Kia Sorento plug-in hybrid here early next year

The all-new Kia Sorento launched today will be available with a super-efficient plug-in hybrid powertrain from early 2021.

The brand will also offer a plug-less petrol-electric hybrid version of the new Kia Sorento later in 2021 as an alternative to the all-new Toyota Kluger, which will also debut with a hybrid model next year.

Kia’s first plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) offered in Australia is powered by a compact 1.6-litre turbo-petrol four-cylinder engine backed up by a 67kW electric motor that can drive the vehicle in pure EV mode.

It’s unclear what the Sorento’s EV range will be, but it’s likely to be around 50km.

Fuel consumption and recharge times are also unknown but Kia Australia was upbeat to announce its first-ever PHEV for the Aussie market.

“They’ve given us the green light to develop for our market both the plug-in hybrid and hybrid powertrains for the all-new Sorento,” said Roland Rivero, Kia Motors Australia’s product planning boss.

“We expect to have the development work and homologation work completed ASAP, and we should see stock arriving early in 2021,” he said.

The 1.6-litre petrol engine (132kW/265Nm) is augmented by a 67kW electric motor to deliver a combined output of 169kW of power and 350Nm of torque. It’s not clear whether it will retain the petrol and diesel models’ 2000kg towing capacity.

Kia’s low-emission Sorento large SUV packs a water-cooled 13.8kWh lithium-ion battery system.

Pricing and specs have not yet been confirmed but Rivero said the fifth variant in the Sorento range will “…still have all the active safety features, to ensure we maximise our [unconfirmed] ANCAP rating, which matters to fleet and government buyers.”

But rather than sitting at the top of the range, above the circa-$65,000 Sorento GT-Line AWD turbo-diesel, the new PHEV will target fleet buyers by slotting between entry-level S and mid-spec Sport grades.

“The model line-up is a still being studied but the PHEV together with the hybrid variant would probably be more suitable for the fleet market,” said Kia’s product planning chief.

“A lot of fleets, particularly the big corporates, are expressing a lot of interest in hybrid. And we’re all very well aware the number one selling hybrid car in Australia [Toyota RAV4] has proven that, so there is strong interest out there from corporate and government buyers to look at hybrid as an alternative.”

Rivero confirmed that because right-hand drive development of the Sorento PHEV is already well underway for the UK market, “…the development work to Australianise it is fairly minor. We’ll be right off the back of the European launch.”

The Kia Sorento PHEV is hooked up to a six-speed automatic transmission and will be an all-wheel drive proposition.

The plug-less Sorento hybrid arriving in Australia later in 2021 gets the same petrol-electric powertrain (169kW/350Nm) as the PHEV albeit with a much smaller 1.5kWh lithium battery.

Before the hybrid models arrive here, the new-generation Kia Sorento will be offered with a 2.2-litre four-cylinder turbo-diesel (148kW/440Nm) with AWD from launch this month, followed in November by a front-drive 3.5-litre petrol V6 (148kW/440Nm).

Kia Australia's chief operating officer Damien Meredith said he expected the new Sorento to find about 400 buyers a month in Australia, of which around 40 per month could be hybrid models once they arrive in showrooms.

“We’ll be conservative in our forecasting in the initial stages to gauge how the hybrid product resonates. We’re obviously confident but in the initial stages we don’t see more than 10-15 per cent being hybrid,” he said.

Standard features across the new fourth-generation Kia Sorento range include a LED headlights and fog lights, seven seats, alloy wheels, autonomous emergency braking (with car, pedestrian, cyclist and junction assist), seven airbags including a front centre airbag, lane following assist, front and rear parking sensors, advanced smart cruise control and embossed cloth-trimmed seats.

Big-ticket items such as the 10.2-inch touch-screen infotainment unit are offered on mid-spec models while a host more are reserved for the top-shelf $60K-plus GT-Line.

These include a 12.3-inch digital instrument cluster, blind spot view monitor, 8.0-inch head-up display and autonomous key-fob-operated parking assistant, 12-speaker Bose surround sound system, 64-colour cabin mood lighting system and rear seat intercom model-grades.