Kia cee'd wins green award

Globally recognized, German-based, TÜV presented Kia with a DFE (Design for Environment) and a LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) environment certificate at a special ceremony in Seoul, Korea, on 25 April, after rigorous inspection of the company’s design operations and the manufacturing facility at Zilina in Slovakia. The Kia cee’d, designed for and made in Europe, is the first Korean car to receive such recognition.

Mr Hyoung-Keun Lee, Senior Executive Vice President and COO, International Business Division of Kia Motors Corporation, enthused; ‘The awarding of two international environment certificates for the Kia cee’d and its excellent 5-Star rating in EuroNCAP crash testing are first-time achievements for a Korean automotive company of which we can all be proud.

‘Our Zilina facility was environmentally certified in 2007 and later this year we will start manufacturing cee’d vehicles with fuel-stretching and CO2 reducing technologies from our experimental eco_cee’d line-up, further underlining Kia’s strong and continuing drive to minimize its impact on the environment,’ concluded Mr Lee.

DFE (ISO 14062) evaluates a car’s environmental friendliness during its design and development, plus the ease with which the car can be disassembled and its level of recyclability. DFE also requires that the assembly plant for the car reaches ISO 14001.

LCA (ISO 14040) examines both the car’s overall manufacturing process and its lifetime environmental impact, including choice of materials and measures to reduce fuel consumption and engine exhaust emissions. The cee’d features lightweight all-aluminium engines (weighing 15 kg less) and Kenaf (a form of jute) recycled materials form its door trim panels.

Last year, Kia’s Zilina factory was certified as an ‘environmentally-friendly’ facility when Kia Motors Slovakia (KMS) was presented with an ISO 14001 international certificate of environmental management. Many of the production and waste-management technologies in operation at Zilina are among the very best available in the world, with a minimised impact on the environment.

Mr In-Kyu Bae, President of Kia Motors Slovakia, said; ‘When launching vehicle and component production, we focused our attention on observing all environmental regulations in both spirit and letter. Personally, I am very glad we had a chance to prove our commitment to being ‘environmentally-friendly’. We received the internationally renowned environmental certificate ISO 14001 within a year of starting production and we can be proud of our achievements to gain these new certificates.’

TÜV NORD environmental certificates are not easily earned. The only significant vehicles to achieve both DFE and LCA certificates in recent years are the Mercedes-Benz S-Class (2005) and Mercedes-Benz C-Class (2006).

Credits: Jarvis