Kia is embarking on an ambitious five-year plan to electrify the brand and bring it “into the future.”
Earlier this year, the South Korean automaker announced its Plan S strategy. As part of this plan, it will establish an electrified lineup of 11 models by 2025 and launch seven all-electric vehicles by 2027. What’s more, it plans on selling 500,000 battery-electric vehicles and 500,000 hybrids and plug-in hybrids by 2026.
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Talking to Auto News recently, Kia’s new President Ho Sung Song says he doesn’t mind if this strategy leaves sister company Hyundai behind.
“I’m just thinking about our strategy,” he said. “We want to be more dynamic, stylish and inventive… We have to proactively put more concentration on the EV world, maybe more than Hyundai, earlier than Hyundai, in the balance of the weight of our business.”
According to Song, Kia’s electric vehicles will achieve price parity with internal-combustion vehicles as early as 2025 when taking into account the lower cost of ownership. He also sees a growing future of purpose-built vehicles, or PBVs, designed specifically for things like ride-hailing, robotaxis and e-commerce, suggesting these types of vehicles will account for 25 per cent of global vehicle demand by 2030.
Kia’s boss concedes, though, that the automaker still needs to improve its brand image to rival that of Hyundai’s; in a recent study of the best global brands, Hyundai was ranked at 36 while Kia was 86th. To change this, apart from using EVs, Kia will soon launch a new logo that will adorn its models from January.
Kia’s new logo