Maybe all supposed that the next generation Kia Sportage will have a hybrid and a plug-in hybrid variant like happened with the recently released new generation Tucson. But today is the first time we have a proof that Kia is already testing a Sportage Hybrid and we have pictures that prove it. The 5th gen Sportage is set for April 2021 debut.
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What we know so far?
The next generation Sportage is a long awaited model. We already have seen the Tucson testing but we were waiting for the Sportage due to as included on Kia’s Product Plan Schedule for 2020 and all models announced on it were already released (Bongo 3 EV, Sorento & Sorento HEV or Sedona-Carnival) we were worried about the Sportage, more after reading some rumours of delay due to design changes.
But here it is! We shared pictures of a SUV a few days ago and despite we were pretty convinced that we were in front of the new generation Sportage, we prefered to be cautious about it, but now we can see that prototype was the new Sportage and today we have more pictures that demonstrate it.
Despite we said NQ4, (as you can see in the picture below, it was originally codenamed as NQ4) but looks like Kia finally called it NQ5 (there are several parts of the cars that where NQ5 is handwritten. The original Sportage was the NB7, and happened before Hyundai bought Kia, while the KM, SL, QL (the current one) were built in the HMG’s era.
The inscription on the exhaust said “NQ5 HEV”.
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This Sportage prototype is on an early stage of development, as it has provisinal headlights and taillights. Despite that you can have an idea of the design and the real thing is I expected that look more like an small Sorento, but looks like Kia will premiere a new design language with the new Sportage, because it looks totally different.
Despite the high level of camouflage, we can see that the design it’s not even close to any current model of Kia (check the new mirrors too) so we can expect a new concept car soon that could premiere the new design identity, like Hyundai did with the Vision T and All-New Tucson. Inside we can see some of the latest model, like the door patterns, similar to Sorento or Carnival.
The new Sportage had suffered a delay according to the product plan schedule, like with the Tucson (spied for the first time in July 2019 and to be released in August 2020) we should have seen the Sportage almost ready to production by this time and the reality is only on stage 1.
