After we have seen the first leaked pictures of Kia Motors’ smallest city car, the Picanto (also known as Morning in South Korea and some overseas markets) facelift, today we have some new leaked images of its Korean-spec counterpart. This time we can see the rear design for the first time, with updated bumper and new LED tailights.
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What we know so far?
Before this facelift started the development, we have read numerous rumours that said Kia will transform the next-gen Picanto into a SUV or also they were working on an full electric Picanto, but at this time is just a refresh of the current generation Picanto (the 3rd, codenamed as JA).
The pictures of the updated Picanto are pretty clear and were taken during filming near Frankfurt, Germany and allow us to see slight changes to its design, as new bumpers, alloy wheels and headlights as well as the usually registatrion plates that Kia uses for filming/photoshoots.
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The currently available, third generation Kia Picanto has been on sale in Europe since 2017. If Kia follows their regular 3 and a half year cycle for upgrading the vehicles, then the enhanced Picanto will be launched at the end of 2020 or early in 2021. So this means that the updated Picanto could arrive very soon as they started filming videos for promotion.
Kia Motor Europe’s chief operating officer, Emilio Herrera, recently suggested that the Picanto EV will have to happen “sooner or later”. The all-electric Picanto has to happen not only because of the tougher European emission standards, but also to stay competitive in the “city” car segment. VW, Renault and Peugeot are all on the brink of releasing small electric cars in Europe.
