Articles by Chris Thompson

We already know Australians love a dual-cab ute. The likes of the Ford Ranger and Toyota HiLux are constantly battling for the top rung on the new-car sales ladder.So when Kia announced it would launch new ute Down Under, the news was met with a mix of excitement and curiosity.From the outside, it seemed like the global carmaking giant was building the Tasman ute with Australia solely in mind, but of course other markets like the Middle East, South Africa, South America and parts of Asia will do a lot of heavy lifting when it comes to sales volume.However, a snippet from the 2025 Kia CEO Investor Day gave away just how much pressure is on Australia when it comes to the Tasman’s sales success.“The brand’s first pickup truck, the Tasman, will launch in Korea, Australia and emerging markets, with an annual sales target of 80,000 units and a six percent market share.”That doesn’t sound like a lot globally, but consider this: Kia Australia is aiming to sell about 20,000 Kia Tasmans annually.Australia is a ute-mad market, but it’s also one of the smallest developed new-car markets and one of the most competitive in the world.Kia Australia taking on the responsibility of a quarter of the Tasman’s global sales is an incredible undertaking, especially for a new, unestablished model. Not to mention one that’s surrounded in some divisive discourse regarding its design.To put the ‘Australia vs the world’ sales split into perspective, let’s look at the nation’s favourite utes, the Toyota HiLux and the Ford Ranger.The HiLux, one of history’s most enduring workhorses, sells in extremely healthy numbers here. Last year Toyota shifted more than 53,000, the year before it was more than 61,000.Globally, Toyota sells somewhere in the vicinity of half a million HiLux units, making Australia’s sales only a tenth of the world’s total.The Ranger is a similar story, with a little more than 60,000 sold annually in the last couple of years. Globally it still sells in the hundreds of thousands - last year it approached 340,000.For Kia Australia, the Tasman is extremely important. This year the brand is looking to sell about 90,000 new cars, and 10,000 should be Tasmans if all goes to plan.If Kia starts approaching 100,000 sales in Australia soon, about a fifth should be Tasmans.But for Tasman, Australia is crucial. It’s hard to predict whether it will work out as the brand hopes, but Kia Australia says it has more than 20,000 expressions of interest.Kia Australia Chief Executive Damien Meredith told CarsGuide the launch of the Tasman’s and its first six months of sales are “a critical element for the back half of the year ”.The Australian ute market is already rather busy, and new rivals like the JAC T9 from China will put the pressure on. More are coming too, like the Foton Tunland and MG U9, which will likely come with competitive pricing and features.Kia Australia certainly won’t be taking the Tasman’s sales performance lightly, and nor should it.

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The days of five-year warranties being competitive for mainstream brands are behind us, let alone the three-year warranties some brands persist with.Pioneered by Kia’s seven-year warranty a decade ago, the move towards decade-long warranties continues with newcomer brands looking to make a name for themselves, while some brands look to keep customers with servicing-conditional extended warranties.But now that Kia’s seven-year warranty is no longer the industry leader - despite still being unlimited-kilometre where others aren’t - will the South Korean brand extend its warranty to remain keep up?Kia Australia CEO Damien Meredith told CarsGuide there are no plans to increase the once-leading seven-year warranty to match rival brands that offer a decade of warranty like MG, Mitsubishi and Nissan.None of those are unlimited-kilometre warranties, and the latter two are conditional to customers servicing their cars with the brands’ dealers. Kia’s seven-year warranty is both unlimited-kilometre and unconditional when it comes to servicing.While Kia’s warranty has by no means fallen behind the average, it’s been around for about a decade and the market has changed significantly in that time.“Over that period of time when we introduced the seven-year warranty, on the first of November, 2014, it was bought in for a lot of reasons but specifically it was to give people permission to look at our brand,” Meredith says.“It did a great job. In 2015, the number one reason for buying a Kia was the warranty.“The latest figures I saw, it’s not even top three, it’s fourth. So it’s changed, and it’s not as important to Kia purchasers as it was ten years ago.”Instead, the factors customers put above its warranty when buying a new car are brand or manufacturer, style, and driving performance.“It used to be an opener on the showroom floor, now it's more of a closer,” adds Kia Australia General Manager of Marketing Dean Norbiato.“As opposed to ‘we’ve got a seven-year warranty, look at us’, it’s now everything else. The brand, the quality, the trust in the brand, and then the seven-year warranty finishes it off.”Kia’s reaffirmed position on its seven-year warranty comes at the same time as reports emerge of Hyundai’s apparent plan to increase its warranty to eight years, up from its current five-year offer.An insider source told CarsGuide the brand is considering the move, which could feasibly be in response to sales not meeting expectations.If it goes ahead, it would leapfrog its sibling brand by a year. Furthermore, if it remains unlimited-kilometre and unconditional, it will be one of the strongest warranties in the industry.Honda currently offers an eight-year unlimited kilometre warranty, the only one to do so, making it the highest-duration warranty not limited by driving distance.GWM, Skoda and KGM SsangYong all offer seven-year unlimited kilometre warranties alongside Kia, while most of the industry offers five-year warranties. Many premium and European brands still offer three-year warranties.

In its CEO Investor Day report this week, Kia has confirmed its plans to introduce an electric ute to join the Tasman.

The Kia EV3 GT-Line Long Range is the most expensive variant in the EV3 line-up, but for its price it might start to borderline being a bit too expensive for the benefits over the mid-spec Earth.At $63,950 before on-roads, the GT-Line comes with one drivetrain option - an 81.4kWh battery allows for a driving range of 563km under WLTP testing. The EV3 is two-wheel drive in all its variants, a single motor at the front wheels produces 150kW and 283Nm. The EV3 charges (with a 350kW DC fast charger) as quickly as 31 minutes.The EV3 comes standard with features like dusk-sensing LED headlights, daytime running lights (DRLs) and partial LED tail-lights, two 12.3-inch screens (one a touchscreen for multimedia) and a 5.0-inch touchscreen for climate controls plus wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, a six-speaker sound system, a wireless phone charger and USB-C ports in both the front and rear rows, a 12-volt outlet in the front and a household-style power outlet in the second row.The mid-spec Earth adds onto that 19-inch alloy wheels, synthetic leather seats with heating and ventilation, the driver’s side being 10-way electrically adjustable, a heated steering wheel, an electro-chromatic (or glare-dimming) mirror and a power tailgate.For the extra cost of the GT-Line, there’s a series of exterior design changes, cubed projection headlights, the tail-lights are fully LED, a three-spoke GT-Line steering wheel, alloy pedals, specific two-tone GT-line seats with the passenger side seat also becoming 10-way electrically adjustable, ambient LED mood lighting, a head-up display and the central upper storage compartment under the armrest becomes a slide-out tabletop.There’s no ANCAP score just yet, but plenty of safety equipment is standard across the range including seven airbags (one in the front-centre), smart cruise control, forward collision avoidance, lane-keep, rear occupant alert, multi-collision braking, blind-spot and rear-cross traffic alert, driver attention warning and a tyre pressure monitor.The EV3 doesn’t have a surround-view camera, but it does have front and rear sensors and a rear parking camera.Kia’s seven-year, unlimited kilometre warranty applies to the EV3, and Kia offers prepaid plans of three ($674), five ($1285) or seven years ($1897) when it comes to servicing.

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