Newsnomics AJAY ANGELINA reporter | Kia, South Korea’s second biggest carmaker has decided to build Kia’s first new car plant, an outcome of years long negotiations with its labor union in 26 years.
Kia will complete the PBV plant in the Autoland Hwaseong, by the end of 2024 and start producing mid-sized PBVs from July 2025, according to the media reports.
"A building in (the company's) Hwaseong plant will be converted into a PBV plant. The time-frame for the plant's construction and production in Hwaseong has yet to be decided," a company spokesman said.
Kia, a carmaker within the country’s leading carmaker Hyundai Motor Group, and its unionized workers agreed to create a production base of more than 200,000 units by building more facilities after establishing a stable market with a plant of 100,000 units,” they said.
Kia has aimed to sell 1.5 million of PBVs around the world as it expected the global market of the segment to grow to 20 million units in 2030, accounting for about 25% of new vehicle sales globally.
Kim Pil-su, an automotive engineering professor at Daelim University said, “although PBVs are expected to account for 30 percent of the total vehicles by 2030 worldwide, it would have been reasonable to lower the target production volume from 200,000 to 150,000 units,”
“Even Tesla is currently facing oversupply issues (with its giga factory in Shanghai) due to a demand shortage.”
“Unlike the US, which sells millions of pickup trucks annually, Koreans prefer regular cars or luxury cars to PBVs,” Kim added.
PBVs include electrified buses and shuttle service vehicles, even future mobility vehicles like robot taxis and portable offices, according to a Kia official.
Kia and the labor union also decided to make pickup trucks powered by internal combustion engines in one of the three Hwaseong factories by Dec. 2024.
It will be the first pickup truck model in 43 years since it discontinued the Brisa model in 1981, targeting the domestic market.
Kia has eight plants in South Korea and seven overseas -- three in China and one each in the United States, Slovakia, Mexico and India. Their overall capacity is 3.84 million units.
