emergency, you might think that something is going wrong and reduce the pressure on the brake, which is the exact opposite of what you should do. In fact, my testing paid off in a few days: I was driving on the highway at 90 kph, when I suddenly encountered a speed breaker. I desperately braked to avoid launching the air into the air and losing control. I knew it was a lost cause given that I was close to the speed breaker, but I had to do what I could. Miraculously, the car decelerated to 20 kph immediately and the speed breaker didn’t pose any risk or damage the car. I didn’t even know vehicles can brake so fast. The hazard lights immediately came on to warn motorists behind me to slow down. The seat belt pretensioner must have kicked in, because I wasn’t thrown forward and then stopped by the seatbelt. This is technology at its best.
The car has daytime running lights and headlights that automatically turn on and off depending on light levels. These turn on in a second.
The car also has a rear windshield wiper. This solves the problem I have on my Ritz, which is that in rain, I can’t see behind me, so I drive blind. The car also has a rear defogger, which solves the same problem, but when it rains suddenly on a hot day and the inside surface is occluded, rather than the outer.
The car does not have lane departure warning or lane keeping assist, which are proven to reduce deaths and permanent disabilities. In fact, when I was driving on the expressway waking up at 4:30 after having slept at midnight the previous night, I switched lanes without realising I had done so.
Light to Drive
The Creta feels light to drive. Well, at least as light as is possible for a manual transmission.
This was counterintuitive, since the Creta weighs 1.6 tons vs the Ritz’s 1.1. Why does it feel light to drive? I think because of a few factors: the steering wheel is very light to rotate, unlike the Ritz, were power steering only supplies (say) 90% of the power needed to turn the front wheels. In the Creta, the power steering supplies 100%. Maybe it’s drive-by-wire and the steering wheel isn’t even physically connected to the front wheels.
Acceleration is linear across gears, unlike the Ritz which has substantially different acceleration from one gear to the next. My guess is that the software is tuned to reduce throttle input in lower gears and increase it in higher gears. By contrast, in the Ritz, the throttle is over-responsive in the 1st gear and under in the 5th.
In the Creta, gear shifts are also light and effortless, at least compared to the Ritz.
If you accidentally upshift too early, the engine is less prone to lugging. It still generates some power. In fact, though the Creta I was driving was a manual, it felt halfway to being an automatic.
The engine is also more refined and quiet. Finally, the noise and vibration in this car is lower than the Ritz. The suspension is smooth and insulates you from road defects. When I was traveling at 80, I thought it was 60. I didn’t believe the speedo when it said 80, since it didn’t feel like it.
All these factors add up to make the car feel light and easy to drive for a manual.
Big vs small car
This is the first time I drove such a big car. I was told that big cars are not suitable for the city, and that they’re slower and more stressful to drive. Neither were true. It’s as good as a small car even in rush hour Bangalore traffic: I didn’t take any longer to reach my office driving all the way across the city from C.V.Raman Nagar to Jayanagar. Nor was I more stressed than in the Ritz. I could navigate tiny roads as well as the Ritz.
Only when parking it is there a difference: when parking in my apartment, I have to slow to a crawl to avoid hitting the pillars, and be vigilant. Even then, the gap between the car and the pillar is tiny. When parking on the road, I sometimes have to rock the car back and forth to fit into a tiny parking area. When I open the door, it opens into the traffic, adding risk, unlike the Ritz, where I’m off the side of the road when I exit the road. But parking is a small part of driving.
So if you want to buy a big car, don’t hesitate that it will somehow not be suitable for city driving, that you’ll be slower to reach your destination or that the drive will be more stressful.
Given the lower fuel economy of this car vs the Ritz, I do have to spend more at the fuel station, like ₹5K instead of the typical ₹3K I spend.
Convenience features
There’s a reverse parking camera, which has the typical beeps that get loud when you’re about to hit something.
It also shows three lines indicating how far the closest object is from the car . When it’s near the farther yellow line, I have to slow, and when it’s near the red line, I have to stop:
This lets me park precisely, leaving only a few inches of gap. In fact, it works so well that I can park in reverse better than forward.
The field of view doesn’t cover the sides. You can still hit a pillar beside your parking space. So I’d like a 360-degree camera.
The car has cruise control. Accelerate to the speed you want to reach, press the cruise control button, and the car maintains the speed. If you temporarily want to speed up (because the road ahead is empty), you can press the accelerator, and the car will speed up. When you release it, it goes back to its set speed. You can also use the steering controls to decrease or increase the set speed, all the way up to 120 kph. When you do, the acceleration is silky smooth. I wouldn’t use it, because I would want to keep matching the speed of traffic on the road to reach my destination sooner rather than traveling at a set speed.
The inner rear view mirror can be dimmed when you have a jerk who’s using high beam, but you have to do it manually. And you have to un-dim it when he leaves, or you won’t be able to see anything, making it dangerous.
