Interesting. In Canada the Leaf/Kona/Niro are in the Cdn$50-55k range depending on trim. The EX30 is 55-60k, and the Countryman starts at 64k and gets to 75k if you click on all the options. That’s actually more expensive than most of the next class up - Equinox/Mach-E/Ioniq 5/ID.4 etc.
I’ll second that. When the car I wanted wasn’t available in the trim and color I wanted, it was trivial for the dealership to request it from another one somewhere else. It took a week or so, but it got here and I bought it. I don’t believe I even had to pay for shipping.
They’ll always want to sell you what’s on their lot already, but if you have a strong preference for another one, just ask and they should be able to get it for you (barring some sort of national shortage, which does sometime happen).
Here, the Niro/Kona are 45k-50k in the available models, i was quoted 51k on a Mini, the leaf is a 2026 where the others are 2025, but i didn’t like it enough to ask for an actual price, and i decided not to bother shopping the EX30 based on reviews.
The Ioniq costs about the same. I want a smaller car because i want to park in the city, not because i want a cheaper car.
Tariffs and what’s still in stock that got in before tariffs may be playing a role in the pricing. The Mini dealership has a sign touting the benefit of buying a pre-tariff vehicle.
How do you actually arrange to buy a car from that far away?
They often juggle cars with other nearby dealers. Do they do it far away, too?
I believe so, but I’m not an expert in this area. See https://www.jdpower.com/cars/shopping-guides/pros-and-cons-of-a-dealer-trade or https://www.edmunds.com/car-buying/the-pros-and-cons-of-a-dealer-trade.html
It wouldn’t hurt to just ask them (if you’re serious about it).
Edit: Especially if you’re not going to haggle much and/or offer to pay for their delivery fee, it shouldn’t be terribly hard for them to source it from further away.
If you don’t mind getting used (EVs get a lot cheaper after the first 2-3 years), you can also find many on Carmax and Carvana.
Find it on Carmax or equivalent, maybe go see it, call them and make the buy, then have it shipped to a partner dealer nearby. Very easy.
Many locally branded dealerships are now part of one or another nationwide chain. e.g. Autonation owns dozens (hundreds?) of new car dealerships across the country in addition to their chain of warehouse used car dealers.
Any one Autonation dealer can sell any car that any other Autonation dealer has possesion of. New or used doesn’t matter.
Also, were you able to test drive a Kona at all (even the non-EV models)? I found it quite top-heavy and not very nice to drive compared to the Niro — turning kinda sucked. But the model I rented was a gasoline-only one (vs an electric EV) so not a totally fair comparison. Presumably the EV would be more bottom-heavy, for one thing.
I sat in a gas powered Kona, but didn’t think it was worth the bother of test driving it. They think one will arrive Monday or Tuesday, and i can test drive it. I kinda suspect it’s a car they’ve sold, but they’ll sneak in a test drive before handing it over.
I own a 2024 Kona EV and park it in the city. It’s bigger than the 2020 Kona EV I had previously leased, and definitely bigger than the Mini. But the range is also much more than the Mini (or at least it was in the last model year.)
It’s a good car, drives nicely, controls have lots of knobs and dials, not touchscreen dependent. It’s not as nice as the Ioniq5, in my opinion, but when I bought it, it was much cheaper, and it is a bit smaller. Overall, it’s a great mid-range, mid-sized EV - I have no regrets buying it.
The controls on the Kona and the Niro looked identical. The whole dash looked identical.
Yes, I just looked at some Niro pics online and it is very similar, though not identical. The main difference appears to be with the start button and shifter. The environmental controls are also slightly different. Probably 90% the same, so if you liked the Niro layout, you’d almost certainly like the Kona as well.
Aside, I tried this when I was shopping for my Prius PHEV. Sadly, it’s a high demand model, so when I tried this, and put a grand down to show I was serious, they delayed, delayed, and then refused to trade. In the meantime, the dealer with the in-stock model bumped the price up by 4 grand and still sold it.
Still, while I liked the higher trim, the base model I ended up with was a fine value.
So… the actual prices are a lot lower than list price. The companies are all offering big rebates. So the KIA is nominally several grand more expensive than the Kona, but the prices I’ve been given are within a couple hundred of each other. And the Mini is a lot more, although it’s hard to compare because they are only offering incentives with a lease.
If the Mini had a more normal interface, I would buy it. It was really a lot of fun to drive, and it’s all wheel drive, and it does automatic parallel parking, and has some other nice bells and whistles that I would enjoy. I’m old and rich and may as well get a car I enjoy. But… it does have a weird interface, and there’s a risk I’d hate it. There’s also a decent chance I’d love it. Did I mention it’s fun to drive? And also super-cute. (Not as cute as the smaller Mini, the 4-door countryman is larger. But still, super cute.) I’m not going to feel strongly either way towards the Niro, unless it turns out to actually be a lemon or something.
So unless I change my mind overnight, I’m going to put down a deposit on the Niro tomorrow, and arrange a date to actually buy the car.
I liked the Niro more than the Kona. Mostly, it’s more powerful, and just feels more responsive. The Kona was sluggish, even in “sport” mode. In fact, the Niro in “eco” mode was more responsive than the Kona in “sport” mode. I did two test drives in the Niro, and didn’t have help either time, but I had no trouble programming the GPS, fiddling with the temp, turning on the rear defroster, and switching to automatic windsheid wipers (which worked okay – not as perfectly as my old Ford C-max, but quite acceptably.) I drove it in the snow today, and it gripped the road comfortably. (It was warm enough that the snow was melting, but the road was certainly very wet.) Oh, and the Kona has that “dimmed rearview mirror” thing that is supposed to be a feature, but that I really dislike. There was nothing I disliked about the Niro.
