KIA announced the first-ever “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 like Stinger Revival or GT1 high performance electric sedan, the EV4 and even the EV3 in an event to be held in October 2023. Today we want to share with you all the information we have already of KIA’s upcoming all-electric line-up.
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
South Korean media already mentioned that Kia has the KIA CT1 on the roadmap. The Kia CT1 will have global aspirations and will take on Toyota BZ-3 Sedan. The new Kia electric compact sedan should use the Hyundai Motor Group’s Electric Global Modular Platform (E-GMP) instead of the eM platform, which is expected to be used by larger to premium vehicles.
The South Korea carmaker already started working so they’re undergoing some upgrades to its AutoLand Gwangju Plant, specifically the Plant 2. Kia shut down Plant 2 on June 1, 2023 in order to transform into a dedicated EV plant, and it will stay closed till December 31, 2023.
Plant 2 was home of the Rio hatchback, a model that was discontinued. It is expected that the updated plant will be ready to built two all-new electric models, the KIA EV4 (known internally as SV1) and the aforementioned KIA EV3 by June 2024. It is expected to see some sightings of the KIA EV3 prototype before the end of the year.
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.
It is still unknown if this model used the E-GMP platform or the new “eM“. As a possible budget electric car (remember it has the same size as a Seltos but with a longer wheelbase) we bow down for E-GMP, but maybe with a 400V system like the EV5 and LFP (lithium iron phosphate battery) to keep the price under $25,000.
KIA EV4 prototype spied testing
