Kia begins work on dedicated commercial EV production facility

Kia and Hyundai are making the headlines for creating impressive and future-looking all-electric vehicles. The Korean auto giants seem to be a step ahead of competitors with their shared Electric-Global Modular Platform (E-GMP), which has been garnering multiple car awards most recently.

Now, it looks like they intend to keep their lead, as Kia held a groundbreaking ceremony to begin work on their dedicated production facility for all-electric purpose-built vehicles (PBV).

While we still have to wait until 2025 to see the first model in the company's PBV lineup, Kia says their PBVs are developed to respond to various business demands such as delivery, ride-hailing, and business-to-business transactions. In the future, Kia plans to make large-sized PBVs that can be used for logistics, fresh food delivery, as well as multi-seat shuttles. In other words, PBVs are the all-electric equivalent of commercial vehicles.

The new PBV plant which will be located in Gyeonggi Province, South Korea, aims to become a cutting-edge smart factory. Aside from being an eco-friendly plant that minimizes carbon emissions, Kia and Hyundai also aim to seek manufacturing efficiency with their innovative manufacturing processes, such as the “cellular method”, which groups together machines and workstations that shared vehicle models utilize.

Kia plans to invest around 24 trillion won in its EV interests, and that includes the dedicated PBV plant that could produce around 150,000 units once it becomes operational by 2025.

The Hyundai Motor Group is doing this with the goal to become one of the world's top 3 EV manufacturers by 2030.