Kia caused a stir in the weeks leading up the Geneva Motor Show with a teaser image that featured no less than 21 digital screens in its concept. Judgment day finally arrived and the concept, called Imagine by Kia, turned out to be quite the contradiction in it of itself. On the surface, the concept looks the part of a real concept, and a beautiful one, too. It’s emotional in a sense that it makes you feel something about, which, I suppose, is what Kia was going for in the first place. But just as the concept’s exterior looks the part of one, the interior takes the concept-car ideology to a different. At the end of the day, Imagine by Kia is the automaker’s first EV concept. That still counts for a lot of things from an automaker that’s slowly building upon its electrification plans for the future. How that future will look is up to Kia. But if Imagine by Kia is a sign of things to come, color us intrigued, if not a little confused.

As a whole, I’m a fan of the Imagine by Kia Concept. A big fan, actually. I love the concept’s muscular, high-riding, swooping-shaped body. It’s pegged as a sedan with suicide doors, but it could also pass for a coupe-crossover. The fact that we can't decide what it is already a notch on its belt. The concept does exude an aura of confidence that’s easy to see and hard to shake off. All that said, the front section is the highlight in my eyes. I previously mentioned that it looks like a superhero’s mask, and I’m not deviating away from that. It’s cool to look at in the same way Volvo’s Thor’s hammer headlamps are cool to the eyes. It shouldn’t be lost on anyone, either, that Kia’s tiger shark front grille is noticeably absent from the front fascia. Part of that is probably due to the new design language that the concept is showcasing, though you can also argue that the DRL arrangement is the tiger shark grille — or “Tiger Mask,” as the automaker calls it — showcased much more elegantly in the face of the concept.

The rest of the body is framed like a proper concept vehicle. The roof and the windscreen are made from a single piece of class, harkening images of the Tesla Model 3. There’s no official name to the concept’s paint finish — it looks like a metallized form of bronze — though Kia said that it’s made from six hand-applied layers of chrome effect paint with a bronze tint outermost layer. Don’t expect those inserts to make it to production. The wheels are wrapped in a set of bespoke Goodyear IntelliGrip tires, which, themselves, are concept tires that, according to Goodyear, can detect and convey road conditions to the car and driver and adjust the driving and handling characteristics of the concept accordingly.

If you look at the Imagine by Kia Concept through the lens of its exterior, it’s a concept car through and through, and a really slick one at that. For better or worse, the same can be said for the interior.

The conversation in this department starts and ends with what Kia interior designer Ralph Kluge describes as a “humorous and irreverent riposte to the ongoing competition between some automotive automakers to see who can produce the car with the biggest screen.” Obviously, those 21 small screens, arranged in a rippling pattern, won’t be part of Kia’s production future. But it does highlight the seriousness by which automakers have taken in developing the most audacious digital screen in the business. Props to Kia for injecting a bit of levity to the proceedings. What shouldn’t get overshadowed by the sheer inanity of those screens is the concept’s dashboard. I previously noted in the teaser that it looks less like a dashboard and more like a countertop, albeit an elegantly designed one. Safety and regulation laws might scoff at the design, but it does inject a different aesthetic flair relative to the rest of the concept’s interior design.

The rest of the cabin forms the makeup of a typical concept car interior. It appeals to the aesthetically inclined, but I wonder if they’re as comfortable as Kia claims they are. Up front is where you’ll see the floating — and naked — center console. It has a mirror-like finish to it, which, I suppose, is a big reason Kia opted to keep it clean from the usual array of buttons and knobs that typically reside in that area of the car. If for nothing else, the “floating” nature of the center console frees up floor space for a front trunk, or “frunk,” as the smart alecks of the business prefer to call it. A more traditional rear trunk is also part of the interior layout. This space can be accessed through the glass hatch.

There’s no mention of the Imagine by Kia’s electric powertrain, so I’ll assume that it’s still a work in progress. All the automaker said is that the concept uses a low-mounted, induction-charged battery pack that powers a compact drivetrain. It’s a vague description, sure, but we’ll let it pass. Besides, the lack of clarity on this end shouldn’t take away from Kia’s plans and ambitions for the EV segment. Kia is serious about venturing into the EV space because, at this point, the alternative is tantamount to business suicide. Trivial mockery of the business notwithstanding, I’m curious to see what Kia does with this concept moving forward, especially if the automaker decides to adopt the concept’s design language for it future models.

I’m all for that possibility. In fact, I can’t wait to see how his new styling direction translates to Kia’s future models, all-electric or otherwise.

Further reading

Read our full review on the 2019 Kia Performance EV Concept.

Read our full review on the 2018 Kia Stinger

Read our full speculative review on the 2020 Kia Stinger Coupe

Read our full speculative review on the 2019 Kia Stinger GT Plus