Kia won’t back down on sales

Kia will continue to publicly announce sales targets for its product portfolio despite having its record 2025 overall results completely overshadowed by the Tasman ute’s troubles.

While many other car companies now decline to offer annual sales targets for new models or overall, Kia Australia has been a notable exception.

Other big players such as Ford don’t offer sales estimates saying it’s commercially valuable information.

But it also means missed targets can’t be reported by the media later.

And that’s certainly what’s happened to Kia, despite an overall positive 2025 result.

In a static overall market Kia Australia sold a record 82,105 vehicles in 2025, up a fractional 0.4 per cent on its 2024 record result of 81,787 sales.

Kia had hoped to sell 90,000 vehicles in Australia in 2025 and harbours the longer term goal of 100,000 sales.

But that 2025 result was dependant on the Tasman hitting its sales numbers as well as a stronger performance from its EVs.

Kia went into the Tasman launch mid-2025 with a 20,000 annual sales target, which translates to a sales average of 1666 per month.

In the second half of 2025 the Tasman averaged 700 sales per month, meaning it’s headed for an annual sales rate around 8300.

At the end of last year Kia modified its sales language around Tasman, saying it still wanted to hit 20,000 but it would take time.

At the Kia EV3 launch in April 2025, Kia stated its EV sales target for 2025 was 11,000, with the EV5 accounting for 6000 sales, the EV3 4000 and the remainder accounted for by the EV6 and EV9.

The actual Kia EV sales total came in at 8001, still good enough for third overall in a slowly climbing segment, but well shy of estimates.

Kia’s popular electric vehicles were the EV5 with 4787 units sold and the EV3 with 2597 units finding homes.

But Kia Australia CEO Damien Meredith made it clear he had no regrets about putting sales targets into the public arena.

“Look, you can either hide behind the corporate veil and not say those things, or you can be as upfront and honest as you possibly can,” he told carsales.

“Were we happy with a record year under the circumstances? We were.

“Did we not meet the fulfilment of what we told you guys at the start of 2025? The answer to that is we didn't.

“But is it a failure? We don't look at it like that.

“In 2014 we sold 28,000 cars. Last year we sold 82, nearly 83,000. Is that a failure?”

Meredith acknowledged the focus on Kia’s sales shortfalls rather than successes, but insisted being transparent was important.

“Does it open you up for criticism? Yes, it does,” he said.

He cited internal Kia Australia motivation as a reason for making sales numbers a public target, but focussed more on the importance of staking a claim within the larger organisation globally.

“Yeah, there's the emotional side of it,” Meredith said.

“There's [also] the commercial side of it in regards to production.

“So you've got to make sure that the lines of production are open for you.

“I always commit to a number because there's some important things in the background that make you chase that number.”

Intriguingly, Meredith nominated a seemingly conservative 70 sales per month for the new EV4 electric sedan that launched in January.

He rejected the suggestion that number was intentionally low after 2025’s missed forecasts.

“I don't think I'm being cautious,” he said.

“I mean, 840 [70 x 12 months] EV4s at an incremental level help us dramatically from an NVES [CO2 reduction scheme] point of view.”

Despite the sales stumbles of 2025, Meredith remains focussed on selling 100,000 Kias annually in Australia and perhaps snaring second place in the market behind Toyota. It finished 2025 in fourth place, its equal best result.

“Certainly not in 2026,” he said of achieving the 100,000 target.

“But if we get Tasman going, then that changes the dynamic quite quickly.”

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