Kia vows to make Tasman a success

The Kia Tasman has failed to make an impact on Australian dual-cab buyers, but local executives are adamant the product has what it takes to succeed. While admitting things haven’t gone according to plan, the brand says it’s still early days and that time is needed to convince loyal ute owners to switch, especially when it comes to fleet operators.

“We know what went wrong. Now we have to work out what we have to do to right it,” Kia Australia CEO Damien Meredith said of the Kia Tasman’s introduction into the local market.

Having sold just 5534 units in the nine months since its June 2025 arrival, the Tasman is well short of the 20,000 per annum target communicated pre-launch.

Meredith identified the three main areas Kia underestimated during the Tasman’s rollout.

“The design of the car was a little bit divisive,” he said. “Secondly, the competition that entered the market at a similar time (PHEVs like the BYD Shark 6) took us by surprise. There’s no question about that.

“We may have gone too early in regards to our communication. We signalled what we were going to do 18 months before launch, but at the end of the day our responsibility, and my responsibility, is to make sure that the Tasman gets to a certain sales level, and we’ve got to find the right formula – to make it successful.”

Roughly 40 per cent of Tasman buyers have been existing Kia owners, with Kia Australia’s marketing general manager Dean Norbiato saying: “We’ve seen repeat purchases of customers on multiple Tasmans. [The] onus is on us to get more bums in seats driving them.”

Despite the sales shortfall, Meredith is satisfied with some aspects of its retail performance.

“Lifestyle we’ve done very, very well and that’s probably been the Kia owner, the one who’s loyal to the product,” he said.

“What we need to do is improve fleet, we need to improve our [agricultural] performance and we need to improve our provincial performance. Selling cars to people – not farmers – in provincial areas.”

Despite the success of some of its electrified opposition, and admitting that recent events haven’t helped the sales prospects of a diesel ute, Meredith said a hybrid drivetrain isn’t a panacea.

“We’ve got to fix what we’ve got now before we start worrying about other powertrains etc.”

Fleet sales are a key focus going forward, but Kia Australia COO Dennis Piccoli said it’s a tough nut to crack.

“You need to be mindful as well that half the [ute] market’s fleet. It’s got a gestation period, that stuff. They need to put the car in trial before they jump in multiples,” he said.

“That takes a bit of time and the existing brands that are out there are pretty well entrenched. They’ve got a lot riding on their products and they’re defending it very, very hard. So it just takes that little bit extra to break through in that space.”

Fleet success will mean making the bottom end of the Tasman range more attractive.

Of the 4196 Tasmans sold in 2025, 1802 were the flagship X-Line Pro, with another 905 being penultimate X-Lines – clearly supporting Meredith’s assertion that it’s performed reasonably well with lifestyle customers, but also evidence cheaper variants have largely been ignored.

“We’ve got a lot of work to do to get it up to an acceptable sales level, but we will,” Meredith said. “That’s our job. That’s our responsibility.”

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