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Kia doubles down on its winning strategy with the EV3.
Sometimes, a car’s name tells you all you need to know.
When Kia turned out its first electric vehicles in the 2010s, the models amounted to gasoline cars retrofitted for battery power. The names, like Soul EV and Niro EV, implied as much. But once the Korean automaker started to make purpose-built electrics, it adopted a very literal naming system — one that outlines its vision to dominate the electric car industry.
First came the EV6. With racy styling and impressive power numbers, EV6 was built to compete in the increasingly crowded space of two-row electric crossovers that start north of $40,000, a category that includes the Ford Mustang Mach-E, the Volkswagen ID.4, and the Tesla Model Y. Next came EV9, the biggest vehicle on Kia’s numerical scale. Teased in a Super Bowl commercial and awarded World Car of the Year at the 2024 New York International Auto Show, the EV9 is one of the first three-row electric SUVs, built for the big family that wants to drive on battery power. Then came the Kia EV5. As the name suggests, this crossover (which won’t be sold in the United States for now because of sourcing complications with the Inflation Reduction Act tax credits) slots in just below the EV6 in price and size.
Now the Korean brand is filling in the smaller end of the range. Its latest reveal, announced Thursday morning, is the EV3, a boxy little crossover that will start in the $30,000s and will come to America next year or the year after (it’s going to Korea and Europe first). The offering is a key piece of the grand plan put together by Kia (and its owner, Hyundai) — and a sign that more entry-level EVs might be coming over the horizon.
Courtesy of Kia
To reach EV3’s more affordable price point, Kia dressed down some of the specs compared to its higher-numbered electric vehicles. Whereas EV9 is built with 800-volt capability for super-fast charging, its little brother gets a maximum of 400 volts — enough to charge up to 80% in 31 minutes, slower than the 24 minutes of the EV9.
EV3 posts 201 horsepower and 208 pound-feet of torque, with a claimed 0-60 miles per hour time of 7.5 seconds and a top speed of 105 miles per hour. Those aren’t eye-popping numbers compared to the performance-minded EVs we’ve seen from the likes of Tesla, which use the electric battery and motor’s instantaneous torque to make the car zip away from a stop light. But it’s plenty for people who just want an affordable little EV. Plus, the long-range version of EV3 is supposed to reach an impressive 372 miles of range, which blows away most current offerings, especially in that price range.
EV3 should find its way into the sub-$40,000 crossover space that’s finally starting to fill out. The Volvo EX30, which debuts soon, will also start in the mid-$30,000s. GM has finally started delivering the Chevy Equinox EV, which starts around $43,000 now (not counting tax credits) but is slated to see a base-trim $35,0000 version arrive later this year.
It’s not just about differentiating on price, either. EV3 will have about the same wheelbase as the dearly departed Chevy Bolt EUV, Road & Tracksays, and will be a little shorter than the Teslas Model 3 and Y. That’s good news for people who don’t want a giant EV and are waiting for the promised return of the Bolt or something like it.
Courtesy of Kia
With EV3, EV5, EV6, and EV9 revealed to the world, you don’t have to squint too hard to see how Kia might fill in the rest of the numbers on its way to selling an EV of every stripe. Rumors swirl of a cheap, subcompact Kia EV1 and EV2, which may or may not eventually come to America. EV4, already shown off as a fanciful concept car, is some kind of mad mixture of sedan, hatchback, and low crossover. EV7 may well be a three-row SUV that’s smaller and cheaper than the big EV9, positioning it to become the brand’s flagship electric crossover. EV8 looks to be a muscle car that can take the place of the petrol-powered Stinger.
Hyundai, the parent brand, has taken a slower but similar strategy. The Ioniq5 compact crossover and Ioniq6 streamlined sedan have both been EV success stories, with sales climbing while the rest of the world frets that EVs have stalled. The forthcoming Ioniq9, like the Kia EV9, will be a top-of-the-range three-row crossover, while Ioniq7 looks to be a slightly less ritzy version of the same concept.
As Heatmap’s Robinson Meyer has pointed out, this approach has been the Korean automakers’ winning strategy. While others have pulled back on EVs in the face of early struggles or only gingerly dipped their toes in the water, Hyundai and Kia are cranking out crossovers of all sizes to plant their flag in every section of the marketplace. Kia is banking on the idea that this all-in strategy will help its EV sales make the enormous leap from 44,000 cars in the first quarter, a new record for the brand, to 1.6 million in 2030, or half of the 3.1 million vehicles of any kind it sold last year.
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Did a battery plant disaster in California spark a PR crisis on the East Coast?
