Kia is set to join the electric commercial vehicle game

Kia has announced that it is building a new factory that will produce a whole host of different electric commercial vehicles, with plans for it to become “a global leader in sustainable mobility solutions” and “a PBV (Purpose Built Vehicles) leader by 2030”. Sounds a bit like world domination to us. 

The grainy silhouettes above are all we have on the potential vehicles so far, but Kia does say that it’ll build a ‘mid-sized PBV’ on a brand new scalable electric platform to kick things off. A pretty standard van, essentially. It’ll then branch out into “unmanned micro-sized PBVs, general logistics, fresh food, multi-seat shuttles and large PBVs that can be used as mobile offices or shops”. Yikes. 

The factory will be based at Kia’s existing Hwaseong site, with construction starting in 2023 and first vehicles being built in 2025. Apparently it’ll initially be able to put together 100,000 commercial vehicles per year, with scope to up that to 150,000 as demand increases.