It's been almost two years since Kia underwent a rebranding exercise and revealed a new logo, but it seems that this new logo is confusing thousands of potential customers. Many are misreading "Kia" as "KN" and searching for the latter online, simply because the word isn't nearly as legible as it once was.

This isn't the news Kia would want to hear, especially with so much else going on at the moment. The Korean manufacturer is currently struggling with a second recall for the Kia Niro due to a potential fire risks, all while preparing for EV production to commence in the US and getting the ludicrously powerful EV6 GT ready for market.

Twitter user @Shwinnabego recently took to the social media platform to share some interesting statistics surrounding the new Kia logo. According to Ashwinn, as the user is known, at least 30,000 people a month have searched for the term "KN car" since the logo was introduced last January. The confusion has also extended to Reddit, where a user asked, "KN car model?" under a picture of a Kia Carnival. A further dive into Google's statistics shows that the confusion isn't limited to US shores; the phenomenon is occurring across the globe. People in Canada, the UK, and even Australia are searching for similar terms, including "KN car brand price," "KN SUV," and "KN car brand electric."

Even worse is some of the searches on US soil. Kia is definitely losing out on sales when users are forced to search for terms such as "What is KN" and "KN Telluride car." These confused searches have become so popular that Google auto-fills "KN c" to "KN car" or "KN car brand." Kia receives nearly two million searches per month, so 30,000 confused monthly searches might not seem like much, but it goes to show that sometimes a new logo, no matter how sleek, can backfire. The silver lining is that people are so intrigued by Kia cars that they're still searching for them, even without any brand knowledge.