Kia Motors Accelerates Open Innovation with Overseas Mobility Companies

[Asia Economy Reporter Suyeon Woo] Kia Motors is accelerating open innovation with overseas mobility service companies and diversifying its mobility strategy. The strategy is to become a global mobility solution provider through collaboration with overseas companies that offer various services including car sharing, ride-hailing, and rental businesses.

According to the automotive industry on the 17th, Kia is currently promoting local businesses with global mobility service companies operating worldwide in Spain, Italy, North America, India, and Southeast Asia.

First, in Spain, Kia plans to offer various services through the car-sharing service "WiBLE," established in 2018 as a joint venture with Repsol, the largest local energy company.

WiBLE provides a "free-floating" mobility service that allows users to freely rent and return vehicles within a specific area. The service operates 500 units of the Niro Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV).

In Italy and Russia, Kia plans to launch a new "dealer-led" mobility service within the year, offering rentals of Kia vehicles managed by dealers for periods ranging from one day to up to one year.

In North America, Kia is actively promoting mobility services focused on electric vehicles. Last year, Kia supplied 200 Niro electric vehicles to Lyft, a U.S. ride-hailing company, and this year supplied 44 Niro hybrids to Motion Lab, Hyundai Motor Group’s mobility service corporation. Kia plans to analyze the vast data obtained from vehicles used in these services and actively apply it to the expanding mobility services in the future.

Additionally, Kia plans to research locally optimized vehicles and service packages through vehicles and operational data supplied to India’s largest ride-hailing company Ola, car-sharing company Revv, and Southeast Asia’s ride-hailing company Grab.

Industry experts view Kia’s collaboration cases as a concrete realization of Hyundai Motor Group’s open innovation strategy, which began with large-scale investments. Since last year, Hyundai Motor Group has established an open innovation strategy division within the group, expanded investment review personnel, and increased startup investments across various fields.

Through large-scale investments, the group aims to expand research and development (R&D) capabilities and increase local business opportunities with companies such as Southeast Asia’s car-sharing company Grab, U.S. autonomous driving solution company Aurora, Croatian high-performance electric vehicle developer Rimac, India’s car-sharing company Ola, and the UK commercial electric vehicle platform developer Arrival.