After Seltos, Carnival & Sonet, Kia Motors confirms all-new mid size MPV for India

Kia Motors is one of those brands in the country that gained popularity in a very short span of time. The brand made its debut with the mid-size SUV Seltos and stole the hearts of Indian customers. It is a good looking, feature loaded and powerful SUV. After Seltos, the second product that Kia launched was the luxury MPV Carnival. Kia Motors announced the price of the Carnival MPV at the Auto Expo this year and also showcased their third product which will be based on the Sonet concept. After all this, now Kia is planning to come up with a mid-size MPV that will rival with cars like Maruti Suzuki Ertiga and Mahindra Marazzo. According to Autocar India, Kia is seriously considering to introduce a mid size MPV as this segment is slowly getting popular among the family audiences.

Han-Woo Park, president and CEO Kia Motors had said,

As you can see, we have launched the Carnival, and with this, we will develop the luxury MPV segment in the Indian market. I have already got some good response from Indian consumers. We are now thinking about another MPV. As you know, Kia is a very strong SUV and MPV player. So the next one I’m considering is another MPV model for Indian customers.

The MPV is likely to be based on Seltos platform but will be slightly bigger than Seltos and will be a completely different product. Kia’s main competition in this segment would be Maruti Suzuki’s Ertiga which inspite of last year’s slowdown Maruti Suzuki managed to sell around 93,000 units in 2019.

What might work in favour of Kia is the discontinuation of Ertiga’s diesel engine which would heavily affect the cab sector. Kia has also confirmed that they will bring the mid size MPV to Indian market by the end of 2021 and the same will be exported to International market as well.

Coming back to Sonet, which is Kia’s next product is a compact SUV that will compete with cars like Maruti Brezza, Hyundai Venue etc in the segment. It will get a 1.0 litre turbo petrol with DCT and manual, a 1.2 litre naturally aspirated petrol with an intelligent manual transmission and a diesel engine with 6-speed manual and automatic transmission. Kia is likely to launch Sonet based compact SUV in India later this year. Kia Motors has also noted that it will stick to utility vehicles for the Indian car market, and steer clear from the hatchback segment.