If you’re like me, you’re still mourning the loss of the Kia Stinger. With the Stinger gone, the EV6 GT is carrying the performance torch for the Kia brand. But if a new report out of Korea is to be believed, that torch is going to get passed really soon to a new performance EV.
Korean Car Blog reports that a leaked new car production schedule from Kia’s Union confirms that a new EV sedan is coming. Apparently, this sedan is already being worked on and bears the internal codename of GT1. It’ll be built at Kia’s Hwaseong Plant 3 starting in 2026. According to Korean Car Blog, this new EV will be the first to ride on a new, next-generation EV platform that’ll also underpin a two new Genesis SUVs.
The GT1 will be Kia’s first electric vehicle to be equipped with next-generation electric vehicle-only platform (known as “eM”) developed by HMG following the E-GMP (used for the KIA EV6, EV9, Hyundai IONIQ 5 and IONIQ 6 and Genesis GV60) and to be premiered by Genesis GV90 in 2025. This model will correspond to an E-segment and will also serve as Kia K8 successor.
Supposedly, the specs for this new performance EV have leaked as well. If everything pans out, this thing will be pretty damn competitive, especially if the price is right. According to the leaked specs, base versions of the GT1 will have a single rear-mounted motor setup with 160 kW; a midlevel AWD trim will add another 160 kW for the front bringing output to 435 horsepower.
The ultimate GT1 will reportedly get a dual motor setup: a 200 kW motor for the front and a 250 kW motor for the rear bringing output to around 603 horsepower. It’ll also have the largest battery ever used by Hyundai or Kia at 113.2 kWh. The most impressive figure from these specs is the range. From the leaked specs, Kia is expecting 700-800 km from this battery; that works out to about 435-497 miles of range.
Again, if any of this pans out, this thing will have some of the longest range of any EV on the market and be among the most powerful. And given how Korean Car Blog tends to be right about these things (they successfully speculated on the Kia Stinger and its specs way back in 2013), you’ll probably want to get your wallets ready for this one.