14 new EV models by Hyundai-Kia by 2025

The Korean alliance announces a serious push of its electric car lineup with 14 new all-electric models to be expected by 2025. That is two cars per year strictly speaking. 

Hyundai-Kia says it wants to run 14 electric models by 2025 as it adds to the portfolio of two existing ones, Hyundai’s Ioniq EV and Kia’s Soul EV.

Hyundai Motor Senior Vice President Lee Ki-Sang made the announcement in a recent press briefing and also offered some detail. First up for electrification is the Hyundai Kona with a range of over 400 kilometres on a single charge in 2018. There had been talks recently of a bigger battery option that could bring the range beyond the 500 km threshold.

Following from there, the first all-electric Genesis is due in 2021 with a range of over 500 km and Hyundai’s premium brand has another two EV models lined up until 2025 reportedly. All models including the ones from Kia are likely to share a dedicated EV platform that is currently under development.

But the strategy goes beyond battery-electric vehicles as VP Ki-Sang said the group wants to increase the number of environmentally-friendly models to 38 by 2025, up from an earlier target of 31. Naturally, this push includes fuel cell cars and with Hyundai having made advances in the field early on, Kia is to follow with its first FCV due by 2020 (we reported). For Hyundai, an updated fuel cell model is planned for next year.

The executive in fact emphasised hydrogen at the press briefing as he sees it as distinction with “only three companies which have technologies to produce hydrogen fuel cell cars. Hydrogen fuel cell cars will ultimately be the right choice for carmakers,” he said. Still, the issue of H2 filling infrastructure remains.

Hyundai sold a total of 13,909 Ioniq EVs globally, more than tripling from 3,379 a year earlier this year throughout October. Kia sold 7,398 Soul EVs in the first 10 months of 2017, up 7.6 percent from 6,878 a year ago, state the companies.