There are four interior lights — one on either side of the rear seat, and two more in the front center. You can turn any of them on individually, or all of them at once. But they don’t always work:
The boot also has a light.
Manual Transmission
This car has a manual transmission. I wouldn’t buy one at any cost, but this is my friend’s car, so I had no choice about it.
It’s better than the one in my Ritz (see the Light to Drive section above), but it’s still prone to some of the problems manual transmissions have: stalling the engine2.
And accidentally switching to the wrong gear3 and either surging forward or having no acceleration at all. An automatic transmission would be the ideal solution for this, but if you insist on a manual, paddle shifters would have helped for the common case of shifting up or down one gear.
The car slides back when starting up a slope. It’s supposed to have hill hold, but it didn’t work for me, and the owner also confirmed that it doesn’t for him.
The clutch causes me knee pain4, unlike the one in my Ritz. I think this is because it needs to be pressed more, extending my leg more, and offers more resistance.
The car has a fuel gage. Using this I found out that to conserve fuel, I should drive at an RPM ≤ 3000. The fuel economy is the same at 3000 as it is at lower RPMs like 15005, so you don’t save any fuel, but lose on acceleration. By the way, the engine idles at 700-900 RPM.
The engine has more inertia than the one in the Ritz. When the engine RPMs are higher than the speed of travel and I declutch, the car surges forward for a noticeably longer time than the Ritz does.
The car also has shift indicators. These will be helpful for new drivers, assuming they’d want to buy a backward manual transmission in the first place. This system also pointed out a bad habit which I’d gotten into, which is upshifting too early. When I did that, it would tell me to downshift. So, the shift indicators are good both for new drivers and for drivers with bad habits. Sometimes it takes time to make up its mind and give you an indication, after I myself had realised I’m in the wrong gear. When I press the clutch the upshift, the system often tells me to upshift. But that’s what I was doing already! Sometimes I’d upshift correctly and system would tell me to downshift. If I followed the instruction, I’d be able to accelerate faster, but the road conditions wouldn’t permit fast acceleration anyway. It would sometimes tell me to downshift one gear and when I did, it would immediately tell me to downshift another gear. Sometimes I do a better job myself. Still, this system is good. It doesn’t handle all the scenarios, but it doesn’t need to to be useful.
Cooling
The AC is more powerful than in my Ritz. Even when the temperature outside is 43C (the car has a thermometer), cold, life-giving air caresses my face. Set the AC to either 3 or 4:
Why? At less than 36, the air became stale. At more than 4, you get a blast of air that’s not cool enough7. So I turn it down to get a slower stream of cold air.
You can close any of the vents in the car, unlike the Ritz where the two center vents can’t be closed, only the ones by the window. When driving alone on the Creta, I sometimes close the center-left vent and leave the center-right one and the window one for balanced cooling.
When the car is left in the summer sun and is therefore very hot, it cools down quicker than the Ritz with the AC in full and the panoramic sunroof open. It cools down in minutes. By contrast, the Ritz gives me a mini heat stroke.
Oh, and the car has climate control: you can set the desired temperature to a desired temperature like 21° rather than having to constantly turn the AC on and off as with the Ritz.
Finally, the car has rear window sunshades:
When one or two people use the car, you can leave the sunshades on all the time.
This variant doesn’t have ventilated seats.
Space and Comfort
If more than two people are using the car, or there’s a lot of luggage, the Creta is far more spacious than the Ritz. But if only one or two people are using the car with limited or no luggage, the Ritz has slightly more legroom. This was surprising — there’s more space between the steering wheel and my knee in the Ritz than in the Creta, in which I have to be more careful not to hit the wheel when getting in or out8. Similarly, I can fully stretch my leg in the Ritz’s front passenger seat, while I can stretch it 95% in the Creta’s.
Headroom, on the other hand, is more in the Creta.
The seating position is also a little higher.
There’s also a lot of storage in the Creta:
Digital Features
Unlike my Ritz, which didn’t let me take calls on the car’s speakers, the Creta can. I found myself able to talk long without taking risk or adding stress.
You sometimes can’t lock the car — you have to reopen the door, press the Start / Stop button, close the door, and try again. This happened even when the engine was off but the instruments were on.
The car’s FM can’t be turned off. Or if it can, I haven’t figured out the magic incantation to do so. I instead turn its volume down to zero. This is a separate volume control from that of navigation. But both are mapped to the same volume knob — whatever you’re hearing when you turn the knob has its volume adjusted. This is finicky: if you want to adjust navigation volume, you have to adjust it precisely when you hear a direction. If you wait even a second, you end up adjusting the FM volume. Even if you start rotating the knob in time, when the direction ends, it goes back to adjusting the FM volume.
The car’s screen allegedly has automatic brightness adjustment, but it’s too dim in sunlight. I turned it off and manually adjusted brightness. Now it works fine in daytime, but it’s too bright at night. I’m stuck with having to adjust it every day I take it out at night.
