2 months ago
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Kia's cheapest car is poised to live through 2026, with the South Korean giant confirming a crash-avoidance tech update to ensure the popular Picanto meets more stringent Australian Design Rules.
Kia has assured the future of one of Australia's cheapest new cars – the entry-level Kia Picanto – indicating plans to upgrade the city hatch to meet new mandates for autonomous emergency braking (AEB) technology.
The Picanto is already fitted with car-to-car AEB – intended to slam the brakes when an imminent rear-end collision with another car is detected – which will be mandatory for almost all new vehicles sold in Australia from 1 March 2025, as part of rules known as ADR 98/00.
However, Kia's smallest car currently lacks AEB capable of preventing collisions with pedestrians, which under ADR 98/01 from 1 August 2026 will join car-to-car AEB in being mandatory.
The tightening of the regulations surrounding AEB is seeing a number of major manufacturers axe some long-running and popular models from their line-ups rather than incur the expense of making them compliant.
But Kia Australia’s General Manager of Product Planning, Roland Rivero, has already poured cold water on any suggestions the Kia Picanto city car could get the chop.
“There is no plan to kill the Picanto,” he told Drive. “We’ll make it compliant.
“Every product in the Kia range is compliant. We're just going through the paperwork,” he added.
“[We] still have to submit it through… the Department of Infrastructure, and we're going through the process now, and bit by bit, they're all getting approved. So ADR 98/00, no worries. And naturally, when it evolves to [ADR] 98/01, we'll do what we need to do.”
Rivero said the popular city car is already fitted with a camera that can detect pedestrians, and that ensuring Australian compliance could be as simple as a software update to turn the feature on – given overseas examples already offer this functionality.
“The camera in the Picanto already detects pedestrians and it just has to make sure that it's in line with their requirements,” he told Drive. “So it could just be a software enhancement and we’re okay.
“The Picanto will continue to be the entry vehicle into the Kia product range for a few more years yet.”
Rob Margeit is an award-winning Australian motoring journalist and editor who has been writing about cars and motorsport for over 25 years. A former editor of Australian Auto Action, Rob’s work has also appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, Wheels, Motor Magazine, Street Machine and Top Gear Australia. Rob’s current rides include a 1996 Mercedes-Benz E-Class and a 2000 Honda HR-V Sport.
