At its 2026 CEO Investor Day, Hyundai showed five electric vehicles bound for Europe. Four of them it named. The fifth was a covered shape labelled D-SUV, positioned in the lineup between the IONIQ 5 and the Santa Fe, and that is the entire public specification. Days later Kia put a date on the PV7, the larger sibling to the electric van that is currently outselling everything in its class in Europe.
The two announcements are the same company describing the next eighteen months from opposite ends: one product nobody can see, one product with a hall number.
The Target Says Combustion Shrinks By A Million
Hyundai wants 5.5 million vehicles a year by 2030, up from 4.1 million in 2025, with electrified models including hybrids, EVs and extended-range cars making up 60 percent of the mix against 23 percent last year.
Run those four numbers together. In 2025 Hyundai sold roughly 943,000 electrified vehicles and about 3.16 million that were not. In 2030 the plan produces roughly 3.3 million electrified and about 2.2 million that are not. Electrified volume rises three and a half times. Total volume rises 34 percent. Everything else falls by around 957,000 units, close to a third of the combustion business.
Growth targets are usually presented as addition. This one is a substitution, and the press release does not do the subtraction for you.
What Is Actually Known About The D-SUV
It will sit on a new full-stack software-defined vehicle platform. Hyundai plans to apply Level 2 driver assistance to its first mass-produced SDV in 2028 through a partnership with NVIDIA, while its in-house autonomous AI, Atria, begins collecting road data in Korea by the end of 2026 with Level 2 to Level 4 as the eventual target. The cabin gets Pleos Connect, Hyundai's Android Automotive OS infotainment system, which reaches Europe first in the IONIQ 3.
The car appeared during the section on China. Hyundai's "In China, for China" strategy leans on local partnerships for technology and development, starting with the IONIQ V launched this year, and its Phase II sequence runs a B-SUV and C-SUV in 2027 followed by the D-SUV, a D-MPV and a D-sedan. TheKoreanCarBlog reports the D-SUV is a global model rather than a China-only one.
So the most specific thing Hyundai has said about its new D-segment SUV is where it stands on a slide.
The commercial case is not hard to see. Hyundai Motor sold a record 490,000 retail vehicles in the United States in the first half, and the IONIQ 5 was the third best-selling EV in the country behind the Tesla Model Y and Model 3. Something slightly larger, on newer electronics, is an obvious gap.
Kia Already Has The Van That Works
The PV5 went on sale at the end of 2025 and now takes 37 percent of Europe's small electric van market, clearing 50 percent of C-segment EV van sales in five countries. Kia has sold more than 39,000 globally through August.
The PV7 is the follow-up, and Kia has confirmed it debuts at IAA Transportation in Hanover, with press day on 14 September and the show running to the 20th. Sales follow in 2027. It uses the same modular E-GMP.S platform and will come in Passenger and Cargo forms, with Pleos Connect expected here too.
Kia has released teaser images rather than dimensions. For scale, the PV7 concept shown at CES 2024 measured 5,270 mm long on a 3,390 mm wheelbase against the PV5 Passenger's 4,695 mm and 2,995 mm. If the production van lands near the concept, that is 575 mm of extra length and 395 mm of extra wheelbase.
Hanover opens to press on 14 September, where Kia will also show new PV5 derivatives and set out the rest of its Platform Beyond Vehicle plan.
