Ahead of the official launch of the Kia Seltos here in Malaysia, Naza Kia Malaysia is now giving us a closer look at the compact B-segment SUV, specifically at its lighting technology of the range-topping GT-Line variant.
Described by Kia themselves as a “work of art”, the lighting system on the Kia Seltos GT-Line is dubbed as “Heart Beat Lighting”, thanks to its light signature on both the headlights and taillights that mimics the heart monitor graphs.
Up front, the Kia Seltos GT-Line features an all-LED headlight, with the main highlight being the eyebrow-style daytime running light that extends into the tiger-nose grille, bookended by a U-shaped kink – a design that is mirrored on the taillights, representing the “heart beat”.
The lower part of the headlights assembly houses the turn indicators, which features three J-shaped LED light strips along with four individual LED bulbs – the former giving the lights a three-dimensional look. The main headlight meanwhile, is illuminated by two individual beams on each side, taking the outer two bulbs in an array of four. Lower down, the Kia Seltos GT-Line also gets vertical LED “ice-cube” foglamps as standard.
The heartbeat motive is even more apparent on the taillights of the Kia Seltos GT-Line, with a light signature featuring the same u-shaped kink similar to the ones on the daytime-running lights in front. The light signature – which doubles as the turn indicators – also feature the same 3D “multi-layer” effect as seen on the front for even more road presence.
Unfortunately, all of these fancy LED lighting technology is only present on the range-topping GT-Line variant. The EX variant settles for halogen projector headlights, halogen foglamps, as well as bulb-type taillights, thus removing the 3D heartbeat graphic on both ends of the compact SUV.
The Kia Seltos is now available for booking at selected Kia showrooms nationwide; the full list of participating showrooms can be found here. Two variants are available – EX and GT-Line, though no pricing has been indicated as of yet.
Expected to be launched during Q4 of 2020, the Kia Seltos will face stiff competition from other new compact SUVs including its brother-from-another-mother, the Hyundai Kona, as well as the hotly-anticipated Proton X50, and of course the old guards of the Honda HR-V and Mazda CX-3.
Will the fancy lighting technology on the Kia Seltos be enough to capture a portion of the compact SUV market? We’ll have to wait and see, but it certainly is exciting to see the B-segment SUV contenders duking it out, giving us the consumers more competitive products to choose from!
GALLERY
