The Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade (KIET), a state-run South Korean think tank, said this past week that South Korea will enter the hybrid car market in a big way in 2011 and then continue to play a big role in the global hybrid market. As you can guess from the links below, there has been movement in this direction for a while, especially by Hyundai/Kia, but Asia Pulse said that earlier reports were hinting at a 2010 start date. KIET cited the added cost of making hybrids as the reason for the later date.

KIET gave these numbers for Korea's domestic hybrid production:

• 500,000 by 2015
• 1.8 million by 2020 (exporting 70 percent)

What vehicles these hybrid drivetrains will be put into is of course unknown at this point. Adding more than a million hybrids a year to the global marketplace will certainly help drivers use less gas (vs. driving standard vehicles), but Korean companies may want to rethink the delayed target date. Thirteen years is a long time to wait for the small MPG gains most hybrids deliver.
Related:

• Hyundai Kia group's new environmental technology R&D center
• Hyundai to produce LPG Hybrid Avante for Korea
• Hyundai shows off its hybid development center
• Hyundai needs government help to compete with the Japanese on hybirds

[Source: EDTA / Asia Pulse]

Kia comes to Geneva with three new vehicles in tow. The cee'd will be available for the first time in final production-ready form and Kia also has "a striking new concept car, which will indicate the options open to its European design and manufacturing bases." We'd like to know more, but we'll have to wait a while for all that.

It's the third vehicle, the Kia Rio Hybrid, that we know the most about. The car's been rumored for years, and it's not hard to find spy shots of the car, but Geneva will be where Kia gives us some details on the hybrid and how it's going to be tested.

Called "a new vision for the future of clean motoring from Kia," the Rio Hybrid has a 1.4-litre 90 PS petrol engine mated to a 12-kW synchronised electric motor. Almost 4,000 will soon become part of a huge real-world hybrid test for the Korean Ministry of the Environment.



[Source: Kia UK]