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Kia UK CEO and president Paul Philpott on the ZEV mandate, balancing UK sales, EV learning for its customers and training for technicians and sales staff.
It’s a good time for Kia. Its line-up has received widespread recognition this year, with the EV9 making the headlines, garnering accolades, including the World Car of the Year 2024 award. The group has won the Carmaker of the Year award at the Motor Trader Industry Awards for the second year in a row. And in recent years it has shot up the UK new car sales charts.
But, like all carmakers, it has to contend with the ZEV Mandate which demands an unprecedented shift towards electrification. A fifth, 22%, of new car sales and 10% of new van sales must be ZEVs this year. By 2030, 80% of new cars and 70% of new vans sold will need to be zero-emission, increasing to 100% by 2035. Manufacturers acknowledge the urgency of meeting these demands but also expect the government to be willing to entice potential EV buyers by offering further incentives.
Writing before the Budget in late October, Philpott is hoping that this is something the chancellor, at some time, will address.
“We are continuing to be part of the discussions that are being had with Government through the SMMT. Three quarters of our EV demand right now is from fleet, retail demand is about a quarter of our total EV demand and that sort of reflects that there are still government incentives or tax breaks for fleet buyers in place but there are no government incentives there for retail buyers,” he said.
“I am supportive of the SMMT’s calls for a reduction in VAT on EVs for retail buyers going forward. That would stimulate a vaster take-up of EVs and I think going back all the way to 2009/2010 when the government introduced a scrappage scheme to encourage the purchase of new vehicles, that worked incredibly well in stimulating a market through a very challenging period.
“Of course there are things we would like to see the government do to support the roadmap to electrification. Each and every manufacturer must look at their own portfolio of products and their own marketing and training activities, and say we’ve got a big job to do here, too.”
Sales success
For its part, Kia is on track to meet or exceed ZEV targets. It is the UK’s second best-selling eco car brand, with 49% of sales being either a fully electric, plug-in hybrid or hybrid model. Sales of 92,420 units and a 6.1% market share positions Kia as the fourth best-selling brand in the country YTD, representing a near 3% year-on-year rise following Kia’s record 2023 when the brand sold 89,953 vehicles by end-September.
“EV sales are going well for us. We just had our best month order take of the year so far for EVs. We are into the pre-launch period for EV3, which goes on sale at the beginning of November. Early demand for it is very positive – 600-700 orders 4 or 5 weeks away from on sale date.
“EV9 is now well established and we are seeing a lot of conquest business on it. We’ve just launched the new EV6 which arrived in showrooms in the last couple of weeks. We’ve got the benefit of EV9 with momentum, EV6 in showrooms for Q4 and EV3 in November.
“All we ever sold up until five or six years ago was petrol or diesel cars so this is the biggest transition that the automotive industry has seen for decades. It is important for us that we are not just offering traditional petrol or diesel cars and EVs, we are offering a range of powertrains in that a number of our products are offered with hybrid and plug-in hybrid powertrains,” explains Philpott.
“For example, Sportage which is our best selling car in our range offers petrol, hybrid and plug-in hybrid. When you look at hybrid, plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles combined it accounts for 50% our sales volume in total.”
Philpott added: “Our position on demand for EVs is that we would always like more of course. The supply of EVs is fine. At the moment all of our EVs are produced in Korea and we import.
“They produce for a global market so my role here is to balance supply and demand so that we don’t build up any excess stocks and have too long a lead time for customers who want to take delivery quickly. But it’s all about product of excellence.”
Understanding EVs
Kia UK held ‘Discover EV with Kia’ events across dealerships to educate customers about EVs and dispel any myths. The events ran between 1 May and 30 June at Kia dealerships. Customers arranged personalised appointments with an EV expert who offered insight into what to expect from driving an EV, understanding range and charge times, for example. The Kia EV3 Electric Experience events ran across August to November, providing presentations about the EV3 and the opportunity to examine the vehicle in detail.
“The education and expertise of our sales teams is critical. During Q2 we ran EV experience events in each dealership that they could invite customers to. Staff learn about how to respond to some of the potential barriers that customers put forward, what were some of the myths people were talking about that actually have no real basis of truth behind them.
“We are currently putting our customer facing staff through an EV masterclass which is running as we speak at Silverstone. This is all about building the expertise of our sales teams and building their belief in the direction of travel that is towards electric vehicles. We have an exceptional range of EVs today and that only gets better and bigger as we go forward.
“It is a gradual progressive process of training, educating, building confidence amongst our sales teams about the future of EVs.”
The future
Kia unveiled the Kia Academy training centre in Derby this January for its apprentices and dealer training initiatives. The Academy equips students with STEM skills, facilitating advanced electrified training, upskilling apprentices and adult learners, and empowering technicians to become leaders in electrification.
Philpott says: “We invested £3m to £4m million pounds last year for our new academy in Derby which opened in January of this year. That is our centre of excellence for learning, we run our apprentice scheme through there (technical and non-technical apprenticeships), we run a program for the Kia genius role.
“We’re on this journey towards providing a quality service to each and every customer. Our sales team, service teams, our technicians really need to understand all of our powertrains and us providing the right level of training, availability of training and quality of training is essential to our roadmap to EVs.”