Smaller, cheaper Kia EVs coming
Korean brand’s electric vehicle rollout to include two more affordable SUVs, but none of them will cost less than $50KKia EVs are about to get smaller and more affordable with at least two new electric models to slot below the EV6 – but pricing of all future Kia EVs will be north of $50,000.
That’s right, you shouldn’t expect Kia – now Australia’s third most popular brand behind Toyota and Mazda – to fight at the entry-level end of the electric car market.
Instead, Kia wants to maintain the EV high ground and sell on technology and substance rather than by dangling a low price tag to take on newcomers such as BYD and GWM Ora.
The new $100,000 Kia EV6 GT high-performance flagship might set a new price record for the once-humble Korean brand, but Kia recently said it would continue to sell conventional sub-$20,000 cars where possible and that mass adoption of EVs in Australia remains a decade away.
However, Kia Australia says it has its hands high in the air for at least two upcoming battery-electric models that are yet to be named but are expected to use either EV3, EV4 and/or EV5 monikers.
“We want all of them,” says Kia Australia product planning manager Roland Rivero of the upcoming EV arrivals. “They’re all on our radar.”
He says Kia will add one or two new EVs annually to its electric portfolio over the next three or four years, significantly bolstering the Niro Electric and EV6 – the only two battery-electric models the brand currently sells here.
And while the Kia EV9 large electric SUV is now confirmed to be heading our way late in 2023, it’s the smaller end of the EV market where much of the action will be from 2024.
“There’s a couple of others, smaller ones [EVs]… both in passenger and SUV [market segments],” says Rivero.
Kia has committed to using at least seven on the names between EV1 and EV9.
Overseas reports suggest the EV3 and EV4 will be compact SUVs, while the EV5 will be a Tesla-rivalling sedan.
Rivero says the smaller – and, inevitably, more affordable – models represent a “massive opportunity” for Kia as it looks to capitalise on the momentum created largely by the EV6 that is the hero of the Kia line-up.
While the imminent new arrivals will sit below the $72,590 (plus on-road costs) starting price for the EV6, which currently leads the brand’s tech charge, they won’t be crashing the sub-$50K party dominated by the BYD Atto 3 and MG ZS EV small Chinese SUVs.
Kia Australia COO Damien Meredith says the brand has made an enormous leap into the premium SUV space with its EV6 – something it wants to maintain with future models.
“There’s a transactional aspect of EVs and there’s the emotional, performance-type aspect of EVs,” he says, adding that “we want to stay up there [in that emotional EV space] in regards to that”.
“I don’t particularly want to go below the $50,000, $60,000 mark,” says Meredith, suggesting he doesn’t want to slog it out in the more price-sensitive end of the EV market that’s currently dominated by Chinese manufacturers still trying to establish their brands in the Australian market.
“It’s better for our brand and our future to be competing in that area rather than the sub-$50K EV area.”
Related: Kia Australia pledges to continue selling sub-$20K cars
Related: Australia’s EV tipping point over a decade away, says Kia
Related: Kia EV9 shown in final testing
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