2011 Kia Optima Ex Sedan 4d on 2040-cars

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Watch the Kia Soul hamsters take on 'Dueling Banjos'

The Kia Soul hamsters are back, but rather than bopping to the party tunes of LMFAO, they're delivering their own take on "Dueling Banjos." Thankfully, this commercial is more pleasant to watch than the film that helped make the banjo tune famous. Aside from the return of Kia's fuzzy mascots, this commercial also marks the welcome return of plumper hamsters. When Kia launched the Soul EV, it gave its spokesrodents a trimmer figure that made the anthropomorphic dancing hamsters even creepier. As Autoblog chief Mike Austin said when assigning this story, "Sexy EV hamsters were scary." Alongside from the two-minute commercial, Kia has included a three-minute, behind-the-scenes video called Soul Sessions: Making the Music. You can check out the main spot up top, and then get the peek behind the curtain below. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings.

2020 Kia Soul earns highest Top Safety Pick + rating from IIHS

The completely redesigned 2020 Kia Soul has finally been crash tested by IIHS, and the results are quite good. The subcompact crossover earned the organization's highest rating of Top Safety Pick +, which topped the previous generation's plain Top Safety Pick rating. The main reason for the higher overall rating is because of an improved passenger-side small overlap crash test result. The new model is now rated "Good" rather than "Acceptable" for the previous model. The rest of the new Soul's crash test results also got the top "Good" rating. Performance in other IIHS test categories are about the same as they had been. The Soul gets the top "Superior" rating for forward collision prevention. The system could stop the car completely before a collision at speeds up to 25 mph. It should be noted that automatic emergency braking is only available as a standard feature on S, EX and GT-Line models. The system with pedestrian detection is only available as a standard feature on the turbocharged GT-Line. Headlight performance was rated "Good" for models with LED headlights, also helping give the Soul the Top Safety Pick + rating, but the halogen headlights that come with lower trim levels were rated as "Poor." The LATCH anchor points for child seats are continued to be rated "Acceptable" for ease of use and access.

Kia considering tiny EV to give commuters an alternative to taking the bus

One of the more unexpected side effects of the coronavirus pandemic that's wreaking havoc on society is that public transportation is no longer being stubbornly celebrated as the solve-all alternative to driving. Commuters are afraid of catching the virus in a bus, and this trend is encouraging automakers to consider adding small, urban-friendly electric cars to their portfolio. Kia could jump into this segment to rival Citroen's $22-a-month Ami. "People want to feel safe today. We saw that clearly from a survey that was done after coronavirus in China, which showed people had moved from public transportation to private transportation," explained Emilio Herrera, the chief operating officer of Kia's European division, in an interview with British magazine Auto Express. He added 34% of respondents used private transportation before the virus began to spread; that number went up to 65% once the lockdowns and stay-at-home orders began to ease. Kia expects to see a similar shift in Europe and in North America, and Herrera said his team is "studying a proposal on having very small micro vehicles for urban use." He sees a real potential in this segment, and he has already looked at the aforementioned Ami. Electrification is key in this corner of the industry. First, it's difficult to develop a car the size of a golf cart if you need to package it around a 4.0-liter straight-six. Second, these vehicles are aimed specifically at urban users, and big cities in Europe and in Asia are increasingly kicking out non-electrified vehicles. Kia's pocket-sized car would be primarily used for short trips, and it would never venture farther than a few hundred yards away from a charging station, so it doesn't need a headline-grabbing driving range to be practical and usable. The 1,070-pound Ami is fitted with a 5.5-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery pack that delivers up to 43 miles of range. Rivaling public transportation is easy when it comes to comfort and convenience, but it's far more difficult when cost enters the equation. Taking the bus is cheap, so Kia's electric car needs to be almost as inexpensive. Citroen cracked the code: in France, the Ami costs about $6,600 to buy, $22 a month to lease, or 30 cents a minute via an app-based car-sharing program. Kia envisions users will be able to rent its competitor for a week or for a month via a subscription service "at very low monthly prices," though it stopped short of providing a dollar figure.