The Kia Tasman Was Designed For 20,000 Buyers Annually. Last Month, It Found 399

At least in Australia, where expectations were high, Kia’s eagerly anticipated debut into the well-liked pickup market has encountered more opposition than progress. The brand’s contentious Tasman truck isn’t selling as well as Kia had anticipated, and the ongoing pressure on gasoline prices from the Middle East crisis isn’t helping, according to news that probably won’t surprise anyone.

At first, the business wanted to sell 20,000 Tasman units in Australia per year. The goal was lowered to 10,000 units for the rest of the year after the July launch. In actuality, just 4,196 were sold by the end of the year. With 472 units transferred in February and just 399 in March, the decline has persisted into this year.

Damien Meredith, the chief executive of Kia Australia, admitted in an interview with Drive that there is a gap between goal and reality, but he refrained from asking for discounts to close it.

What Went Wrong?

“We have a lot of work to do with Tasman since [Kia] can’t exploit external environment issues [like the Iranian crisis],” he said. The car hasn’t been on the market for a full year, which seems to be because we started the voyage so long ago. We don’t back down from the fact that there is a lot of work to be done in order to raise the volume.

In a bid to help drive up demand, Meredith said Kia will look at new financing deals and “value-add considerations”, noting, “We’ve got to get the right mix, fix the curriculum, so to speak, to make sure that we’re lifting sales and that that nameplate is growing.”

Kia has already adjusted its approach, lowering interest rates through its in-house finance arm and introducing a stripped-back single-cab chassis aimed squarely at tradespeople.

“The entire range is there, so we have no excuse now,” Meredith continued. To put it simply, we’ve had success with lifestyle [buyers]. Both the fleet and the rural province markets have not performed well for us, thus far. Our concentration is on it, and in order to move Tasman on to a level of traffic that is acceptable, we must raise those segments.

He also conceded the obvious. The Tasman’s design, he said in a separate interview with Carsales, is “a little bit divisive”, though he dismissed suggestions that a facelift is being rushed into development.

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