The normally aspirated Kia 2.0 should never ping on regular gas, definitely not to the point where you could actually hear it. Even my 1.6T with it's ridiculously high compression (for a turbo especially) doesn't have any audible ping on regular.
I don't know what your local weather is, but high ambient temperatures can definitely exacerbate the issue, (if it's a timing or mixture problem) I was always able to run substantially more boost and timing in the winter (it gets a lot colder here...lol) with my old Audi UrS6
I don't know what your local weather is, but high ambient temperatures can definitely exacerbate the issue, (if it's a timing or mixture problem) I was always able to run substantially more boost and timing in the winter (it gets a lot colder here...lol) with my old Audi UrS6