- Kia is offering up to $1,500 off the price of a new EV6 or EV9 until the end of September.
- The dealer incentive applies to customers who already own or lease a Tesla.
- The automakers is also offering $7,500 in bonus cash for electric vehicles.
The current state of the electric vehicle market is a bit of a mess. Tesla, the biggest player by far for over a decade, has seen its sales volume go down after years of gains. Meanwhile, so-called traditional automakers are trying to woo the crowds with newer and flashier cars. And it’s working, at least for some of them.
Kia, which is part of the Hyundai Motor Group, is one of those legacy car manufacturers that are seeing their EV and hybrid sales volumes increase. But it wants more, so it’s targeting Tesla customers directly with a new cash incentive.
According to Cars Direct, Kia is offering a national Tesla Competitive Bonus Program that slashes the price of a new EV6 by $1,000, while the larger EV9 gets a price cut of $9,000 if the customer owns or leases a Tesla.
That may not seem like much, but seeing how Kia is also offering a $7,500 Customer Cash incentive when purchasing, which leads to savings of up to $9,000 for the EV9 and $8,500 for the EV6. It’s worth noting that the new dealer program doesn’t require Tesla owners to trade in their vehicles.
With the discounts, the price of an entry-level 2025 Kia EV9 goes down from $56,395 to a much more palatable $47,395. Meanwhile, the EV6 can be had for as low as $35,975 after applying the two dealer incentives.
In August, Kia recorded its best-ever month in sales in the United States with 75,217 units finding new owners–4% more year over year. This includes gas, hybrid, plug-in hybrid and all-electric models. Sales of the EV6 went down nearly 25% last month to 1,885 units, while the EV9 saw its sales volume increase by 27% to 2,388 units.
These are rookie numbers compared to the roughly 50,000 units sold by Tesla on average every month in the first half of the year. In the first six months of 2024, Tesla sold a combined 299,200 EVs in the United States, down from 324,900 units in 2023.
