The people’s electric car: Kia plans to release a budget model with a price of €20 thousand

Kia intends to increase its market share by launching a series of cheaper electric vehicles. Some of them are already in production, such as the new EV3but Kia aims to make electric cars even more affordable. This is planned to be achieved with the help of a new entry-level model, the price of which will be about €20 thousand.

During a test drive of the Kia EV3, CEO Ho-Sung Song said that the company wants to release an entry-level electric car at a price of about $22,200 (€20,000). Kia has registered trademarks from EV1 to EV9, which opens up the possibility of producing cheaper lower-level electric vehicles than the EV3. Currently, the price of the EV3 starts at around €35 thousand.

Song said that an entry-level electric car is «the next goal of the» brand, as it is likely to lower the threshold for starting to drive electric.

Kia has already confirmed that it will release an EV2 model costing about €30,000 over the next 3 years. Probably, an even cheaper version will be called EV1. However, we will have to wait for this affordable model to appear.

According to Song, an electric car priced below €20 thousand is not likely to appear before 2030. As new battery and drivetrain technologies emerge, Kia plans to continue to reduce the price.

Song also confirmed that Kia is developing solid-state batteries that look «in all aspects much better than» than current battery technology for electric vehicles. However, the Kia executive did not say when the company would release electric vehicles with solid-state batteries.

Source: electrek