- Kia looks set to break its annual sales record for the third straight year.
- Record third-quarter numbers lifted year-to-date sales by 9 percent.
- Big gainers include the K5 (+85 percent) and Carnival (+48 percent).
Kia’s EV debuts have generated plenty of exposure for the brand in the US in the last few years, but it’s demand for the company’s combustion and hybrid models that’s put it on track to break annual sales records for the third consecutive time.
The US division of the Korean automaker just posted its results for September and Q3 along with year-to-date numbers. And they’re strong. Kia sales jumped 11 percent in September, were up 9 percent in the last quarter, and have climbed by the same amount in the first nine months of this year to 636,148 units.
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Kia’s biggest seller by far is the Sportage, which has found 134,102 buyers so far this year, an increase of 13 percent. The Telluride SUV, another big mover, scored 92,498 sales, which represents another 13 percent boost.
But look at what’s happened with the K5 sedan and Carnival minivan. These two older-style (and having been originally launched before the pandemic) combustion models, which we mostly forget about, are doing sterling work in the background. Carnival sales are up 48 percent YTD, and K5 sales rocketed 85 percent, both cars now reaping the full rewards of successful facelift overhauls.
Kia proudly says that sales of electrified models grew by 26 percent, but don’t confuse electrified with electric. Kia’s hybrid cars might be doing the biz, but its EVs mostly aren’t. True, sales of the EV9 did jump by almost 50 percent to 3,094 in September, and EV6 sales swelled by more than 30 percent to 2,116 in the same month. But we suspect that was down to people rushing to take advantage of tax credits before they disappeared at the end of last month.
Take a look at the year-to-date stats, and you can see that EV9 sales dropped from close to 16,000 last year to 12,448 in 2025, and demand for the EV6 also declined. Its sales have dropped from 15,985 to 11,077.
Kia America 2025 sales
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Image Kia