Battery fire fears are fomenting a storage backlash in New York City – and it risks turning into fresh PR hell for the industry.
Aggrieved neighbors, anti-BESS activists, and Republican politicians are galvanizing more opposition to battery storage in pockets of the five boroughs where development is actually happening, capturing rapt attention from other residents as well as members of the media. In Staten Island, a petition against a NineDot Energy battery project has received more than 1,300 signatures in a little over two months. Two weeks ago, advocates – backed by representatives of local politicians including Rep. Nicole Mallitokis – swarmed a public meeting on the project, getting a local community board to vote unanimously against the project.
According to Heatmap Pro’s proprietary modeling of local opinion around battery storage, there are likely twice as many strong opponents than strong supporters in the area:
Heatmap Pro
Yesterday, leaders in the Queens community of Hempstead enacted a year-long ban on BESS for at least a year after GOP Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, other local politicians, and a slew of aggrieved residents testified in favor of a moratorium. The day before, officials in the Long Island town of Southampton said at a public meeting they were ready to extend their battery storage ban until they enshrined a more restrictive development code – even as many energy companies testified against doing so, including NineDot and solar plus storage developer Key Capture Energy. Yonkers also recently extended its own battery moratorium.
This flurry of activity follows the Moss Landing battery plant fire in California, a rather exceptional event caused by tech that was extremely old and a battery chemistry that is no longer popular in the sector. But opponents of battery storage don’t care – they’re telling their friends to stop the community from becoming the next Moss Landing. The longer this goes on without a fulsome, strident response from the industry, the more communities may rally against them. Making matters even worse, as I explained in The Fight earlier this year, we’re seeing battery fire concerns impact solar projects too.
“This is a huge problem for solar. If [fires] start regularly happening, communities are going to say hey, you can’t put that there,” Derek Chase, CEO of battery fire smoke detection tech company OnSight Technologies, told me at Intersolar this week. “It’s going to be really detrimental.”
I’ve long worried New York City in particular may be a powder keg for the battery storage sector given its omnipresence as a popular media environment. If it happens in New York, the rest of the world learns about it.
I feel like the power of the New York media environment is not lost on Staten Island borough president Vito Fossella, a de facto leader of the anti-BESS movement in the boroughs. Last fall I interviewed Fossella, whose rhetorical strategy often leans on painting Staten Island as an overburdened community. (At least 13 battery storage projects have been in the works in Staten Island according to recent reporting. Fossella claims that is far more than any amount proposed elsewhere in the city.) He often points to battery blazes that happen elsewhere in the country, as well as fears about lithium-ion scooters that have caught fire. His goal is to enact very large setback distance requirements for battery storage, at a minimum.
“You can still put them throughout the city but you can’t put them next to people’s homes – what happens if one of these goes on fire next to a gas station,” he told me at the time, chalking the wider city government’s reluctance to capitulate on batteries to a “political problem.”
Well, I’m going to hold my breath for the real political problem in waiting – the inevitable backlash that happens when Mallitokis, D’Esposito, and others take this fight to Congress and the national stage. I bet that’s probably why American Clean Power just sent me a notice for a press briefing on battery safety next week …
And more of the week’s top conflicts around renewable energy.
1. Queen Anne’s County, Maryland – They really don’t want you to sign a solar lease out in the rural parts of this otherwise very pro-renewables state.
2. Logan County, Ohio – Staff for the Ohio Power Siting Board have recommended it reject Open Road Renewables’ Grange Solar agrivoltaics project.
3. Bandera County, Texas – On a slightly brighter note for solar, it appears that Pine Gate Renewables’ Rio Lago solar project might just be safe from county restrictions.
Here’s what else we’re watching…
In Illinois, Armoracia Solar is struggling to get necessary permits from Madison County.
In Kentucky, the mayor of Lexington is getting into a public spat with East Kentucky Power Cooperative over solar.
In Michigan, Livingston County is now backing the legal challenge to Michigan’s state permitting primacy law.
On the week’s top news around renewable energy policy.
1. IRA funding freeze update – Money is starting to get out the door, finally: the EPA unfroze most of its climate grant funding it had paused after Trump entered office.
2. Scalpel vs. sledgehammer – House Speaker Mike Johnson signaled Republicans in Congress may take a broader approach to repealing the Inflation Reduction Act than previously expected in tax talks.
3. Endangerment in danger – The EPA is reportedly urging the White House to back reversing its 2009 “endangerment” finding on air pollutants and climate change, a linchpin in the agency’s overall CO2 and climate regulatory scheme.