Kia Motors held a groundbreaking ceremony for its dedicated plant for the production of battery-electric Purpose-Built Vehicles (PBV). The ceremony was held at Kia’s Hwaseong plant, located in Gyeonggi Province, South Korea.
The new PBV plant will be built as an eco-friendly plant that applies future innovative manufacturing technologies while minimising carbon emissions.
Kia plans to show SW (project name), the first model in the company’s dedicated PBV line-up, in 2025, which includes light commercial vehicles. The model will be a mid-sized PBV and will be based on the “eS” platform, a dedicated skateboard platform for battery electric PBVs, enabling various types of vehicle bodies to be flexibly combined.
SW has been developed to respond to various business demands such as delivery, ride hailing, and business-to-business (B2B) transactions thanks to its excellent load structure and spacious indoor space that reaches the height of an adult.
After launching the mid-sized SW PBV, Kia plans to expand its product line-up to large-sized PBVs that can be used for logistics, fresh food delivery, multi-seat shuttles, and mobile offices and stores as well as small-sized PBVs and mid-sized robotaxis applied with autonomous driving technology.
There are also plans to introduce a mid-sized pick-up truck.
To date Kia has a presence in the light truck market across a number of European countries and is now considering inclusion of these new PBV models in right hand drive form, taking in UK & Ireland markets.