A verified hit, Kia Soul EV will come to new markets
Today at the Chicago Auto Show, Kia introduced a new off-road Trailster plug-in concept, but the real-world news was all about how the Soul EV will be traveling to places it hasn't gone before. When Kia introduced the Soul EV in Chicago last year, it said that the car would some day be available in five states: California, Oregon, New York, New Jersey and Maryland. Today, company executives said the car will be coming to more markets – they just declined to mention where, exactly.
The Soul EV is currently sold in just 17 dealerships in California, Orth Hedrick, vice president of product planning at Kia Motors America, told AutoblogGreen. "For the next stage, we were originally planning on hitting the east coast, but we are changing that around a little bit. You'll see more availability," he said.
Hedrick said that the change was prompted by the simple fact that the Soul is attracting new customers. "We went back to the factory and told them it's doing very well and it's now expanded beyond an EV, it's something bigger," he said. "It's helping us get a dialogue with completely new, different customer that we normally wouldn't see in a Kia store. So we would like the opportunity to take it further."
We asked if customer interest in the compliance car caught the company off guard. Hedrick said that wasn't quite the right way to look at the history of the Soul EV. "When we looked at it originally, we were trying to go beyond the compliance part," he said. "We understood, of course, that we had to do it, but we wanted to showcase something that was really strong for us, which is the Soul, and we thought it would help build out the Soul family and bring more people to see us and that's exactly what's happening. It was a little more than compliance but I think we were kind of shocked how well it was received. It's been a huge hit."
"Huge" in this case means bigger than Kia's original production capacity estimates, he said, without getting into specifics. It was "significantly more than what we originally planned for," he said.
The Soul EV is built in Korea and the car is sold there, the US and will be coming to Europe as well. "I don't think they're in a position to ramp up quickly," Hedrick said, "They're in the process of ramping up more and we'll have an announcement, we hope, by New York, about where we're going to go to." The New York Auto Show media days start April 1, 2015.
Featured Gallery2015 Kia Soul EV: Chicago 2014
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The Kia Soul EV is a solid car, a pleasure to drive. Its battery is a half generation ahead of the other low to mid market cars now at 27kWh and higher density in small pack. they are rated at 9 EPA rated miles higher than LEAF. I'm currently considering it as my second electric car to go with my awesome LEAF in the garage. Or we might just get a LEAF of a different color ( Please could some of these guys add some more variety to their paint selections? Less metallic and more sporty solids). Waiting for a little more info about next years offerings. iMiev will be giving the 2016 details next month... and Nissan is in a bidding war with Chevy (Bolt) and Tesla (S60 and model III) to get the first inexpensive 200 mile car out the chute the earliest. I'd bet that Nissan could get theirs into production sooner as they have been rolling for more years. Experience and a clear focus on the low (iMiev) to mid end (LEAF, Soul EV) of the market. I would bet that if Nissan could get a battery rev into the current LEAF to push it to 160+ miles of real range and nearly 200 hyper-miler range that they could take a lot of the thunder out of Chevy's Bolt and the next low end Tesla.
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