See the Imagine by Kia Concept in Photos

In lieu of traditional crossover-like lower body cladding, Kia has gone with an altogether different surfacing solution. The Imagine has a rippling effect stamped into the metal on the lower front bumper and bottom half of the door skins, and none of the "ruches" are the same in length and angle.

Sadly, Kia gives no actual details about the Imagine's platform or powertrain beyond saying it has a low-mounted battery pack with "a compact drivetrain."

Kia does say that the Imagine is the company's first purely electric passenger car, so it doesn't share anything with existing Kia EVs like the Niro, and the car's proportions lend us to believe it's a rear-drive-based platform. The electric platform allows for a large rear luggage area accessed by the rear glass, a frunk under the hood, and a flat floor on the interior.

The rest of the Imagine's interior is typical concept-car extravagance, too.

With the Imagine's interior, Kia is directly poking fun at other automakers. The relatively simple, sweeping dashboard is dominated by 21 screens that are placed atop it and curve their way across.

Ralph Kluge, Kia's general manager of interior design, says the screens "are a humorous and irreverent riposte" to the competition between other automakers to produce the car with the biggest screens.

When viewed from the driver's seat, the screens actually look like one large unit thanks to the clever positioning—in fact, they might be easier on the eyes than one giant screen—and the wavelike placement ties in with the car's exterior surfacing.

The four seats are covered in leather and silk and have shells with a diamond-cut finish, and the door cards are covered in leather and a metallic fabric.

The center console stretches back toward the rear seats and appears to float, an effect that is echoed by the mounts for the front seats.

Refreshingly for a concept car in 2019, Kia makes no mention of an autonomous mode that sees the steering wheel fold away, although the pedals do disappear when the car is turned off.

Vehicles shaped like this are extremely in vogue right now, and the way Kia talks about the design of the Imagine makes it seem the company wants to put it into production.

Says Guillaume, "We imagined designing an all-electric car that not only answered consumer concerns around range, performance, recharging networks, and driving dynamism, but one that also gave you goosebumps when you looked at it and made the hairs on the back of your neck stand up when you drove it."

Take away all of the insane concept-car details, and it's not hard to imagine (get it?) a production car based on the Imagine.

If that kind of thought and emotion get put into Kia's future production EVs, we're all for it—even if they get silly names.