Kia is offering up to $10,000 in customer cash on the EV9 this month, a cash offer a third larger than the federal tax credit that supported the electric SUV until it expired last year, and dealers are adding discounts on top that take some cars $16,000 below list.
The brand’s suggested retail price has not moved. Kia last changed it in May 2025, for the 2026 model year, cutting three trims by $1,000 to $2,000 and leaving the entry model at $54,900 before destination, where it has stood since launch.
What has changed is what sits on the hood.
The Ladder
At the 2026 model year launch Kia offered $4,000 in customer cash and a $1,000 conquest bonus. With the federal clean vehicle credit then worth $7,500, a qualifying buyer could take $12,500 off.
The credit expired for vehicles acquired after September 30, 2025.
By early November Kia was offering $10,000, where it stands now, as a straight discount or as $5,000 with interest-free financing over 60 months.
Leases have been advertised from about $399 a month over 36 months on the Light Long Range rear-wheel drive, with about $3,999 due at signing. The current offers run to September 30.
The cash offer is a third larger than the old federal maximum. It is not more than the model briefly carried, since the stacked total in mid-2025 was $12,500. What has happened is that a dead government line has been replaced by a factory one, larger than the credit and smaller than the combined support available in mid-2025.
The Dealers
Some retailers are going further.
Carscoops reported this week that Shottenkirk Kia Fort Bend in Texas was advertising $16,041 off, the deepest publicly flagged discount, and that Liberty Auto Plaza in Illinois was offering $15,000 off an EV9 Light Short Range.
Examples cited in mid-September include a Light rear-wheel drive at about $40,700, a Light Long Range at about $44,800 and a Wind at about $52,400.
Those are individual stores with heavy inventory rather than national prices. Listings elsewhere show much narrower gaps.
The pattern follows inventory rather than trim. The deepest flagged cut is on a short-range car, and the Illinois dealer marked down both short and long-range examples by the same $15,000.
Demand Plunges
EV9 sales fell 33% in August to 1,789 units. Kia sold 12,693 Tellurides and 18,723 Sportages in the same month. The Sportage outsold the EV9 by more than ten to one.
The longer picture is less severe than one month suggests. The EV9 sold 22,017 units in 2024, its first full year and its peak, then 15,051 in 2025, a fall of 32%. Across January to August this year it sold 10,474, about 12% ahead of the same period last year.
So the year is running ahead of a weak 2025 and August broke that recovery. The best month remains September 2025 at 3,094 units, in the run-up to the credit’s expiry.
The decline has been widely attributed to the credit ending and to softer electric vehicle demand.
The Localisation
Kia moved most EV9 production to West Point, Georgia for the 2026 model year, which was what qualified the vehicle for a credit written to reward North American assembly.
It announced 2026 pricing on May 27, 2025. The credit was gone for vehicles acquired after September 30 that year, four months later.
The EV9 is one of the few mainstream three-row electric vehicles on sale in the United States.
The EV6 and EV9 together accounted for about 28,000 of the 852,155 vehicles Kia sold in the United States in 2025, a record year built on hybrids.