The screen, along with the AC controls, would turn off and then quickly on every few hours. Maybe the software that controls these keeps crashing and restarting.
The screen has an auto night mode, but it keeps going into night mode in daytime — outdoors. I turned it off, but after a week, the car reset it to auto. Even when it’s on, some apps like Google Maps don’t respect it. Maybe it’s taking the setting from my iPhone and not my car, but night mode is off on my iPhone, too.
CarPlay is supported. Apple supports both wired and wireless connections, but this car supports only wireless. On occasion, parts of the directions go missing, like “In _____ meters, turn _____”.
The car’s screen sometimes stops showing the map mid-navigation. When this happened, I restarted both my iPhone and the car, but it didn’t help. I had a traditional mobile holder on the windscreen on which I attached my phone. That’s more reliable.
When navigating, I sometimes pinch to zoom out to see which route I’m taking, to ensure that Google is routing me correctly. But, unfortunately, this is not possible since the car’s screen isn’t multitouch. It isn’t even a good single-touch screen — taps are sometimes ignored. It’s probably a resistive rather than the capacitive touch screens we’ve been using in mobile phones since 2008. You have to tap deliberately. This is dangerous when driving, since it distracts you from the road.
It’s not just a poor touchscreen; it’s also a poor screen. It isn’t sharp. When I checked, it turned out not to be HD. This is unimaginable for a car purchased in 2022. If you’re buying a car with CarPlay, ensure that the screen is HD with capacitive multitouch and wired CarPlay. You have to check these specs given the regressive state of the car industry. When you buy an AC for your home, you don’t have have to check if it comes with a remote, but you have to check the equivalent for cars.
Sometimes, the integration between maps on the phone and car works very well — I was at a mall, checked the estimate to reach home and put the phone in my pocket. Half an hour later, when I got into the car, the car’s screen showed the route and offered me a Start button, without having to select my destination again. But, other times, I’d get in and start driving and the car would not even open Google Maps. There was a stupid safety warning I had to confirm, while driving, which actually makes it unsafe. This safety warning comes up every time you start the car. Then, I had to tap the Map button on the car’s screen to open Google Maps.
CarPlay also has a problem of the car’s OS and iOS trying to live on one screen. In the car’s OS, there’s a CarPlay button you tap to enter CarPlay, at which point the car’s screen starts showing what’s on the iPhone. This shows an iOS-like UI with apps and an app switcher showing various apps like Google Maps, Phone, WhatsApp, Audible, and so on. One of these apps is Hyundai which, if tapped, puts you back in the car’s UI. It’s jarring, with a completely different UI theme and uglier than iOS.
On the topic of WhatsApp, I often send voice messages, but I could not do so in CarPlay. It insisted on transcribing and sending it as a text message. I don’t like this because speech-to-text is inaccurate. It would have been easier to just send the audio, but CarPlay doesn’t offer that.
The car also doesn’t have a USB-C port. It has two USB-A ports in the front and one more in the back. So there’s enough to charge three phones, but only if you’re okay with slow charging at 12 watts (or lower). I instead bought a USB-C fast charger and plugged it into the 12V socket.
The car seems to have its own GPS receiver for location which is passed on to Google Maps running on the phone, resulting in location that’s always accurate even when surrounded by buildings.
The car doesn’t have any navigation of its own, unlike the Ather. If your smartphone has run out of charge, or you forgot it at home, you can’t navigate.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the Creta is a good car. 12 years of progress is wonderful!
The brakes are far more sensitive than the Ritz. When I was new to this car, I accidentally abruptly braked, jerking myself forward.
If I must drive a manual, I’d like an automatic system that presses the clutch when the engine RPM gets too low. That would still give you the control that a manual gives you without stalling the engine.
To maintain engine rpm at 1000 or above, upshift to:
2nd gear at 15 kph or above
3rd gear at 23 kph
4th gear at 30 kph
5th gear at 36 kph
6th gear at 41 kph
This is something I’m sharing just out of curiosity; you’re not to refer to a chart while driving. Nor are you going to memorise these numbers.
My driving style in a manual involves significant periods when I’m clutched in fully.
6000 RPM: 5 kmpl
4500 RPM: 8 kmpl
3000 RPM: 9 kmpl
2000 RPM: 9 kmpl
1500 RPM: 9 kmpl
I measured all these in 1st gear. If you’re in a different gear, the numbers will change, but what won’t change is that the ratio of these numbers and that the fuel efficiency is the same whether at 1500, 2000 or 3000 RPM.
with the air directed only towards my legs
because the fan is running faster than the cooling ability of the compressor.
The steering wheel’s tilt is adjustable, but it was already at its highest position.
I could lower the seat, but then I had poor visibility — it was like driving while looking up at the sky. It was dangerous. I didn’t know where the car’s body ended and if I was going to scrape another vehicle.