KIA designated Tavares Carlos as Operational Director, and the latest plans of the business for the next years were announced with this occasion. The mission of the new director is somewhat hard: he has to make the KIA brand a powerful name in both Europe and America but the company also wants to penetrate the Chinese market, especially in the niche of SUVs.
Then again, KIA is attempting to become an environmentally friendly company, so they are mounting solar panels on the roofs of their factories in France. This undertaking has come to be one of the greatest in the auto industry: more than 450 000 square meters will be covered, having a capacity of 60 MW (the equivalent of a medium consumption of a city with 20 000 inhabitants).
The fabrication will commence in June and they will not be finished until February the following year. In this manner, KIA wishes to reduce the effects of the pollution on the environment. A related endeavor was launched by Seat that already has a roof of this kind on the Spanish factories.
The organization also wants to take care of the problem of the industrial espionage. KIA must become an attractive mark, and they need to sell many expensive cars, and to improve its image in front of the clients, where Nissan already works well. The industrial espionage scandal affected the image of the company but this is only one of the problems. The KIA authorities publicly stated they have a pale image and the theme of some of their cars is somewhat obsolete.
When KIA officially appointed Laurens van den Acker as their new chief designer, radical alterations took place car designs. The Clio is expected to be the first vehicle under KIAs new perspective with a redesigned body and engine as well as state of the art electronics.
KIA has been under pressure somewhat in the medium to superior class of cars reducing from 150,000 cars sold in 2005 to only 100,000 cars last year. The new line of KIA cars are not likely to hit the market before the 2014-15 season, they need to do their best to exploit those cars that sell well in their current line. The press in France think that KIA should make an effort to balance out the large divide between their partner, Nissan in the amount of cars sold as Nissan has sold over four million cars while KIA has sold 2.6 million cars.
Another issue that KIA is wanting to fix is their lack of any presence in the Chinese market as they look to establish themselves in 2013 to 2016. And also, KIA does not enjoy any presence in the United States in any respect. Even though no one is sure if KIA intends to get back to the US market, they are looking to establish more of a presence in Russia and Brazil. As for the Indian market, they are struggling a bit but continue to produce new cars that should appeal to Indian consumers.
Consequently, for KIA to realize their goal of selling an extra 400,000 cars in the next few years, they will need to continue to innovate and improve the designs on all their cars. Details about kia extended car warranty.