The 2024 Kia Sportage Gas and Hybrid Pricing: Drops an AWD Trim and Now Costs More

With 2023 well past its halfway point, more and more 2024 model year vehicles begin to make their way out of the planning stages and into production. For the 2024 Kia Sportage, the SUV enters its second year of production on a new chassis after its full platform change for 2023. This change drastically improved certain features and gave us frustration in others. Overall, it was definitely aimed at taking some of the market share away from the Toyota RAV4. Let's look at the prices of this majority-carryover crossover and see if losing one AWD option was in the Sportage's best interest.

Carryover With Changes

The newest standard features for all of the 2024 Kia Sportage trims are the inclusion of LED projector headlights and second-row seat-mounted airbags to improve the overall safety. Unfortunately, the mediocre 2.5-liter gasoline direct injection (GDI) I-4 also returns on gas-only Sportages making the same 187 hp and 178 lb-ft of torque. It's also still mated to an eight-speed automatic transmission, which was geared to push the 2023 Sportage X-Pro to 60 in a slow 9.3-second time. However, the X-Pro does feature all-terrain tires that other trims don't, and it was able to make it to our 2023 SUV of the Year finals. Nonetheless, that time is still disappointing, and we aren't expecting that to change.

The hybrid and plug-in hybrid Sportage options and pricing were announced a little later. Hybrid models come with a 1.6-liter turbo 4-cylinder engine good for 177 hp and 195 lb-ft of torque mated to a 44 kW electric motor unit generating a combined total vehicle system power output of 227 hp and 258 lb-ft of torque, with power sent to the wheels through a six-speed automatic gearbox. The plug-in hybrid setup uses the same 1.6 engine but boosts it up to a total output of 261 hp and 258 lb-ft torque, with an estimated 34 miles of all-electric driving range when the battery is fully charged.

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Any price increase is tough to swallow, but Kia keeps it to a minimum. Some of that increase is possibly a result of making the projector LED headlights and new rear-seat-mounted airbags standard across the board. Each gas-powered trim that remains gained $1,170 over the 2023 model year. This includes a $70 increase for destination charges, which also applied to hybrid and plug-in hybrid models that also saw price increases and options change.

Dropping the Old SX AWD Trim

For the 2024 model year, the SX AWD is no longer available, and the X-Line seems to be taking its place. The bad news: When comparing what was standard on the SX versus what's now standard on the X-Line, there are some notable losses. First, X-Line owners will lose the standard 18-inch wheel, memory for the driver's seat position, the 12.3-inch TFT cluster, the heated steering wheel, the leather-wrapped shift knob, and—the biggest losses of all in our opinions—Smart Cruise Control, Kia's adaptive cruise control with stop-and-go functionality, navigation-based speed curve, and highway driving assist. Those were all standard on the SX AWD and are not even options on the X-Line.

The height-adjustable power liftgate, the panoramic sunroof with a power sunshade, illuminated sun visors, and LED room and luggage lighting were all once standard on the SX AWD but are now optional on the X-Line. That's a lot of great standard and optional equipment to be lost. We just don't see where value to the buyer was added by dropping the 2023 SX AWD and retaining the X-Line. Here's how the final pricing for the gas, hybrid, and plug-in hybrid 2024 Kia Sportage SUV breaks down by trim and powertrain:

2024 Kia Sportage Pricing Chart

2024 Kia Sportage SUV MPG Efficiency Chart

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