Kia EV3 Winning World Car of the Year is Old News but Good News
The real story is that Kia is serious in its electric dreams
Kia EV3 won the 2025 World Car of the Year award at the New York International Auto Show. But that’s old news. What is more significant is that since 2020, Kia has won the awards six times and only once for an internal combustion car — the Telluride — which is a North America specific model.
What many of the 96 automotive journalist-judges saw with the EV3 was Kia’s successful move to take winning concepts from another World Car award winner, the robust EV9 electric SUV, and put them into a smaller, more affordable suit. It wasn’t shrinking the EV9, it was a rethinking of its DNA. I guess it worked for the judges. The clean, modern look with strong lines and surprisingly roomy and flexible interior gave it major thumbs up.
“This award highlights Kia’s global leadership in providing design-led, technologically advanced, sustainable mobility solutions and how the EV3’s class-leading attributes redefine the user experience for customers worldwide,” Ho Sung Song, the President and CEO at Kia, said about the win.
“That’s a real affirmation. When you look at the string of our EVs winning that, it says a lot about the direction that we took and also emerging extreme credibility in that space,” Steven Center, EVP and Chief Operating Officer of Kia America, said in an interview with Newsweek.
The Kia EV3 was designed to travel up to 600 kilometers (375 miles) on a single charge. Achieving this kind of distance in a compact car was a major factor in the win, but not as much as its charging speed, which tops up from 10% to 80% in about 30 minutes. Kia’s AI assistant and its lane-keeping and highway driving assist functions are part of the EV3’s arsenal, and like many electric cars, it can get software updates from the cloud.
The EV3 World Car of the Year trophy is one more for Kia’s cabinet, and one of its first World Car awards was another EV — the Kia Soul — which won the World Urban Car of the Year, side by side with the Telluride in 2020. Back then, the Telluride’s massive 3.8-liter engine, huge space, and fancy fitments won the hearts of the judges, and of reporters.
The Kia Soul EV was reported on only as a by the way, when, in fact, it was the “soul of Kia’s EV ambitions.” It became the moving test bed for customer acceptance, at least in the North American market. The quirky looking subcompact SUV offered two battery options, the more popular being the 64.8 kWh pack providing a range of 450 kilometers (~280 miles).
Last year, it was the Kia EV9 that took both the World Car of the Year and the World Electric Vehicle of the Year award. Not bad for the full-size, three-row electric SUV, proving that the space, comfort, and desirability sought by families could be delivered in a purely electric package.
Just a year before that, the company sent a jolt through the performance world with the Kia EV6 GT, winning World Performance Car. Typically set aside for the proven, gas-guzzling thoroughbred muscle cars, the win shattered long-held perceptions. The judges pointed out the EV6 GT’s “breathtaking acceleration and dynamic handling,” as the future of high-performance vehicles. “It was not just electric, but electrifyingly fun,” said one judge in an after-event social media post.
The EV6 GT was a clear signal that Kia wasn’t just building EVs for practicality, but for passion as well.
Kia’s electrification strategy seems to be working. Called “Plan S,” it is a massive, top-down push into electrification led by the Electric-Global Modular Platform (E-GMP). This EV architecture is the secret sauce behind the EV6, EV9, and now the EV3, allowing for flat floors, spacious interiors, ultra-fast charging, and impressive range. The next steps include faster charging and a clear end-of-life plan for batteries.
Interestingly, its cousin, the Hyundai Inster (a.k.a Casper in the Philippines and other markets) won the World Electric Car of the Year award.
One could say the Telluride win was like a graduation ceremony for Kia’s internal combustion efforts. Ever since then, the brand has been on an all-electric honor roll.
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