The imminent arrival of the Kia EV4 in the United States has been unceremoniously halted. Despite official US unveilings and previous statements indicating a launch in early 2026, a Kia representative has confirmed that the electric sedan is now “postponed until further notice”. The reason is that “market conditions for electric vehicles have changed”.
This abrupt about-face is, frankly, bewildering. The EV4 was intended to land at an accessible price point around $30,000. It was positioned to slot smartly beneath the larger EV6 and EV9 models. It promised a refreshingly boxy sedan style. It’s a stark contrast to the EV3, which adheres to the ubiquitous small electric SUV format. The EV3, incidentally, is already hitting streets in Korea and Europe but remains absent from the US, and its fate here is equally uncertain.
Bringing a car concept, the EV4 with an official presentation at the New York Auto Show, strongly implied that US customers would soon have access to this potentially high-volume electric sedan. That assumption, however, has proven as reliable as a 1970s British sports car.
Kia has offered a generic statement about “changing market conditions” as the reason for this sudden reversal. But it’s not hard to read the subtext. This delay robs Americans of one more opportunity to escape the “big car disease” that currently plagues the nation’s appetite for oversized vehicles. Instead of getting a reasonably priced EV, US buyers are left watching the EV4’s rollout elsewhere.
Historically, an indefinite “delay” of this nature for an EV often serves as a polite notice for the US market. We’ve seen this movie before with the VW ID.7, the second-generation Kia Soul EV, and the Ram 1500 EV. While Kia didn’t explicitly say “never”, the fate of these previous ghost-models offers little hope. Whatever Kia perceives as the “new” market condition, it doesn’t favor making inexpensive electric cars available to Americans.
