Kia’s EV Play – Is This Bad News For Ioniq?
By Phil Royle – Jan. 16, 2021
Kia put forth a trendy new corporate logo earlier this year, and now the company has presented an equally hip corporate mission with electrification standing front and center. Kia’s EV presentation this week set forth a solid and bold direction for the company – but now comes the next problem for Hyundai Motor Group: Can the Ioniq brand stay relevant?
“We are now securely focused on taking the leading position in the global EV market,” Kia President and CEO Ho Sung Song said this week. “And we plan to launch seven new dedicated EVs by 2027 while simultaneously promoting sustainable manufacturing through the uses of clean energy and recyclable materials.”
Karin Habib, Kia’s head of global design, explained more: “If we are designing a powerful and dynamic crossover, a fun and practical commuter, a strong and bold SUV, an agile and dynamic machine, or a long and elegant sedan, our aim is to design the physical experience of our brand to create original, inventive, and exciting electric vehicles. These will simply be named EV1 to EV9.”
“Along with our EVs, we are developing products tailored to the diverse needs of our customers, whether for business or for private use, we are engineering and designing flexible concepts,” Habib continued. “We are building purpose-built vehicles, otherwise known as PBVs.”
Kia’s nine new EVs will be built upon Hyundai Motor Group’s E-GMP platform utilizing an 800-volt architecture allowing for rapid DC fast charging. They will also likely integrate the company’s Vehicle-to-Load (V2L) technology that enables the battery to supply up to 3.5 kW of power through 110- and 220-volt plugs.
Kia’s first EV is slated to be announced in the first quarter of 2021 and will sport a range of 320 miles (presumably a WLTP estimate).
Kia’s first entry into the EV market will come soon, and likely resemble the Ioniq 5.
Kia also looks to be leveraging the E-GMP platform in a similar way to GM and its Ultium technology, producing the foundation that other companies design upon. Kia calls these Purpose-Built Vehicles (PBVs).
“These specialized vehicles will be based on flexible ‘skateboard’ platforms, with modular bodies designed to meet the specific mobility needs of a broad range of corporate and fleet customers,” reads Kia’s press release announcing its EV future. “Partnerships with the likes of Canoo and Arrival will mean Kia PBVs can offer different bodies mounted on top of an integrated modular ‘skateboard’ platform, tailored to users’ functional requirements.”
Likely, Canoo’s entry into the delivery van market – which will battle the likes of GM’s BrightDrop EV600 – has E-GMP underpinnings. Also, Hyundai Motor Group’s recent conversations with Apple now make far more sense.
“Demand for PBVs is expected to grow five-fold by 2030 due to rapid and sustained growth in e-commerce and car-sharing services,” Kia stated in its press release. “Bespoke Kia PBVs will be tailored to meet the needs of corporate and fleet customers. For instance, these could include car-sharing vehicles, low-floor logistics vehicles, and delivery vehicles.”
The problem then becomes: Ioniq.
“Ioniq brand was conceived to fuse life changing mobility with environmental performance and has so far been instrumental in delivering progress electrified,” Hyundai Motor Group said in mid-2020. “Ioniq will continue to create a new balance in clean mobility synchronizing eco-products within an ecosystem of lifestyle solutions bringing connected living to a new generation.”
All of this sounds very similar to Kia’s new mission.
Granted, between Kia, Hyundai, and Genesis, overlap in Hyundai Motor Group’s portfolio is plentiful, but each brand currently has a somewhat distinct place in the market. Hyundai and Kia tackle different design styles and trim levels, while Genesis is akin to Honda’s Acura or Nissan’s Infinity. Once Hyundai and Genesis announce their intent for full electrification – and they will – presumably all four corporate brands will wield the same battle cry of creating “a new balance in clean mobility synchronizing eco-products within an ecosystem of lifestyle solutions bringing connected living to a new generation” or “promoting sustainable manufacturing through the uses of clean energy and recyclable materials.”
Launching a new brand, as Hyundai Motor Group discovered with Genesis, is expensive for the company and confusing for its consumers. It took several years for the Genesis brand to take hold, so with Hyundai Motor Group’s inevitable move to full electrification with all of its brands, Ioniq hasn’t much time to build a following.
Kia says it’s targeting a 6.6% share of the global EV market by 2025, translating to roughly 500,000 sales annually. Once Hyundai and Genesis go EV, it could be that Ioniq’s increasingly niche-less brand slips away and becomes little more than a blip in the history books for Hyundai Motor Group.
(Images courtesy Kia)
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