Kia debuted its latest ambition plans during its 2026 CEO Investor Day, including plans for a hybrid body-on-frame truck.
Just last week during its Boulder concept SUV debut in New York, Hyundai CEO José Muñoz affirmed the automaker’s plans to introduce a new body-on-frame truck within the next four years. Hot on the heels of that announcement, sister company Kia confirmed it is also jumping into the truck fray with its own model targeting North American buyers.
In total, Kia said it plans to introduce nine new internal combustion models as well as expand its hybrid lineup to 13 models. The company has already been building up its body-on-frame truck portfolio with the Tasman, introduced to some global markets like Australia, New Zealand, Southeast Asia, South Africa and the Middle East.
We’ve seen some examples of the Tasman curiously making the journey over to America, but there’s a key word in Kia’s announcement that has us questioning whether they’re talking about actually bringing the Tasman itself to the U.S. “Looking ahead, the company plans to further expand its pickup lineup by adding a body-on-frame pickup truck with HEV and EREV variants by 2030, targeting core markets in North America” (emphasis added).
If anything, it sounds like both Hyundai and Kia will produce a shared-platform truck, though details are obviously thin on the ground at this point. Hyundai, for its part, said it would build a new body-on-frame truck in the U.S. from American steel — a clear (if indirect) nod toward the 25% Chicken Tax levied against trucks built overseas, as well as fluctuating tariffs, incentives and exchange rates, which Kia expects to increase by as much as $800 million over those operating expense-related costs in 2025.
The Tasman, as it is available in certain markets right now, comes available with a 2.5-liter Smartstream direct-injected gas engine, which is similar to what we get on Hyundai/Kia models here in North America. You can also get it with a 2.2-liter turbo-diesel, which almost certainly wouldn’t land in Kia’s North American truck lineup, when it arrives by 2030. Instead, we could be looking at a Hilux vs. Tacoma situation, in which Toyota sells a markedly different midsize truck in the U.S. and Canada to what’s available overseas (in Mexico, buyers actually have both choices).
Kia’s ambitious plans aim to bring both a standard hybrid setup as well as an extended-range EV (EREV) to the mix by 2030. While that could include the Tasman, which is pretty similar in size to the Tacoma, it could also take a different route and introduce something a little closer to what Hyundai’s doing here in the U.S.
Beyond just the truck, Kia’s announcement also included a more aggressive sales volume target of 4.13 million vehicles globally by 2030, as well as 1.02 million sales in the U.S. within the same time frame (up from 852,155 sales in 2025). Like virtually every other automaker, it’s also heavily investing in semi-autonomous driving capability, with plans to launch a new self-driving model by late 2027, and an “urban autonmous vehicle” in early 2029 that’s capable of Level 2++ capability (basically hands-off, eyes-on self-driving that still requires humans to oversee the system).
For years and years, the midsize truck segment has effectively been an escalating fight between well-established players like the Toyota Tacoma, Nissan Frontier and Chevy Colorado/GMC Canyon. Ford was the latest to (re)enter the space with the Ranger back in 2019, but it will be interesting to see if and how Hyundai/Kia can shake up the status quo with another option in this hyper-competitive segment.
