Kia Ray plug-in hybrid in show

Kia Motors Australia PR manager Jonathan Fletcher said he could only confirm that the company's environmental testing centre outside Seoul was considering a range of options.

"They are looking at a lot of things such as petrol-hybrid, diesel-hybrid, hydrogen fuel cells and no doubt they would be looking at electric cars but to what extent we don't know at the moment," he said.  No date has been set for hybrid Kia models to go on sale in Australia but on-road testing of petrol and diesel hybrid vehicles is due to start in Europe this year.

Kia has been developing fuel cell vehicles with working prototypes in California and Korea, testing various hybrid-engined vehicles and has plans to commercialise Liquefied Petroleum Gas hybrid vehicles in Korea within the next 12 months.  Fletcher said they would consider any of the alternative fuel options, but they would have to be tested and evaluated in Australia first.

"If you take the Cerato LPG hybrid that was evaluated out here, it was deemed at this stage to have insufficient range for Australia," he said.  "It's not off the cards, but it's on the backburner.  "It's important to consider all these new alternative fuel vehicles but obviously they need to be right for our environment to make them viable."

The Ray was designed at Kia's Design Centre America in California and although the official photographs are shadowy and vague, it shows a different styling direction for the company.  However, Fletcher said he suspected European-based chief designer, Peter Schreyer, would have overseen the project.