According to a report by Maeil Business News Korea, Kia is considering building its first ASEAN production facility in Thailand which will have an annual capacity of 250,000 vehicles.
Citing multiple sources within the Thailand automotive industry, the news outlet says Kia is currently in talks with the local government on the new factory, with an investment deal expected to be signed later this year. If built, the Kia facility in Thailand would be the South Korean carmaker’s first venture into building a new overseas plant in years after the completion of its factory in India in 2018.
In addition to sites in its home country and India, Kia also has production facilities in China, Mexico, Slovakia, the United States – the Thailand factory would be its sixth global production base outside of South Korea.
Hyundai Motors, which is Kia’s bigger sibling, already started local production in Indonesia last year, and the parent company to both, Hyundai Motor Group, views Indonesia and Thailand as markets with potential for growth and high volume.
Data from the ASEAN Automotive Federation revealed that in the first half of 2023, Indonesia was the leader in terms of sales with 505,985 units (up 6.5% YoY), followed by Thailand with 406,131 units (down 5% YoY) and Malaysia with 366,037 units (up 10.3%).
Looking to sell your car? Sell it with Carro.
…while nearby Malaysia prefers imported ones…
Anwar menang, Tesla mari
There is no car manufacturers willing to invest and open factory in Malaysia due to our useless and corrupt government.
Are you sure about that? Or just those manufacturers can’t deal with our country higher wages cost? Porsche says Hi btw
Corrupt government with their corrupt supporters. No wonder our country can’t progress.
Oh yes didn’t the PN government previously managed to make our worldwide Corruption Index much worst than during PN time also wasn’t the previous Environmental Man busy dishing direct negotiation tender all year round until the Johor flood mitigation project not carried out despite years of approval. One golly love the Hippo supporters.
Do you want to know why Thailand got so many investments from global car companies? Because they don’t have PH and formula man.
Well done to our neighbour, Thailand. It seems like our corrupt politicians can learn something from them.
Build so many cars, who buy ah? LOLROFL LMAO. 300k in Malaysia can go fly kite la
while our so called national car still busy to rebadge other people car and close the door sell to own people
so when Porsche decided to assemble cars in Malaysia, maybe the Thais are pulling out their hair….
Malaun species red eye on Corean investing at Siamese Land KeK
kia is like mitsubishi. can not survive if just depend on 1 or 2 model only. can not be like honda and toyota. can not compete with national car geely and daihatsu. so better go to indonesia or thailand. if you want to blame, not madani or anwar or formula man, just blame the one wants to build national car first.
Maybe we should just follow Thai’s formula, ditch P1 and P2, let foreigners come here and build factories.
I think this way, we create more employment opportunities than what P1 and P2 can offer.
The real reason why most chose to open factory in thailand is because Thailand is connected to chine via the BRI. There will have zero supply chain problems. BRI is boosting thailand’s economy like crazy. Thailand is now on hyper mode while we are still busy lepaking and drinking teh tarik.
hyundai motors groups is trying to play in the ASEAN biggest market they start from indonesia with hyundai motors and they soon will start in thai with KIA motors because hyundai motors group know that ASEAN market giant market is in thai and Indonesia
While previously they said Malaysia will be asean hub, and now they switched to Thailand to make it as asean hub…
well i believe u know the reasons why kia remove their asean hub to thai from malay because u see kia sales in malay its not getting better they just sold carnival, EV6 and the Niro EV. you also can see that malay competition ev getting though after tesla entering malay market, so kia pull away
Car manufacturers always choose Thailand and now even Indon over Malaysia.
Saying that the Kia plant in Thailand is going to be first in ASEAN is wrong. Their first major investment in the whole ASEAN region was a production facility Vietnam since 2001. It is still running well.