On behalf of KIA’s all-new electric compact SUV, the EV5, the South Korean carmaker announced the KIA EV Day, and event where they will give more details about the EV5 availability (to be on sale in China before end of 2023) and future products, to be held in October 2023.
Despite Kia initially make it clear that the EV5 will be Chinese-only model with options to be sold in additional countries in the future, Kia’s CEO Song Ho-seong turned around and said, “We will also sell EV5 in South Korea and overseas.” and also pointed out that “The EV5 is struggling with a variety of marketing measures to dissage the image of the EV5 as an SUV for China,” he added.
Now, with the debut of the EV5, Kia only revealed a few images but did not say anything about the powertrain or batteries of the new all-electric SUV placing us for the KIA EV day, an event where the company will talk about this and future models like the EV4.
The EV5 price will be set within the 50 million won (US $38,000/35.000€) for the standard range and the 57 million won (US $43,800/40.000€) for the long range model. Larger battery pack will reach 82 kWh in order to get closer to the 700 km of range. The overseas market model will use a NCM battery while the Chinese version will use LPF only.
Detail of KIA’s eM platform
Also, it will be the first time we known from KIA about the future all-electric sedan that it is internally known as GT1. The GT1 will be Hyundai Motor Group’s first electric vehicle to be equipped with next-generation electric vehicle-only platform (known as “eM”) developed by HMG following the E-GMP (used for the KIA EV6, EV9, Hyundai IONIQ 5 and IONIQ 6 and Genesis GV60). This model will correspond to an E-segment and will also serve as Kia K8 successor.
The GT1 Stinger is expected to achieve a range of 700 to 800 km on a single full charge thanks to a new 113,2 kWh battery pack. For the current largest battery, the Mercedes-Benz EQS (107.8kWh) runs 770 km according to the European World Standard Automotive Test Method (WLTP).
The KIA GT1 will have maximum output of 450 kW (612 hp) thanks to the combination of a 200 kW front engine and a 250 kW rear engine, so it will be more powerful than the EV6 GT (that has 430 kW). KIA will also use another configurations for base and medium model. Its base spec will have a single rear engine with 160 kW (218 hp) and another with 160 kW dual-motor (320 kW and 435 hp).
KIA EV4 prototype spied testing
The KIA EV4 was already spied as a prototype, with several stages of development, despite all are under that camouflage for now some prototypes were spied in South Korea already con production wheels or proper alloy wheels. The EV4 will be positioned below the recently revealed EV5 and according to our sources its said to keep it’s price under $30.000.
Rumors has it that the EV4 will get a 400V tech or LFP battery instead in order to keep the price down. Same rumors also say the EV5 models for China will also get the 400V system but also that the EV5 will hit other markets but then with the 800V set-up.
