Kia’s EV3 Concept has a center console grown from… mushrooms

I won’t lie: We don’t know a lot about the Kia EV3 Concept from a technical perspective. Like, basically anything. We don’t have battery capacity, range, power output, or even dimensions. It’s a compact crossover based on the E-GMP platform that slots in roughly where the Kia Seltos does at the moment, which should give you a sense of what kind of size class we’re talking about here. Kia announced the EV3 Concept at its EV Day event in Korea.

The EV3 Concept does apparently support V2L (vehicle-to-load) tech and has a dedicated space in the trunk for charging a small e-bike or electric scooter — and that’s certainly cool. Again, no detailed specs there: Kia just wants you to know they’re thinking about it. In fact, there aren’t even any photos of it.

But have you ever heard of a center console table from mushroom roots? Well, if you’ve heard of mycelium materials, maybe this doesn’t sound too strange, but it sure makes for a head-turner of a statement when you can say your concept car has a fungus-derived console. There’s effectively no chance this makes it into production, and Kia certainly isn’t suggesting it will. Mycelium is a potential material of the future, one of doubtless many that Kia and other automakers are exploring.

But the EV3 Concept itself seems quite fully realized — the design is a clear callback to the EV9 and EV5, and it would certainly make sense for Kia to offer an electric compact CUV; the things practically sell themselves.

There’s no word if the EV3 Concept will eventually make it to the US when the production version is announced, but based on Kia’s trepidation to launch the EV5 in the US, it seems far from certain. Additionally, Kia isn’t talking about battery architecture. The EV5 was announced as the brand’s first 400-volt architecture car on the E-GMP platform, and given the EV3 would slot in below that car, it’s hard to imagine it would go 800-volt when its larger (and presumably pricier) stablemate is using 400-volt.