Although Kia is currently already very successful in the market for electrically powered crossovers, the real work has yet to begin. The first purely EV developed Kia is coming and that promises something.
With the e-Soul and especially the e-Niro, Kia manages to attract quite a few people to the showroom who prefer to ignore a combustion engine entirely. In fact, the e-Niro is one of the absolute top sellers when it comes to the sale of electric cars in our country. That of course tastes like more. Not only because high-legged electric cars are clearly catching on well, but it is of course also important for the reduction of the average emissions of the fleet for the brand to take really big steps in the electrical field. To do this, parent company Hyundai has a completely new platform in the nursery. This E-GMP baptized base is to be used by Hyundai as well as Genesis and Kia in the coming years. All three are working on a crossover on this platform. Crossovers and electric drive: exactly what a brand needs to be future-proof. We will now examine Kia’s view on this. The South Koreans already gave a preview of the electric future of the brand in the form of the Futuron Concept at the end of 2019. In any case, that study model largely leads to the crossover that you see here. Don’t be surprised if more electric Kias follow, with the design team using this Futuron as a guideline.
Source of inspiration
The still unnamed electric crossover was recently spotted outdoors for the first time, covered with camouflage material. Broadly speaking, we expect that if you would remove the patches, the car shown here will appear. Futuron and Imagine (based on the concept of the same name from early 2019) are mentioned as names for the newcomer in the corridors. For the sake of convenience, we’ll stick to Futuron for a while, because that’s the concept that most reminds of it all. The Futuron will get a fairly stretched carriage, it is clear. As with the concept car, the whole is quite high above the ground, but the carriage itself is not overly high. As a result, it is somewhat in the middle between an SUV and a station wagon. Striking details left over from the concept include the boomerang-shaped lines at the rear, along which the rear lights run. Very different from what we are used to from Kia. The nose also clearly distances itself from Kia’s conventional designs and broadly follows the lines of the Futuron Concept. The sharp viewers are adjacent to a closed and contrasting colored panel, which optically represents a kind of grille. It gives the Futuron a tough, but at the same time not overly aggressive appearance.
Load and drive
Earlier this year, Kia already revealed what we can expect from the technology of its firstborn on the E-GMP platform. Good news for road-eaters, because with this Kia you have to last at least 500 km on one battery charge under normal circumstances, according to Kia. When the injection is out, the car must be able to be recharged very quickly. In less than 20 minutes you should be able to have the battery almost full again with a fast charger. This is possible because the system works at a voltage of 800 volts, just like the Porsche Taycan, among others. Whether the electric power is released on one or more motors and whether these drive two or four wheels is still to be seen. You can also guess the power, but you can count on it that you can sprint very quickly with this EV. We will probably know more next year. We are aiming for an introduction late in 2021.