Kia’s Pivot: Why The EV Trailblazer Is Betting Big On Hybrids

Kia is on a hot streak. The company is well on its way to a fourth consecutive year of U.S. sales growth, fueled by growth in gas car, hybrid and EV sales.

Yet Kia’s executives are striking a different tone than they have for the past few years. At last year’s LA Auto Show, the company was unveiling the new, U.S.-built versions of the EV6 and a high-performance GT trim for the EV9. I thought at the time that a Tesla-style charging plug, eligibility for the federal tax credit and a new U.S. production location would sweeten the deal significantly. 

The 2025 Kia EV6 at last year’s LA Auto Show.

Photo by: InsideEVs

But one year later, the tax credit is gone, the EV9 GT is postponed indefinitely, and the EV6 is, seemingly, the one EV that didn’t set a sales record in the second quarter, even as buyers rushed to claim tax credits. And as a South Korean company, Kia has been vulnerable to new tariffs. The car market is now very different from what it was a year ago.

Officials at Kia say the brand’s competency in all three powertrain types means that it can lean into “choice.” 

“We’re not pushing anything. We’re creating the right products that are meeting the customer demands,” Russell Wager, Kia’s vice president of marketing in the U.S., told InsideEVs. 

It’s a fair and earned brag. The Telluride was a smash hit for the company, breaking through to a wealthy and young audience with a ravenous appetite for three-row SUVs. At the LA Auto Show, Kia revealed a second-generation Telluride with a new hybrid powertrain. It sits well alongside the EV9, which just set its own sales record, and models like the Carnival and K5, which just saw 48% and 85% sales growth, respectively. (All of these numbers are from the third quarter.)

“We just got done with a national dealer meeting in Las Vegas,” Wager said. “We had over 1,700 representatives from our dealers there, and we told them: ‘we are going to give you choices for your customers.’”

Reality Check

This year, then, has been a reality check for Kia, as it has for everyone. With the EV tax credits gone and the Trump administration ending any sort of fuel economy regulations pushing for cleaner cars, a lot is up in the air right now. And that makes Kia’s onetime EV push less of a certainty than before.

“Yeah, I think the EV business has been, I would say, disrupted,” Eric Watson, Kia’s vice president of sales operations for the U.S., said in an interview.

”We had a great start to the year, and then in summer, there was a lot of EV business pulled ahead,” he said, referencing how buyers moved up their purchase timelines to take advantage of tax-credit deals, which expired on Sept. 30. 

The Kia EV9 set a sales record in the third quarter.

Photo by: Kia

Since then, the industry “softened,” but Watson says he expects EV sales to bounce back slightly from their October nadir. Sales peaked at around 10% of the market, then dropped to around 4-5% now, he said.

“But in 2026 it’ll grow. I think it’ll get to six, seven or eight percent of the industry next year,” Watson told me. Even in a best-case scenario, then, we’re probably not going to see 10% penetration anytime in the next year. And as Kia proves better than maybe any other company, it’s not for a lack of trying.

The company was early to launch a compelling compact electric SUV. This segment makes up the meat of the EV market, and Kia arrived with industry-beating charging times, an 800-volt architecture, plenty of range and good pricing. It was an immediate hit. But that was in 2021, in a much less crowded field. Since then, Kia has introduced the fantastic EV9—which nearly clinched our Breakthrough EV Of The Year award in 2024—and promised more affordable options, like the upcoming EV3. (The company hasn’t yet said when that might come to the U.S. market.) Its sibling, the EV4 sedan that was shown off to much fanfare at the New York Auto Show this spring, has been postponed “indefinitely.” 

The Kia EV3 is supposed to come to the U.S. at some point in the near future.

Photo by: Kia

But consumers are clamoring for hybrids, and the tax credit is gone. Tariffs are in effect, and steep duties have been biting into Kia’s margins since April. A recent tariff deal with South Korea lessens the pain, but it’s still far more expensive to import EVs than it was a year ago. Then consider that emissions standards are getting rolled back, and that Kia buyers can’t seem to get enough high-trim, high-dollar Tellurides.

All of this adds up to a refocused version of Kia that is aggressively playing the spread. The company is aggressively launching new hybrid versions of its core lineup, while pushing into new markets with upscale EVs like the top-trim EV9. 

The Kia EV4 was supposed to come to the U.S., but has been postponed indefinitely. 

Photo by: Kia

The only thing it really needs is an affordable electric option, a role that should be filled by the upcoming EV3. But we still don’t know where that’ll be built, how much it’ll cost, how interested consumers will be, or whether we can expect other affordable options to follow.

“Things are changing, right? We’re cognizant of the fact that we moved some production here for EV9 and EV6. So that gives us flexibility,” Wager, the marketing boss, said. “We’re looking at: Should we bring others to North America? 

Wager noted that the company has a “global portfolio” of products, including many EVs that haven’t made it here yet. But the business case for them—and any future EV, for that matter—is unclear in such a noisy, chaotic environment.

“So we’re just waiting to see where things shake out a little bit, but we’ll add to the lineup,” Wager said. “We’re just figuring out the timing.”

Contact the author: Mack.Hogan@insideevs.com.