Confirmed: High-performance Kia EVs coming from 2021
Kia president and CEO Ho Sung Song has confirmed Kia will soon have high-performance EVs.
To utilise the designs and ground-up construction of the seven new dedicated EV models due before 2025, the high-performance EVs will broaden the appeal of the brand, which recently unveiled a new logo and mobility-focused direction.
“Yes, we are planning to launch the high-performance model version of electrification including our first dedicated EV, which will be revealed in the first quarter of this year,” said Song, confirming Kia would not create an EV or performance sub-brand but instead simply be sold as a Kia (sister brand Hyundai is using Ioniq for its dedicated EVs while Toyota has created BZ for its EVs).
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“Still this will be under the brand of Kia.”
The new dedicated Kia EVs will utilise the E-GMP platform created by parent company Hyundai.
Each new Kia EV will utilise a simple alpha-numeric naming structure and eventually include EV1, EV2, EV3, EV4, EV5, EV6, EV7, EV8 and EV9, bigger numbers reserved for bigger vehicles.
The first of the EV performance models will be based on the first dedicated EV to be unveiled in the first quarter of 2021.
Condenamed CV, the new EV will be a mid-sized SUV similar in size to the car it will share plenty with under the skin, the Hyundai Ioniq 5.
Kia’s head of brand and customer experience, Artur Martins, tempered the excitement slightly by saying the EV performance models would not be as hard core as some of the market, instead suggesting that were more about everyday driving excitement.
“The high performance of Kia is about excitement to drive, it’s not so much in the [BMW] M territory … of being prepared for track,” said Martins. “Our performance cars will not be track cars.”
The man in charge of performance vehicles for Hyundai and Kia, Albert Biermann – formerly the head of BMW M division – late last year gave clues of the upcoming performance EVs.
Key to those high-performance models is the new E-GMP platform that will underpin them.