Except the color. But basically everything comes in boring colors these days. And the salesman looked, and said he couldn’t find a green one with the “heat the battery when it’s cold out” option, which I definintely want – it turns out that electic cars drive better and have more range when they spend some of their energy to keep the battery comfy. At least it’s white and not black.
Have you given any serious thought to leasing…? For some reason I don’t quite understand, many/most EV deals are on leases only, but maybe don’t automatically rule it out if you haven’t thought it through? Leasing has several advantages:
- You can still buy the car for its residual value after the lease is up, while still taking advantage of the lease-only deals
- Or, you have the option of simply returning it at the end of the lease… if this is your first EV, that gives you a chance to drive it around for a few years and figure all the quirks.
- State-level rebates (check yours!) might still apply to leasing
- EVs are still advancing quite quickly. Kia just developed a brand new EV chassis in Korea; they may or may not bring it over. Toyota is just getting into the game (finally). The battery technologies are getting better every year. NACS (the new standard charger port) standardization and rollouts are just starting. If the tariff situation changes and the Chinese are able to enter the US market, their EVs are a LOT better AND cheaper than what we currently have here.
Basically, in 3 years’ time, the EV landscape could be completely different. You could choose to buy the remainder of the car out then for its residual value, or see how the other options are then.
It’s also possible, on the other hand, with the feds pulling back all the EV incentives and infrastructure funding, EV adoption will stutter in the US and the situation might suck a lot in 3 years as chargers continue to age, etc. Many of them are already broken (check PlugShare near your area).
We ended up leasing because it was such a better offer, even though we still plan on buying it out at the end of our lease. The lease + offer + residual value was still better than just buying upfront, and this way we’re also kinda hedging our bet in case dramatically better options are available 3 years later, or we find some quirk we really don’t like.
For example, even in the first 6 mos of ownership, we learned that the rear wiper is really important to us, the app is totally broken, and the winter range of this particular car is much worse than advertised. We’re making a list of pros and cons and will reevaluate when the lease is almost due. Things like that are hard to notice just from a short test-drive, and leasing lets you slowly figure them out over a few years.
It also buys you time to buy a more polished version of an EV you do like, once the manufacturer has had a chance to work out all the quirks over several model refreshes. Many of the ones currently available are still first-gen EVs for their manufacturers.
All the more reason! You can do that again and again every lease term and try all the fun cars then 
well, i did get to test the rear wiper on the kia today. it’s acceptable.
You could wrap it! Green to purple shift for the win. Not too expensive and it protects the paint. Just sayin,
I’ve considered that. But not seriously enough to look up who does it or how much it costs. 
It looks like it costs a few grand and only lasts a few years. 
Anyway, we now have a shiny new KIA Niro BEV. And someone in the dealership must be a lizard. I brought it in today for the inspection (service was closed when i bought it, and i had a week to drive it legally without). I dropped off the car with the temp at a cozy 65°F, and the heated seats off. When they returned it, the temp was set to 82°F!!! and the heated seats were on “high”. I turned that all off before i left the lot, but the seat was still uncomfortably warm when i got home.
@LSLGuy , do you have relatives selling KIAs?
Congrats!! How do you like it so far? What ultimately made you choose that particular car? How’s the winter range on it?
What sort of inspection is that…? Why does a brand new car need an inspection, and what happens if you don’t get it within the week? (Is this some sort of state rule?)
Not that I’m aware of. But as soon as I saw 82F and who was posting I had a feeling I’d be pinged. 
All cars need an inspection sticker. That’s standard in the US. I don’t know if they actually need to inspect it, but they need to put on the sticker. And the people who do that weren’t available the day i bought the car.
I won’t be driving it far enough to test the range until i get a charger. It doesn’t come with one (not even level 1) and the one i ordered won’t be here for a few more days.
It was more responsive and perkier than anything except the Mini, and had a more traditional user interface than the Mini.
In the “small electric cars sold in the US” category, i found 5 possibilities:
- Some Volvo with bad enough reviews i decided not to test drive it.
- The Mini countryman, which is larger than you’d expect for a Mini, but still an acceptable size. It was fun to drive and had nice features like automatic parallel parking. But it has a funky user interface and i was afraid i might hate it. I might have loved it. But i didn’t feel like taking the risk.
- The Nissan Leaf. It was the only 2026 i drove. On the plus side, it has both a NACS and a CCS port standard. But it was sluggish, and i couldn’t figure out some basic things in the user interface during the test drive.
- The similar KIA Niro and Hyundai Kona.
The Niro has a lot more horsepower (and only slightly less range) than the Kona. And the Niro i drove (which is the one i bought) didn’t have the annoying whine the Kona had when i drove it. And they cost the same.
It’s not a perfect car. It has the super weird “feature” that you need to plug in your phone, with a wire, to use android auto. Which means we can’t use the nook that’s designated for the phone for general storage. (That’s where my husband has been keeping his face mask and his driving glasses. Neither the glove box nor the center console is ideal for those. I’d have liked more range. I’d have liked all wheel drive. I’d have liked surround cameras. I’d have liked automatic parking. But it’s easy to drive, and easier to park than the Forester. It’ll be fine.