The launch of the 2020 Kia Telluride 8-passenger SUV expands and refines the automaker’s Drive Wise suite of advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS). Kia refers to it as a Level 2 autonomous driving system.
To learn more about Kia Drive Wise systems and to test the Telluride’s Highway Driving Assist for myself, I headed for (where else?) Telluride, Colorado, to spend a day behind this family-sized SUV’s steering wheel.
Assists Come Standard on the Kia Telluride
You may have noticed that some car companies still reserve driver assists for more expensive trim levels. Then, even after you’ve bumped up in price to access them, you’ve still gotta pay extra for a package that includes these features.
For example, take one of the Kia Telluride’s direct competitors, the Chevrolet Traverse. To get any ADAS on the Traverse, you need to choose the Premier trim and buy the Driver Confidence Package, resulting in a price tag of $47,170 (including a destination charge of $1,195).
Meanwhile, Kia offers ADAS as standard equipment on the new Telluride, which costs $32,735 (including $1,045 for destination charges). Below, you can see the breakdown of ADAS technologies for the Kia Telluride:
LX and S Trim Levels:
- Driver attention monitoring system
- Adaptive cruise control with stop-and-go capability
- Forward collision warning with pedestrian detection
- Automatic front and rear emergency braking
- Lane departure warning with lane-keeping and lane centering assist
- Blind-spot monitoring with collision avoidance assist
- Reversing camera with dynamic guidance lines
- Rear parking assist sensors
EX Trim Level Adds:
- Highway Driving Assist
SX Trim Level Adds:
- Blind-Spot View Monitor
- Automatic high-beam headlights
- Front parking assist sensors
- Surround-view monitoring system
This is an undeniably impressive array of driver assistance and collision avoidance systems, and most of it is standard equipment on the least-expensive version of the Telluride.
Driving assists on the road to Telluride
Colorado 141 is one of those epically gorgeous and epically empty two-lane roads, winding up, down, over, and through the topography of the state’s western slope. Not far past Naturita, it connects to Colorado 145, the road to Telluride.
This served as my testing grounds for the Kia Telluride’s driver assists. It was not ideal. Without freeways, traffic, and other situations that most Telluride owners will encounter daily, my experience with Kia’s Drive Wise technologies was limited, yet instructive.
Let’s begin with the adaptive cruise control system. It operates in a refined and smooth fashion, maintaining a safe following distance without the subtle braking and acceleration evident in less sophisticated technologies. On the bendy sections of Colorado 145, which has a posted speed limit of 65 mph, I needed to disengage the system because it carried a dangerous amount of speed into some of the curves.
At a construction zone, the Telluride ahead of me came to a stop, and so did my test vehicle. This action was confident rather than hesitant, bringing the SUV to a hitch-free halt. When we were cleared to go, a prompt recommends using a steering wheel-mounted cruise control button or a push on the accelerator pedal to re-engage the system. Kia allows drivers to tailor this response to Slow, Normal, or Fast settings.
Intrusive lane departure warnings
On these narrow ribbons of road, the Telluride’s lane departure warning system became a nuisance, even though you can choose from three different volume settings. Personally, I’d prefer a steering wheel vibration to a beep. That’s because a beep tells everyone aboard about your sloppy lane discipline. A vibration is a more private communication between you and the technology.
Lane-keeping assist and lane follow assist work well. You’re aware of the added inputs, but they’re muted enough to encourage continued use. The Highway Driving Assist is downright impressive, too, proactively steering into kinks in the road and excelling at centering the SUV in its lane. Kia says you can allow the Telluride’s software to autonomously steer for up to two minutes before it requests your hands on the steering wheel.
As good as Highway Driving Assist was, I did not trust the system on tighter curves. Also, many stretches of the route had puddles or wet slush on the road surface. I wasn’t comfortable with testing it in such conditions.
Because we were limited to two-lane roads the entire day, I never needed the Telluride’s blind-spot collision avoidance system or the blind-spot view monitor that shows a video feed of what’s on either side of the SUV within the instrumentation. Nor did I need to sample the rear cross-traffic avoidance system.
Snow and Level 2 Self-Driving
Following lunch in Telluride, we headed back from whence we’d come, traveling the high, flat plateau between the legendary ski town and western slope canyon country. A snowstorm blew in, its wind-driven and fluffy flakes coating the SUV’s front end in an icy mask.
After we’d descended below the snow line, I tried to re-activate the Highway Driving Assist technology. Unfortunately, the radar and lidar units that control this system were covered in slushy muck, disabling the ADAS.
This illustrates one of the challenges on the road to fully autonomous vehicles. If people no longer require driving skills, what happens when weather moves in, whether its heavy snow, dense fog, wind-driven rain, blowing dust or sand, or even a tornado? If you’re in an automated pod without a steering wheel or pedals, and the technology is rendered inoperable, and you’re out in the middle of nowhere Colorado without a Kia-supplied satellite phone like I had, what will you do?
Sophistication, Thy Name is Kia
Kia Telluride’s Drive Wise suite of driver assists is impressive. They work as well as others I’ve experienced, including systems installed in vehicles that cost double what this SUV commands. Unfortunately, neither Cadillac’s Super Cruise nor Tesla’s Autopilot is among the measurements on my personal yardstick. I hear, though, that when properly used, they are outstanding.
So is the new 2020 Kia Telluride. Highway Driving Assist aside, this is a stylish, comfortable, value-laden family-sized SUV.
