This is a new spy photos of KIA Tasman UTE vehicle caught testing in South Korea still in Test mule form. If you take a look closely to the prototype you will see that front and front door are transplanted from Kia’s Mohave while the rest of the vehicle is added. Kia’s president Mr. Ho-sung Song announced plans to produce specialized electric vehicles in four major markets to expand electric vehicle volume.
Apart from the EV9, that will be built ad
Hwaseong plant, a mid-size electric vehicle models will be introduced in China
from next year while an entry and mid-size electric vehicle models will be
produced in India from 2025. And then, they also announced two pickups, that
will use an electric vehicle-only platform and an internal combustion
engine-based architecture (this is the first, the so-called Tasman),
respectively. It is expected that the former will be developed for the North
American market and the latter will be developed for the emerging market and
use a market-tailored strategy.
This is not the first time we heard about
Kia could launch a pickup, many years ago Kia released (in 2004) the KCV-4 or
Mojave pickup concept that never reached production. Instead, Kia launched a
ladder-frame chassis based SUV, the Borrego/Mohave (depending on the market)
that passed almost unnoticed. Now the Tasman, codenamed as TK1, will try for
better luck.
More recently, some rumors said that Kia
planned to launch UTE vehicles in Australia but these plans were also
discarded. Despite we are still far from seeing something real that confirms
this project, we will keep an eye on it to tell you more as soon as we have any
new info.
