Kia invites global PBV dealers to Korea to share brand vision

Kia announced Friday that it held a "Kia Discovery" event, inviting key overseas dealers to Korea as part of its push to expand its global purpose-built vehicle business.

The two-night, three-day event ran from Tuesday through Thursday, bringing together 33 dealers from 17 countries across four regions — Europe, Canada, Asia-Pacific and the UAE — where Kia PBV models are sold. The program was designed to give global PBV dealers a firsthand look at Kia's future vision and business competitiveness while strengthening brand trust and partnerships.

Participants visited Kia's headquarters, the Autoland Hwaseong plant and the Pyeongtaek PBV Experience Center. At headquarters, they toured the newly renovated lobby and attended a vision conference covering Kia's future business direction across brand, sales, service, channels and PBV. At Autoland Hwaseong, they inspected PBV production lines and the latest automated manufacturing equipment, gaining a close look at production processes and quality control capabilities. At the Pyeongtaek center, they experienced PBV products and service operations firsthand. A heritage program tracing Kia's 80-year history and brand legacy was also held.

Kia formalized what had been an irregular overseas dealer invitation program under the "Kia Discovery" brand in 2016 and now runs it twice a year. The first event of this year, held in May, drew 45 new and high-performing dealers. A post-event survey found brand trust scored 4.93 out of 5.

"We hope this experience — seeing Kia's core facilities and technology firsthand — gave our global PBV dealers the confidence to believe in the future growth potential and vision of PBV, which is Kia's new core business," a Kia official said. "We will continue to build brand loyalty among our global dealers through ongoing dealer invitation programs."

Meanwhile, Kia last month unveiled the PV7 for the first time at IAA Transportation 2026, the world's largest commercial vehicle show, held in Hanover, Germany.

Kia plans to initially offer the PV7 Cargo Long and PV7 Passenger Long, both with a body length of approximately 5.3 meters. The company intends to roll out a range of variants with differentiated specifications — including wheelbase, overall length and height — and interior configurations based on its next-generation body development and manufacturing technology called the Flexible Body System.