Kia is looking for a surge in fleet registrations to underpin ambitions to turn the South Korean brand into a major force on the UK new car market.
Annual corporate volume rose to almost 36,000 units last year for a 3% share of the sector, but further growth in company transport will be a vital to ambitions to achieving more than 100,000 sales by the end of the decade, believes Kia Motors UK head of fleet and remarketing John Hargreaves (pictured).
“Careful management has been crucial to lifting our fleet share from 1.5% over the last four years,” said Hargreaves. “I'm not planning to make any changes.
“We will attain further substantial growth without forcing product into the marketplace.”
He continued: “Growth is easy if you do deals with major rental firms but our policy is to keep a strict cap of 10% on rental volumes.
“Total sales this year are set to be 80,000, so we will limit ourselves to 8,000 rental units.
“Motability business is also controlled – this is a good channel, but it comes at high cost and we never intend to punch above our weight in this area, so these sales are maintained at less than the 3.5% level of our total retail share.”
Hargreaves claimed increasing product desirability was underpinning the rising number of Kia's corporate sales. “We are accessing big fleets with user chooser policies or restricted badge policies because people are now actively considering the brand,” he said.
“But the other reason behind our growth is when cost of ownership is a prime consideration – customers are finding that Kia stacks up well in terms of RVs, maintenance and wholelife costs.
''We have a competitive position and are looking forward to the facelift Ceed range, which will offer some significant improvements when it reaches the market later this year, and the new Sportage, which will arrive early next year. This is our biggest seller and has phenomenal residuals.”
He concluded: “There’s no need for us to throw cars at the market – this kind of new product will allow us to get to where we want with sustained and controlled business.”
Bob the Engineer - 21/07/2015 17:31
First Kia need to target CO2 from their engines, look at a Sportage (or take the new Tucson as an indication of the next Sportage) and its either feebly underpowered 1.7 2WD or far too high 2.0 compared to Nissan's or Mazda and especially BMW's new X1. I am running a high spec Mitsubishi PHEV with a list price of nearly £38K but the low company car tax and reasonable lease added together cost me less than a modest spec Sportage with a £24K list would.