Kia’s stellar year continues as the brand has set a new August sales record in the United States. Dealers moved 83,793 vehicles last month, which was 786 more than a year ago.

The brand didn’t just break one record either as the K4, K5, Carnival, Seltos, Sportage, and Telluride all posted their best August in history. Kia also noted hybrid sales were up 99%, which can largely be credited to high gas prices caused by the war in Iran.

More: Kia’s New EV3 Starts Under $30,000 And Undercuts Nissan Leaf

While consumers embraced hybrids to save at the pump, gas prices weren’t high enough to get them to switch to EVs. Sales of the EV6 tumbled 60% to 712 units, while the larger EV9 fell 33% to 1,789.

The big winner last month was the Sportage as Americans snapped up 18,723 of them. This was a slight increase from a year ago, but sales are up nearly 8.5% year-to-date.

The Sportage was followed by the affordable K4 (12,881) and Telluride (12,693). The latter was recently redesigned and consumers appear to be digging it as sales are up 16.7% year-to-date. This was undoubtedly aided by the introduction of a hybrid variant with its recent redesign.

Speaking of redesigned models, the 2027 Seltos appears to be off to a strong start as August sales surged 65.3% to 9,214 units. The classier crossover starts at $24,990 and will be followed by a hybrid variant later this year.

It’s also worth noting Kia was able to set a new monthly sales record despite the elimination of the Soul. That model found 5,548 buyers in August of 2025, while last month’s sales fell to zero.

Kia also has a few things to look forward to including the facelifted Niro and all-new EV3. The latter found six early adopters last month and should generate some interest thanks to a starting price of $29,890.

Kia August 2026 US Sales

Public EV charging is expensive compared to juicing up at home, but $16,000 for 4.91 kWh is really taking the electrons. That’s the bill ($CAD22,308) one Canadian Kia owner says he received after a charging session apparently remained electronically open for more than 15 months.

Reddit user IntelliDev posted the incredible invoice more than a year after he’d topped up his EV9 with Hypercharge Networks. It shows the session beginning at 6.57 p.m. on May 17, 2025, but not ending until 1.09 p.m. on August 25, 2026.

Related: The Best Fast Charging Experience In America Isn’t From Tesla

The Kia EV9 is among the faster-charging electric cars, capable of swallowing up to 235 kW when hooked up to the right kind of equipment. But if this bill was to be believed, and the EV9 really did need 15 months to chug down just 4.91 kWh, its effective charge rate would have been less than half a Watt per hour. “And I thought my Bolt charged slowly,” one Reddit commenter joked, alluding to the 2017-23 Chevy‘s modest 55 kW rate.

The invoice itself offers a clue besides the price to there being some major mix-up going on here. It says the session “took place in the past on a terminal that was out of communication.” That suggests the actual charging stopped long ago, but the network didn’t receive or correctly process the message telling it the session was finished.

Billed By the Hour

And because the charger appears to have billed by time rather than electrical units, the meter apparently kept running. At roughly CAD$2 ($1.44) per hour, the elapsed time between those start and finish dates gets you close to the enormous invoice total.

In another glitch, the invoice lists the session duration as only seven days, 18 hours, 12 minutes and 40 seconds, apparently omitting the preceding year and three months even though the billing calculation seems to have remembered them.

IntelliDev said he emailed Hypercharge to dispute the bill but hadn’t received a response at the time of his latest update. We’ve also found nothing suggesting the company has publicly explained what happened yet.

Kia, IntelliDev

H/t to Auto Evolution

Kia keeps rewriting its own US sales record, and July gave it another line in the book. Last month stood as the brand’s best July ever, with several models posting record numbers for the month, the Carnival family hauler among them.

The Korean automaker moved 75,857 vehicles in July, a 7 percent gain over the same month last year. Through the first seven months of 2026, the running total reaches 506,584 units, up 4 percent, which puts Kia on course for a fourth straight annual sales record in the US.

Record-Setters Across The Lineup

According to Kia, the Sportage, Carnival, Telluride, Seltos, and K4 all logged best-ever July sales. The Sportage led the pack with 16,083 sales (+11.7%), trailed by the K4/Forte at 12,094 (+8%), the Telluride at 11,816 (+13%), the Sorento at 9,038 (+13.5%), and the Seltos at 8,807 (+79.1%).

More: Kia’s Next Sportage Is Getting A Rugged Redesign

The one that caught our eye, though, is the Carnival minivan. Its 7,279 deliveries marked a hefty 22.8% climb over last year and landed within striking distance of its all-time monthly best of 7,362 units, set in November 2025. A recent study found millennials are fueling a minivan comeback, sold on the practicality and value SUVs can’t match, and Kia’s numbers appear to reflect the trend.

Kia introduced the current Carnival in 2020, and it reached the US for the 2022 model year. A mid-cycle refresh arrived in late 2023 for the 2025 model year, bringing a sharper face and a hybrid powertrain option. Pricing now runs from $37,490 to $53,590, with buyers choosing between a 3.5-liter V6 and a turbocharged 1.6-liter hybrid.

EV Sales Down, Hybrids On The Rise

Strong as the month was overall, Kia’s electric lineup told a rougher story. EV6 deliveries nearly halved to 674 units (-48%) in July, dragging its year-to-date figure to 4,717 (-34%). The three-row EV9 dipped more gently to 1,650 units (-5%), though its year-to-date total still runs ahead of last year at 8,685 (+30%).

Hybrids went the other direction, and hard. Total hybrid sales jumped 108 percent year-over-year. The Sportage Hybrid posted the steepest growth among electrified models at 76%, while the Sorento Hybrid and Carnival Hybrid each managed a 16 percent gain over last July.

More: 2027 Kia Seltos Has A Higher Price To Match Its More Upscale Design

Kia plans to keep the momentum going with the new Seltos and the entry-level EV3 electric crossover, due later this year.

Kia US Sales 2026

Battery fires rank among the worst things that can befall an everyday motorist. Kia and Hyundai have each just issued a fresh recall tied to exactly that danger. Both companies say misaligned electrodes can create an internal short and start a fire in the affected cars. The two campaigns cover just 14 vehicles in total, but every owner still needs to park outside until the problem is fixed.

Hyundai says six Ioniq 5 models from the 2023 and 2024 model years may carry high-voltage battery cells with these skewed electrodes. The automaker warns the defect could eventually spark a blaze whether the car is parked or on the move.

More: Fuel Leaks Spark Recall Of Nearly A Quarter Million Kia And Genesis Vehicles

Kia’s recall identifies the same root cause. According to documents filed with the NHTSA, the supplier, SK On Co, blames a quality deviation for the problem. The automaker says the issue affects seven 2022-2024MY EV6s and a lone 2024MY EV9 SUV.

Hyundai has not yet detailed its repair procedure. The normal NHTSA documentation isn’t viewable as of this writing, but Kia will replace the entire high-voltage battery pack with one containing properly aligned battery cells. We expect Hyundai will do the same thing given that the issue is basically identical and from the same supplier.

Until that work is completed, the automaker is instructing owners to limit charging to 80 percent and park their vehicles outdoors and away from structures as a precaution. While it’s not explicitly stated in the recall, it probably wouldn’t be a bad idea to park away from other vehicles even when outside and away from structures.

Much like the recall of nearly half a million Tellurides we reported on earlier today, dealer notification letters for this recall went out on July 6. Owner notification correspondence will go out on August 7.