Kia's smallest electric SUV caught on in Britain almost as soon as it arrived. Kia says the EV2 was the UK's most popular EV with private buyers in September, and if you're shopping for a cheap electric car, a government grant is a big part of the reason.
Kia puts the EV2 at nearly 3,400 UK registrations so far this year, with more than half of them in September alone. The company calls that "significant and immediate demand". That's fast for a car whose orders only opened in April and whose deliveries didn't really get going until the summer. Nobody outside Kia can check the private buyer claim yet. Industry body SMMT only splits private and fleet sales for the market as a whole, not by model, and its September top 10 EVs, led by Tesla's (TSLA) Model 3 and Model Y, didn't include the EV2.
The grant did a lot of the work
In July, the government moved the EV2 Long Range, with a 61 kWh battery and up to 275 miles (443 km) of WLTP range, into the top Band 1 tier of its Electric Car Grant. That's worth £3,750 (roughly US$5,000), and it brings the Long Range Air down to £24,245 (US$32,500). The First Edition, with a smaller 42.2 kWh battery, gets only the £1,500 (US$2,000) Band 2 grant, and electrive listed it at £28,495 (US$38,200) when prices came out in April. So the cheapest EV2 you can buy is also the one with the bigger battery, which is an odd result. The car is built in Slovakia, at Kia's plant in Žilina.
A record month to launch into
The timing helped too. September is a number-plate month in Britain, when a new registration plate comes out and car sales always jump. This one set a record for electric cars: 99,201 registered, or 28.3% of the market, according to SMMT. Fuel was getting more expensive at the same time. Diesel hit a record 199.18p a litre on 28 September and passed £2 (around US$2.70) on 2 October, while petrol averaged 174.71p, according to the RAC.
So the EV2 launched with a full grant, record EV demand and painful fuel prices all at once. Kia also says early sales elsewhere in Europe are moving just as quickly, though that's the company's own count.
We think October and November will be a harder test. There's no new plate to bring buyers into showrooms, so those months will show how much of this was the car and how much was the grant. The number to watch is SMMT's October model ranking, due in early November: if the EV2 breaks into the top 10 EVs there, which it didn't do in September, Kia's claim gets independent backing for the first time.
Sources
- 1.Kia's EV2 draws 'significant and immediate demand,' with 3,386 registrations in the UK · Electrek
- 2.Kia EV2 Long Range now eligible for UK Electric Car Grant · electrive.com
- 3.Kia EV2 priced from £24,245 in UK · electrive.com
- 5.Record electric car market powers bumper September · SMMT
- 6.Average UK diesel price passes £2 per litre for first time, RAC says · ITV News
Reported by the WattsUpNext desk from the sources linked below. Spot an error? Tell us at corrections@wattsupnext.com.
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