Kia Bags Five Red Dot Awards—But When Will the Wheels Actually Turn?

Kia walked away with five accolades at the 2025 Red Dot Design Awards, including the top honor, “Best of the Best,” for its PV5 WKNDR Concept—an electric minivan that looks ready to live off the grid, if only it could leave the show floor. Other concept entries—PV1, PV5, PV7, and EV2—also earned nods. But as usual, the real question remains: when will any of this start moving?

Unveiled at SEMA 2024, the PV5 WKNDR is built on Kia’s modular PBV (Platform Beyond Vehicle) architecture and boasts a long wish list: outdoor kitchens, solar panels and hydro turbines, fully customizable interiors, and passengers who apparently don’t require infrastructure. It all sounds great—until you realize it’s still firmly a design study, not a production model. So don’t count on taking it off the beaten path anytime soon.

The PV1 is a tiny, narrow, autonomous city logistics pod—ideal if your daily deliveries amount to a loaf of bread and a stamp.
The standard PV5 is technically available to customers but feels more like a showcase of "flexible layout" than a leap in innovation.
The PV7 is the largest of the bunch, envisioned as a mobile office. Space it has, but a clear timeline it does not.
And then there’s the EV2, a compact SUV with pillarless doors and an adaptive interior—if the design survives translation into reality.

For now, Kia’s trophy shelf just got heavier. The road, however, remains frustratingly theoretical.