Market Insight: Kia embraces competition
BY MATT CAMPBELL | 27th May 2024
KIA Australia CEO Damien Meredith says the market is on track for another big sales number in 2024 – and his brand is also heading in a positive direction with a forecast of 80,000 sales this year – but it is clear that new competition is on the mind of the man in charge.
Mr Meredith told media at the recent launch of the facelifted Carnival people-mover that 2024 will be a year that reshapes the marketplace.
“It’s obvious that Australia is going to get more and more brands into the country,” he said, referring to the recent announcements from brands such as Zeekr, Geely, Leapmotor, XPeng and others.
“You have a choice with what you do,” Mr Meredith hypothesised. “You can go into the corner and suck your thumb. You can leave the market. You can play the discount game. Or, you can have faith, and by that, I mean what we’ll do.
“We believe in our product, we believe in our brand and we believe in our dealer network to still do the job that’s required in regards to customer satisfaction, our volume, our market share, and ensuring there is growth in our brand ongoing, even with that competition.”
Mr Meredith was clearly referring to the brand’s bold aspirations around its own wallet-friendly battery electric vehicle (BEV) model range that is due to arrive in the coming months and years, spearheaded by the EV5 medium SUV, which the Korean brand has signalled will undercut and aim directly at the Tesla Model Y.
“It’s going to heat up, no doubt about that. And we look forward to it,” Mr Meredith said.
During his address, Mr Meredith predicted that Australia’s new vehicle take-up rate will remain at high levels of about 100,000 new registrations per month on average, based on what has happened so far this year.
“After four months, over 400,000 cars have been sold. And it looks like a market that will be, quite comfortably, a 1.2-million-plus market for the year,” Mr Meredith said. “For ourselves, we will achieve 80,000.”
However, with BEV sales dipping 5.1 per cent in April despite still being up 32.3 per cent year-to-date, Mr Meredith called out the fact that several new BEV-oriented marques are joining the market soon, and the existing pie – most of which is so far apportioned to Tesla and BYD – will be evened out among the mainly Chinese newcomers.
As for the statement around sales volumes for 2024 in totality, Mr Meredith said that plenty of the current registrations are seemingly stock that is arriving for those who have had orders in the works for months.
“There is a proportion of it which is backorders, no question. What percentage that is, I’d be guessing. But I would assume that it’s probably around about 10-15 per cent,” he said.
“New orders are still quite solid I think for all manufacturers. You only have to look at Toyota’s figures for the first four months, and sure there’s a bit of a backorder situation there, but it’s going alright,” Mr Meredith said.
To the end of April 2024, Kia sold 25,571 vehicles, up 3.9 per cent compared with 2023’s first four months.
For that period, the brand is ranked third overall behind Toyota (21.4 per cent market share) and Ford (8.9 per cent share), with Kia – the brand that still lacks a dual-cab ute, but is soon to add the Tasman to its ranks – still managing to peg out 6.8 per cent share.
