Kia EV6 electric car production halted due to factory fire - report

Production of the Kia EV6 has been dealt a setback following a fire at its Korean factory.

Yonhap News Agency reports Kia has been forced to suspend operations in one of its eight domestic plants due to a fire caused by industrial robots in its paint shop.

Eight industrial robots were reportedly affected by the fire in Kia’s plant in Hwaseong, caused by a spark from a cable on one of them.

Kia Australia has confirmed its allocation of EV6s for next month has already been secured. It’s now bringing around 250 EV6s in per month.

The fire reportedly broke out on August 28 and a company spokesperson told Yonhap production at the plant will remain suspended until September 6.

In addition to the EV6, the Hwaseong plant also produces the K5 and K8 sedans.

Kia operates eight plants in Korea, plus six overseas: two in China, and the rest spread across the United States, Mexico, Slovakia and India.

At the start of August, Kia confirmed greater factory support for Australia had slashed wait times.

Earlier this year the EV6 had wait times of around 12 months, but the company said it had slashed these to just 2-3 months.

Kia said at the time it expected to clear its order backlog within a few months.

Since the start of 2022, Kia has sold 1266 units of the EV6, but says it could have more than doubled this based on enquiry levels.

Over the first half of 2023, the EV6 was the eighth best-selling EV in Australia, but the Tesla Model Y outsold it 28:1 (14,002 sales versus 535 sales, January to June).

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