LDV MIFA aims directly at Kia Carnival

Look out Kia Carnival: the new LDV MIFA has you in its crosshairs.

The value-focused Chinese brand wants to carve a slice of the lucrative people-mover pie that accounts for upwards of 10,000 sales locally – most of them Kia Carnivals.

“We see this as a vehicle… that can take Carnival on head-on,” says Dinesh Chinnappa, LDV Australia general manager. “This car is every bit as capable of doing what Carnival has done.”

One thing LDV doesn’t have is a price advantage; the MIFA is more expensive than the Carnival, although it comes with a long list of equipment that LDV believes will be appealing to those wanting seven seats.

LDV will also start selling an eight-seat model early in 2023.

Australian LDV importer Ateco has a clear understanding of the people-mover space. It helped set the Carnival up as the dominant player in the local people-mover market segment when it originally imported Kias before the Korean car-maker took over its Australian distribution.

The Carnival now accounts for around three-quarters of all people-mover sales, comfortably outselling the other 10 or so prime large van rivals combined. It has also outlasted the Toyota Tarago, which once dominated the segment before being retired in 2019.

LDV Australia now wants the MIFA – which denotes Maximum, Intelligent, Friendly and Artistic – to muscle in on Kia’s home turf.

Chinnappa acknowledges it’ll be a long road chipping away at the Carnival’s dominance, given the loyalties that often exist when a model comfortably trounces its competition. But he says the company will be patient.

“Carnival didn’t do it overnight – it took years,” he says. “We’re not expecting to go in there tomorrow and flip the segment on its head. We’ll persistently attack the market.”

Chinnappa points to the relatively quick success LDV had in Australia with the Deliver van.

“When we launched the Deliver 9 we said a year and a half, two years ago, that we had aspirations to be the number one large selling van in Australia. And guess what, a couple of years later… we’re the number one selling [large] van in Australia.”

LDV has a key advantage over its rivals in those space: EV versions of its commercial vehicles and people-mover.

While there has been plenty of chat about electric utes and vans, LDV has beaten its rivals to the zero-emissions market, also adding an EV version of the MIFA – known as the MIFA 9 – as part of a three-pronged attack.

Each has big price tags – the eT60 ute sells from $92,990, the eDeliver 9 from $99,990 and the MIFA 9 from $106,000 (all plus on-road costs) – but LDV says there has been no shortage of early interest.

Reinforcing that internal combustion engines are still the bulk of its business for now, LDV says EV is an “unchartered opportunity” and says it is holding about 80 orders for the eT60 ute, eDeliver 9 van and MIFA 9 electric version of that people-mover.

It’s the $92,990 drive-away ute that is proving most popular from early interest – perhaps not surprising given utes make up more than one in five new vehicle sales.

“A ute is a high proportion of [the early interest], but we’re also getting some reasonable interest and enquiry on pre-sale of the van,” says Chinnappa.

He acknowledges the eT60 is “not a recreational ute” – it’s only two-wheel drive, has a 1000kg towing capacity and a 330km EV driving range – but that it will have appeal for specific applications, especially in urban centres.

“We’ve got [interest from] mining companies, we’ve got construction companies, we’ve got people in the energy renewables sector… and there’s been roughly, to date, 600 expressions of interest through our website.”

Chinnappa isn’t releasing figures on how many electric LDVs will come into the country, but he believes people could still be queuing for a few months given the early interest.

“Supply is going to be challenging. We’re going to be restrained for supply,” he says, adding that “I don’t see Australia bursting into the EV market in massive volumes”.

Given the eager interest in EVs, the LDV trio find themselves well positioned for incremental sales volume.

While LDV has just upped the warranty on the diesel-powered T60 and petrol-powered MIFA to seven years and 200,000km, the electric versions of each make do with five-year, 160,000km coverage.

“The OEM (LDV) has specified it [at five years],” says Chinnappa, adding that “they need time to collect data… information”.

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