2021 Kia Carnival India Launch Not Planned For Now, Says Kia

Fourth-Gen Carnival India Launch — The fourth-gen Carnival will go on sale in Korea this year

Kia has revealed that it is not planning to launch the 2021 Carnival in India at present as it wants to focus on the current model and work on increasing its demand.

Launched in February here, the third-generation Carnival, priced from Rs. 24.95 lakhs (ex-showroom), has witnessed lukewarm response, with only 3812 units getting sold*.

That being the case, in August, Kia revealed the fourth-gen Carnival with new styling, redesigned interior, more kit, larger footprint, and much more changes. While we expected this new model to arrive at our shores by the year 2022, it is now clear that the time frame might be pushed further back.

The reason is that Kia wants to do better marketing with regards to the current product and increase customer interest, as it feels the timing of the product launch was bad.

President and CEO, Kia Motors Corporation, Ho Sung Song, said, “We launched the Carnival and timing-wise, it was just poor timing (just before the spread) of COVID-19. That is why we couldn’t do enough in the way of marketing and communication activities.”

He, however, noted that the segment in which the Carnival is placed does not do massive numbers. “The Carnival segment is, at the moment, limited to the demand of the market, but I believe that demand will increase in the future,” stated Song.

Admitting that the Carnival would appeal to the likes of “premium business people” more, Ho Sung Song is confident that the Carnival will be in high demand in the future.

One thing Kia India wants to do to ensure that is reduce the cost of the premium MPV by improving localisation from current levels, which has contributed to the high pricing of the vehicle.

“We can increase localisation of the parts because it depends on the kind of economic scale. Even on today’s Carnival, we’ll start the localisation one by one to make the scale of business and so we don’t have any plan for now to bring the new Carnival to the Indian market,” the Kia head explained.

Although the news about fourth-gen Kia Carnival India launch not being planned is a bummer, the current model is not a sparsely-equipped car by any means. The top-spec variant gets powered and ventilated driver’s seat, captain chairs with two 10.1-inch touchscreens for the second row, 8-inch touchscreen infotainment system, car connectivity tech, dual sunroof, Nappa leather upholstery, among many other equipment.