Every time there’s a new entrant to the van market I take out my metaphorical spoon.
It used to be that just a pinch of salt that was needed, but such is the relentlessness, scale, ambition and false hope fostered by these new light commercial vehicle entrant brands, that I’ve upgraded my measures from a pinch, to a teaspoon and now to tablespoons full of the white stuff.
Call me cynical, but there’s been a lot of noise about new models in the past and I’ve got a bit jaded by it all.
Arrival and Canoo came and went. B-On and the Pelkan have gone quiet. We've also seen Volta come and go twice, in the truck world, and they looked like the most credible start-up of all, at one point.
Geely-owned Farizon are making lots of noise right now about the SV. We’ve also got Renault farming out its next-gen tech via a company it jointly owns and then marketing them through three different brands (Renault, Renault Trucks and Flexis). It's all getting complicated and feels a bit like an arms race to launch more and more models. Then there’s the new FLYNT van, coming soon.
There’s a constantly evolving range of Maxus vans, sometimes with diesel and sometimes with electric powertrains.
And what about BYD. The cars models are mounting up, but the van is still not in the UK.
It’s hard to know what the van landscape will look like in three months, let alone 12 or 24.
Then there’s Kia. Coming to market with their two pence. Yet another skateboard van design. Another range of electric vans that will offer software and solutions beyond your wildest dreams. Another name that comes and goes?
Well... maybe not. Because behind the drawn-out launch phase, we’re now getting some concrete information about the Kia van project and the Kia PV5 Cargo.
Sales targets. Just 3,000 to 4,000 next year - that’s about 60 units per dealer, and no doubt includes a hat full of fleet deals that have already been done. Each dealer in the network is probably looking at low double digit sales. Sensible numbers.
More importantly, Kia UK President and CEO Paul Philpott (pictured) says the spread of dealers is on course to meet their desired levels of coverage. So a proper network.
There’s an aftersales and service plan to the Kia roll-out too. Something that we’re not seeing with so many of the other names in the sector, past and present.
Whether those dealers, their sales and the product all meet expectations, we will have to wait and see but it’s refreshing to see that on paper, at least, a fairly “out there” plan to launch autonomous swap bodies 18 months ago, has matured into a sensible van like the PV5 and a realistic plan to support it.
