Kia Tasman 2024 News

A new year brings a fresh array of vehicles for Australia — but some get us more excited than others.

The Kia Tasman was one of the most hyped new car reveals of 2024, but has it hit the mark with Australia ute shoppers? Kia Australia’s marketing chief, Dean Norbiato, said the brand is aiming to get eight to 10 per cent of the market in Australia, which is about 20,000 to 25,000 sales.

The cat is out of the bag — an electric Kia Tasman ute is coming and it’s been confirmed in a surprisingly casual way by one of the company bosses. All that's been announced by Kia until now is that its Tasman ute will be offered only with a diesel engine in Australia at launch. A hybrid is tipped to follow.The latest confirmation of a fully electric version came while United States motoring website CarBuzz interviewed Kia South Africa's Head of Marketing Christo Valentyn at the Tasman ute launch recently."I'm probably not supposed to say this, but... an electric one is coming," Valentyn told the outlet.The casual manner in which such big news was delivered is surprising. This is the first confirmation from Kia that an electric version of the Tasman is coming and Valentyn may have landed himself in some very hot water for making an announcement that we would have expected to be revealed in a more official capacity.   Given Kia’s major electric vehicle push right now, it’s not surprising that an electric Tasman is coming. Various electric Kia utes have been spied testing (via The Korean Car Blog) in the wild, too.Still, this is big news because Kia might have managed to do what other established ute brands, such as Ford with its Ranger, Toyota with the HiLux and Mitsubishi with the Triton, have failed to do — bring an electric ute to market.LDV was the first company to bring an electric ute to Australia, but bring only two-wheel drive and having a limited range saw slow sales. It will be replaced by the brand's eTerron 9 next year.Kia revealed the Tasman ute's vital specification in late October. The ute will arrive with a 2.2-litre diesel engine making 154kW and 441Nm, and have an eight-speed transmission.A 3500kg braked towing capacity and impressive off-road capacity will make it a direct rival to the Ranger, HiLux, Isuzu D-Max and Triton. A petrol-electric hybrid variant has been all-but confirmed by Kia, with specifications yet to be fully disclosed.The big question now that the cat is indeed out, is when is the Tasman electric ute coming?CarsGuide put the question to Kia Australia General Manager of Product Planning Roland Rivero.“All I can confirm is that Tasman’s ladder frame platform is fairly modular and can underpin numerous powertrains,” Rivero said.  “For now, Australia will only introduce the R2.2 Turbo Diesel. However, Tasman like many light commercial vehicles will have a fairly long model life and as such we will continually look at other powertrain options in the future in light of NVES and market demand... There are no sacred cows.”To us it’s clear Kia will introduce an EV Tasman once the diesel variant has found a foothold in Australia.It’s been a big year for Kia with the brand bringing its fourth fully electric vehicle to Australia with the EV5 mid-sized SUV in October.Kia Australia year-to-date sales are sitting at 75,485, up by seven per cent on this time in 2023 and with a month left of the year that places the brand in fourth place ahead of its sibling Hyundai.  

The impending demise of diesel in Australia has been greatly exaggerated, at least according to Kia executives, who insists diesel engines have "got a lot of mileage left in our country."

An electric variant of the Kia Tasman has reportedly been seen testing under camouflage in the brand’s native South Korea.

This generation of the Kia Tasman will go green, with an all-new 2.5-litre petrol-hybrid that should shame the Ford Ranger, Toyota Hilux and Isuzu D-Max firming as the favourite to propel the brand’s new dual-cab ute.

Kia has released its first ute with the ambitious target of capturing 10 per cent of Australia's highly competitive pick-up market in its first year of sales.

It's fair to say reaction has been mixed to the new Kia Tasman, with the brand's first ute combining a unique exterior design with diesel engine outputs that sit somewhere around the middle of the dual-cab pack.

Kia is expecting at least a 20,000 annual sales uptick when the Tasman goes on sale around June next year, helping it break free from Hyundai and potentially chasing down Mazda and Ford to claim position number two on Australia's sales charts.That's from

The most revealing teaser shots of the Kia Tasman ute have surfaced online, as overseas sources widely report that the ute will make its official debut at the Jeddah motor show on October 29.