- Niro family takes best-selling honours in the Kia range and enters UK Top 10
- e-Niro is second-best selling battery electric car in the UK
- August performance shows continued growth on the back of a record July
Kia Motors (UK) Limited recorded 4,179 new car deliveries to customers across the country last month – a new all-time August record for the brand – despite a small drop in overall UK new car sales.
Kia’s total was up by 21 per cent compared to August 2019 when dealers sold 3,452 new cars to their customers. The August total means Kia has delivered 42,259 new cars this year – down compared to last year’s total of 63,799 in the first eight months – but representing a strong comeback since June following the COVID-19 lockdown.
The Kia Niro family attracted 1,417 new owners to push the brand’s electrified range into the UK Top Ten for the first time and amongst that total were 533 e-Niro battery electric variants – a best-ever performance for the brand’s 282-mile range zero-tailpipe emission contender. That made it the second-best seller in the battery electric market. Its hybrid stablemate found 751 owners making it the best-selling hybrid in August.
That performance meant the compact SUV Niro family unseated Kia’s no.1 bestseller, the Sportage range, with the Ceed family, Picanto and Stonic completing Kia’s Top Five.
Paul Philpott, President and CEO of Kia Motors (UK) Ltd. commented “The fact that the UK new car market overall was down by more than five per cent clearly shows that business is not fully back to normal, but we and our dealers have worked incredibly hard after lockdown to get back to business quickly and to communicate with our loyal and new customers to emphasise just how good the Kia range is in these difficult times.
“In the past we have faced significant supply restrictions of e-Niro but this is now improving and our customers have been prepared to wait, so I am delighted that our e-Niro is helping to bring more people to the exciting future of electric motoring. With Soul EV also in showrooms I am confident sales of our zero-tailpipe emission vehicles will continue to grow and our ever-widening range of hybrid and plug-in hybrid vehicles provide a stepping stone for those motorists who still have some reservations about making the jump to full electric-only motoring,” he added.