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Kia is on a massive electric vehicle offensive.
The South Korean brand has just added the Tesla Model Y-rivalling EV5 mid-size SUV to its electric car line-up, joining the bigger EV6 and EV9.
It’s not done yet, though. Kia will bring the EV3 compact SUV, due in March/April, and EV4 small car later in 2025.
The EV5’s sharp circa-$56,000 drive-away starting price puts the smaller EV3 on track to kick off below $50,000 drive-away to create some breathing room between its bigger brother.
“[The EV3] is a small SUV relatively to a medium SUV that is EV5, and will need to be positioned accordingly,” said Kia Australia Head of Product Planning Roland Rivero.
“Given our ambitions it has to be priced correctly to be able to achieve our sales plan.”
It’ll need to slip below the $50K mark to trouble established Chinese EVs such as the circa-$45,000 BYD Atto 3.
Rivero said it was important to get the price right the first time as it didn’t want to be changing it on the fly.
Several carmakers, including MG and Tesla, have given their electric cars several price cuts this year to help boost demand.
MG recently knocked $10,000 off the price of its MG4 64 Excite variant to help move older stock.
This can have several negative effects: one is to torpedo future value of existing customers' cars and potentially damage brand loyalty of customers who recently paid full price.
Rivero said Kia would be doing none of that.
“The key point from our end is we are aiming for a good launch price that speaks of value, that is part of our strategy, but we’re not then going to play silly buggers on price after that. So lock in that price after that and give it a good run,” he said.
“Obviously it’s going to go through peaks and troughs of demand, there’s not going to be any panic and suddenly drop the price five grand. That’s not something that Kia Australia will be doing.”
Kia Australia Chief Operating Officer Dennis Piccoli expects the EV3 to be the brand's second best selling electric vehicle after the bigger EV5. He said Kia is planning on selling about 10,000 to 11,000 electric vehicles next year.
Kia Australia boss Damien Meredith said it expects about 5000 sales for the EV5 next year, which would put the EV3 in the 3000 to 4000 range.
The EV3 will be available with two battery sizes: a 58.3kWh unit and long-range 81.4kWh pack — the latter is capable of up to 600km.
Power comes from a single 150kW/283Nm electric motor that can go from zero to 100km/h in 7.5 seconds on the way to a top speed of 170km/h.
Charging won't be as speedy as the bigger, more expensive models as it forgoes the 800-volt charging architecture in favour of a 400-volt set-up.
This means the 350kW maximum rate of the Kia EV6 and EV9 is unlikely. The company said it can replenish the batteries from 10 to 80 per cent in 31 minutes, which would put the charge rate at about 120kW.
There won’t be a smaller, cheaper electric Kia SUV in Australia initially.,m
Kia will leave the smaller European-built EV2 SUV on the shelf for now, said Rivero.
“We’ve had Slovakian products before, logistically it's not easy — a train to a German port, it takes awhile to get here. So I think we need to look at it in a bit more detail but for now, just look at EV3 and EV5 as our two main volume EVs coming to market,” he said.
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