After years of hints and reporting suggesting that Kia has been considering producing an all-electric pickup truck, hard confirmation finally landed at an event hosted by the automaker in Korea. Per Jalopnik, executives came out and said that a Kia EV truck is happening, and that development is already underway. Here we should point out the obvious—that this new electric pickup is not the same thing as the bizarrely styled Tasman introduced for certain global markets last year. The two were never one and the same, even though like the Tasman the EV is expected to be a midsize pickup as well.
The electric truck (we’ve included renderings here of a would-be Telluride pickup, but the eventual production truck is more likely to resemble a pickup-ified EV9 SUV than anything else) also will get its own platform, something Kia’s hinted at since 2022, though it isn’t yet clear whether that means it’ll be adapted from the E-GMP architecture that currently underpins almost every Hyundai-Kia EV, including the EV9 three-row SUV some have speculated the truck could be spun off of. But if it’s truckier, it could possibly feature a body-on-frame-type design.
Kia outright says the electric truck it’s working on will go head-to-head with offerings including the Ford Ranger and Toyota Tacoma, per Jalopnik, which means it’d also face up against the Nissan Frontier, Chevrolet Colorado, GMC Canyon, and Honda Ridgeline here in America. To some extent, we’d include the Rivian R1T in that group, since it’s the only all-electric midsize-ish truck available (or, put another way, it’s the smallest EV truck you can buy here, even if its footprint lands it somewhere between traditional midsize and full-size rigs). Oh, and Kia is targeting some 90,000 sales with the EV truck.
Given the global trade environment—which was just as topsy-turvy during the Kia event last week as it is today—we have to assume Kia is planning on building this new truck in America. Otherwise, it’d be subject to tariffs and not qualify for the EV tax credit (for as long as that’s around, if the Trump administration decides to undo it). Kia has manufacturing resources here, so it’s not a stretch to think that the automaker would be able to fire up more capacity for something with as much potential upside as an affordable electric truck.
The only key question left, besides details such as the truck’s powertrain, battery capacity, hauling capabilities, and more, is when we can see this new Kia debut. With development vehicles already spotted in the wild, as Jalopnik points out, the wait shouldn’t be long—look for the EV Kia pickup to show itself for the first time in some production-intent form within a year or so.
