You don’t just become a car of the year 2021 at autoreview.nl. We loved the use of recycled materials in the interior of the Kia EV6. Do the Koreans have any other plans for the climate? We look into Kia’s crystal ball with environmentally friendly plans for the next 25 years and see, among other things, PET bottles, fishing nets and green steel … what about that?
It all sounds nice and nice, when Kia says that it wants to be carbon neutral by 2045. But what does this mean in concrete terms? Biggest change: the combustion engine is banned. According to a 2018 Greenpeace study, road traffic is responsible for about 9 percent of total CO2 emissions worldwide, compared to 31 percent for industry, 22 percent for power plants and 22 percent for households.
Kia takes its responsibility and so in the coming years the petrol and diesel engines of all Picanto’s and Sorento’s will be gradually phased out. So on to fully electric, although it will take until 2035 before all Kia models in Europe only drive around with an electric motor. The rest of the world follows another five years later.
No more animal leather
If you take climate problems seriously, you as a car brand have to do more than put an end to petrol fumes. You can also take green steps when choosing the materials. No more cowhides have been sacrificed for the upholstery of the EV6. When you step into a Kia EV6, your buttocks are covered with vegan leather made from recycled PET bottles. They are cleaned, crushed and shredded into small pieces. The small pieces are melted down until they are suitable as upholstery for the chairs. 111 500-milliliter water bottles are used in each EV6. And the future models? Kia isn’t ready to equip them all without animal leather yet, but does promise to phase out its use.
Green steel from Kia’s own factory
Not only the emissions while driving, but also building a car is not a party for the climate. The production of steel, batteries and plastics still gives an environmental activist shaky knees. Because steel factories emit a lot of CO2, Kia wants to use ‘green steel’ in the future. The production uses as little fossil fuels as possible. Kia has this ambition in hand, because the brand owns five steel plants worldwide.
To make the production of plastics less harmful to the environment, Kia has recently partnered with The Ocean Cleanup, an organization that develops technologies to remove plastic from the oceans. Kia is going to use this plastic in its cars. By 2030, 20 percent of all plastics in Kia’s will consist of recycled plastic.
A solution is also being developed for the battery packs, which are converted at the end of their life cycle into batteries for buildings to store solar energy, for example.
From Kia EV6 to Kia EV9: stepping further for the climate
The EV6 is actually just the starting point of Kia’s climate plans. With each new model, the brand goes one step further to reduce the burden on the environment. What Kia plans to do in the near future is the electric EV9, a harbinger of a new SUV that will hit the market in 2023.
In places where you would not immediately expect it, recycled materials have been used. We know the recycled PET bottles for the chairs from the EV6. An even crazier detail in the EV9 is that your feet rest on a floor mat woven from discarded fishing nets. They are a major problem for the climate. According to the United Nations, 10 percent of all marine litter consists of these fishing nets, which can be deadly to marine animals for years to come. If you fish them from the sea, they can be converted into useful and sustainable materials.
97 percent less CO2 emissions in 2045
All these steps lead to Kia being able to be completely climate neutral by 2045. In concrete terms, this means that all activities of the Koreans from that year will no longer contribute to climate change. That is going to be a lot of work, because Kia’s CO2 emissions must drop by 97 percent compared to 2019. If it is successful, in 2045 it may be another Kia model Car of the Year from autoreview.nl!