When Kia recently pulled the plug on the scheduled Canadian first test drive event for the revised 2027 Telluride, there was some speculation about the reason for it. “Logistical issues”, was the given reason; the speculation centered around tariff issues, which have in the past year led to some U.S.-built models being temporarily or definitively made unavailable in the Canadian market due to counter-tariffs imposed by Ottawa.
Not so with the Telluride, we were told by Kia Canada COO and VP Elias El-Achhab at the just completed test drive event of the automaker’s EV3 (we’ll have a review of that for you on Monday).
El-Achhab acknowledged that Canadian counter-tariffs are a concern and a factor that has to be taken into account when making decisions for an automaker like Kia, but he noted that the Canadian division would have imported the Made-in-the-USA 2027 Telluride into the Great White North, counter-tariffs be darned.
Demand too strong
So what IS behind the delay? What are those logistical issues? According to El-Achhab, it’s really quite simple: U.S. demand for the new Telluride has been so strong that the automaker is in a struggle to meet it in that market initially. It’s so strong that it blew through the initial 80,000-unit production target Kia had set; the automaker’s new annual target is 180,000. And as Kia’s VP pointed out, this is with fuel prices being where they are right now.
Hence the decision to hold off on launching the model officially in Canada until production capacity gets up to full speed. Kia Canada says it’s now hoping to have inventory to launch the new Telluride here at some point later in 2027. And if the counter-tariffs are still in place, no worries - we were assured that won’t be a deal-breaker for the division.