2024 Kia EV9: Variants confirmed, strong monthly supply assured

November: EV9 driven in Australia

Kia's massive EV9 is a unique thing, for Kia and the market alike, which could result in a surprise success – even at $100k a pop.

Story continues: EV9 coming with strong supply

It looks like buyers keen on the big new Kia EV9 electric SUV won’t go through the waits suffered by EV6 buyers in its first year on sale, with the brand confirming 200 vehicles will arrive in October – followed by up to 100 cars each month.

EV6 availability has improved dramatically in recent months, falling from a woeful one to two years in its initial production allocation to around three months. The brand warns it is still working through that backlog, but buyers are now receiving their cars sooner than expected and new orders will come even sooner.

Kia’s local arm credits that improvement to “a combination of supply freeing up and the Kia Australia sales team consistently rallying for more supply since launch,” and the same efforts have resulted in a stronger flow of EV9 spots for our market.

“The initial shipment [of EV9] will be 200, which is effectively on the water now, and we’re very confident of getting good supply,” Kia Australia operations boss Damien Meredith told Wheels Media this week.

The media launch for the EV9 is set for October, and customer deliveries will begin “straight after”.

In terms of demand, Meredith said dealers “have been writing orders for a while already, there’s probably a couple-hundred orders already”.

Kia Australia marketing head Dean Norbiato added that around 7000 “expressions of interest, which vary from wanting to purchase through to simply wanting more information, and somewhere in between”.

As with any new model when local pricing is yet to be revealed, only a fraction of those are expected to convert to orders.

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“To Damien’s point, we haven’t revealed local spec or pricing, so to have customers going into dealerships and putting money down on a product they don’t have the details for..."

"It’s a pretty big indication of interest in this model and it’s something we’ve never had before, at this level,” Norbiato said.

Availability of 100 cars each month may not seem like much – especially in comparison to the sales volumes achieved by any of Australia's top-10 models – but for a ~$100,000 electric SUV from Korea? It will be interesting to see just how many of those 7000 'expressions of interest' convert to sales...