We are currently speculating that the business case made for the US version cars missing features was done so in favor of the extended warranty.

The US is offered a 100k mile warranty which to our knowledge, is 30k more than anywhere else. The warranties are not free, they cost quite a bit of money and I suspect the company felt that they HAD to offer this warranty, since that is what has boosted their sales. In order to keep it in the price range they wanted, they had to sacrifice in a couple areas.



Those areas are:

- Not cutting big-dollar deals with cell phone providers to offer SIM card service to the cars (I'm fuzzy on the numbers here, but I would expect this to save KIA an up-front contract cost somewhere near 100k to provide continuous support and service, plus a recurring monthly bill for however long they decide to cover the cost for the buyer (typically 3 years I think)

- No 360* camera which saves them probably 500-600$ per vehicle (that is a huge savings in the car world)

- No rear heated seats (100-200$ per unit)

- No wireless charger (100-200$ per unit)



All in all it's probably about a 1.5k per vehicle off the price. Which if I am not mistaken is about the price difference for Canada's MSRP with the added features and the lesser warranty.



Given the success of the car in various markets, KIA may be able to start implementing the added features AND keep the 100k warranty in the US market, but that is speculative and I would be really impressed/surprised if they could do it as early as 2019. That said, I've been wrong before.

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