Buyers could pay extra for EV4 hatch

Just $1000 more on the price tag could decide whether the Kia EV4 hatchback joins the freshly launched EV4 sedan on sale in Australia.

While previously bullish about taking the hatch, Kia Australia is now crunching the numbers on the five-door EV4 to determine how close it can get to the sedan’s pricing.

Kia’s challenge with the new EV4 hatch? It’s sourced from Slovakia rather than Korea, making it costlier to ship to Australia.

Although the brand has traditionally priced its sedan and hatch variants at parity, it’s now weighing how much extra the EV4 hatch would need to cost locally and whether buyers would accept the premium.

Kia Australia product chief Roland Rivero is confident that the hatch still has strong buyer appeal.

“I think that if we get the price right, the EV4 hatchback could still outsell the EV4 sedan,” Rivero said.

The starting price for the hatch – if its line-up reflected the sedan – would tip over beyond $50,000 plus on-road costs.

The sedan range starts with the $49,990 EV4 Air Standard Range, then escalates to the bigger battery $59,190 EV4 Earth Long Range and $64,690 EV4 GT-Line Long Range.

Rivero says demand for a hatchback version remains strong, but early pricing feedback from headquarters has complicated the business case.

“The desire for the hatchback isn't really gone. It's just now that we got into the nitty gritty number crunching with Korea headquarters that they came back with some initial feedback on our pricing proposal,” Rivero said.

“Our pricing proposal always is just like K4. The market does not care whether you source a car from one place or another.

“They only care about the fact that it's fundamentally the same car just in a hatchback.

“So as a product planner, we wouldn't want to release the hatchback at a price increase above the sedan.”

But Rivero admitted there was potentially some leeway on pricing, even if it’s limited.

“As much as I know Australia's very hatch favourable as a body style, how much more would they pay for it? Or would they actually look at it as, ‘Kia, you've lost the plot’,” he said.

“We're just fighting the number crunch game.

“And our chief financial officer is trying to get it as low as possible.

“If we manage to get our negotiations up to that nice $1000 to $1500 [price impost over Kia EV4 sedan] … it's [EV4 hatch] coming.”

A decision is due to be made this quarter (January–March), and if the business case stacks up, the EV4 hatch should be in Australia before the end of 2024, as right-hand drive production has already started for the UK.

As carsales already reported, the future of the Kia EV4 GT is being worked on alongside the standard models since it's also sourced from Slovakia.

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