Kia Is Building A 'Class-Leading' Midsize Electric Pickup For America, Aiming To Capture 90,000 Sales Per Year

Last year Kia unveiled its first pickup truck, the body-on-frame Tasman, which won't be sold in the U.S. as it was designed for markets like Asia, Australia and the Middle East — maybe for the best, because it looks so damn weird. But for a few years now we've heard rumors that Kia had been working on two pickups, one of which would be a U.S.-bound EV. Test mules made from EV9 and Hyundai Santa Cruz parts have been spied, giving us an idea of the size. Finally, at Kia's CEO Investor Day in Seoul this week, the company officially announced that an electric pickup designed for North America is coming soon.

At the investor day executives talked about how Kia plans to grow between now and 2030, when the company hopes to have 1.26 million EV sales globally (and 2.33 million electrified vehicles, including hybrids). Part of that growth will be through "meeting diverse market needs" and entering new segments with electric vehicles, such as the recently introduced PV5 van. Kia wants its proportion of electrified vehicle sales to be 70% in North America, and to do that you've really gotta offer a truck. That's where this new model comes in.

Kia's press release says the new electric truck will ride on a new EV platform that's "designed for both urban and outdoor use," so it won't just be the same E-GMP modular platform that underpins basically all of Hyundai Motor Group's EVs. I think that's a good thing — to really compete in the truck market you've really got to have a dedicated platform for it, whether you go body-on-frame like the F-150 Lightning or a modern unibody like the Rivian R1T. Kia's announcement didn't give any other specs or details beyond saying it will have "best-in-class interior and cargo space, a robust towing system and off-road capabilities."

At the Seoul Mobility Show last week Kia's CEO did confirm this truck would compete in the midsize segment against pickups like the Toyota Tacoma and Ford Ranger, which aligns with the size of the test mule. I'm guessing this truck will only come with one bed and cab configuration, but maybe Kia will surprise me and offer a few different setups — the Tasman has a bunch of wild ones, after all.

Kia did say it's targeting "mid-to-long-term annual sales" of 90,000 for the U.S.-bound truck, which would be a 7% market share. Surely this pickup will be built in the U.S. to keep the price down as much as possible and production and sales as easy as possible given *waves hands* everything going on. What Kia hasn't said is when the truck is supposed to enter production, but with mules already on the roads, I bet we'll see a reveal within the next year or so.

Kia isn't the only company working on an electric pickup smaller than the typical half-ton models like the Chevy Silverado or Ram 1500. Just this week the head of Nissan's U.S. product planning said the company is working on a new EV platform that it will build a lightweight truck on, Ford is working on an electric midsize truck to slot below the F-150 Lightning, and Toyota has shown concepts for a Tacoma EV as well as a dedicated smaller truck. Plus there's the Telo startup, which recently released details on its Mini Cooper–sized truck. Hopefully Rivian will do a small truck based on the adorable R3X, too.

But the newest and most intriguing competitor may be a company that basically no one knew existed that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has secretly invested in. As our friend Sean O'Kane uncovered in a banger story for Tech Crunch, a Michigan-based electric startup called Slate Auto has been stealthily developing a two-seat electric pickup truck with a goal price of $25,000, influenced in spirit by cars like the Ford Model T and Volkswagen Beetle and funded by all sorts of different billionaires. And it's aiming to start production in Indiana by late 2026. I can't wait to see how that turns out.