Back in 2024, Kia did something I didn’t think any manufacturer would do in America again: It said it would introduce a new hatchback to its lineup. Even crazier, the company actually did it, putting the K4 hatchback on sale in U.S. dealers last year. This is notable because, aside from a few notable examples from Honda and Toyota, American buyers and hatchbacks usually don’t mix.

The K4 hatch was primarily developed for markets in Europe, where the hatchback body style reigns supreme over sedans. But Kia has figured out a way to make it work Stateside, even if the vast majority of K4s sold here are still sedans. In a rare instance of hatchback or sedan, American buyers are no longer restricted to one or the other.

The secret to the K4 hatch’s existence in the U.S., according to Russell Wager, head of marketing for Kia in the Americas, is that the K4’s success and the sheer volume, both domestically and abroad, make the hatch viable for our market.

“So in Europe, hatchbacks are like 80% of the sales and sedans are 20%, and in the US is the opposite,” Wager told me at the New York Auto Show yesterday, speaking on the split between K4 body style sales. “So because there’s that much demand there to make it a product that we can take here, we can take a lower amount. Because globally, it still adds up to a bigger total amount.”

So basically, because the global volume is high enough overseas, Kia can justify spending the cash to homologate the hatch in America, even if sales aren’t as big here compared to the sedan. While the majority of people will opt for the sedan, there’s another sect of people who will buy the hatchback on top of that crowd. And that means more sales overall. If the hatch wasn’t such a huge hit in Europe, it might not have been worth it to go through the homologation process. But it is, and the U.S. is benefitting as a result.

While it might seem like a strange call either way, Kia definitely knows what it’s doing, at least going by its sales. The company’s American arm announced yesterday that it just achieved its best first-quarter sales in company history, selling over 200,000 cars in the first three months of 2026. And on the topic of sedans, another segment that the internet seems to think is going away, Kia is doing well.

Out of the 11 vehicles Kia sells, just two—the K4 and the K5—are sedans and hatchbacks. Yet those two models alone made up 27%—more than a quarter—of all of the company’s sales last quarter. Both the K4 and the K5 are up in sales versus the same period last quarter.

What About The Fun Stuff?

Of course, record sales don’t mean the company always judges things perfectly, especially when it comes to EVs. Kia originally planned to launch the EV4 sedan in the U.S. in late 2025, but tariffs, a disappearing federal tax credit, and flattening EV demand pushed it back indefinitely. The performance-oriented EV9 GT, the sportiest version of its three-row SUV, was also delayed from entering showrooms, with no concrete debut date. And the EV6 GT, one of the most fun EVs I’ve driven, was taken off the shelves last month.

I asked Wager about that car, and its lagging sales ultimately came down to the fact that the regular EV6 was quick enough for most people, and they didn’t need the extra power from the GT.

“We had [a GT trim] on the EV6, and it was a great car, and the people that bought it loved it, [but] there just wasn’t a lot of them,” he told me. “Because most [buyers] were like, ‘You know what? I don’t need 576 horsepower. I have instant torque on the non-GT version, I can spend a little less money, get a little extra range, I’m gonna go there,’ and they’re all happy with it. And the same thing from an EV9. The GT version, it just wasn’t going to be a whole lot of volume.”

These results haven’t stopped Kia from offering a GT version of the new EV3, the company’s new small electric crossover. Shown off at the New York Auto Show yesterday, it feels more like a 288-horsepower hot hatch than an SUV to us. There’s certainly potential here, but even Wager doesn’t exactly know how to approach it just yet.

“We’ll start here and see what the demand is. It’s an option,” Wager said to me regarding the EV3 GT’s launch. “I haven’t gotten to the point of how I’m going to talk about the GT.
Today in the press conference, I used it to say, ‘Hey, look, we got a lineup, and if you go all the way up to the GT, it’s 288 horsepower. That’s pretty good. “It gives [the car] a little sportiness. As we get to the younger audience, maybe they’re a little bit more interested in a GT version.”

The electric hot hatch space is pretty much nonexistent in America right now, so I’m glad Kia is giving the EV3 GT a chance at life, even if it ends up being killed off a few years from now. Given how well the EV6 GT drives, I’m confident it’ll be a hoot. If anything, this means I can buy one off of Facebook Marketplace for cheap in a decade. So I have that to look forward to.

As for an actual hot hatch in the form of a legit K4 GT hatchback, I wouldn’t get my hopes up. I asked Wager about this, and he basically told me that the market was already covered with the lesser GT-Line model, which already comes with a turbocharged engine. That’s a shame, considering Matt didn’t really enjoy his time with that car when he reviewed it earlier this year, and knowing what Kia can do when it sets its mind to things. Oh well. Maybe one day.

Top graphic image: Kia; DepositPhotos.com

The post Here’s How Kia Justifies Selling The Ultra-Cool K4 Hatchback In America appeared first on The Autopian.

In 2019, the big minds at the Butterfly Pavilion knew habitat destruction, chemical pollution, parasites and pathogens were crushing populations of bees, butterflies, moths and beetles, and that without these critical species one out of every three bites of food we eat could be at severe risk. 

However, pollinators aren’t just critical to keeping three-quarters of the world’s flowering plants alive and around 35% of food crops producing, according to the USDA. 

“They keep wetlands going. They keep our grasslands going. They make sure forests are diverse. And if they can keep those plant communities healthy and reproducing by assisting plants in their reproduction, that means our water is filtered, and we can hold on to our soil and not just have a big old dust bowl,” said Amy Yarger, director of horticulture at the Butterfly Pavilion, the science-based invertebrate conservation organization in Westminster. 

So the big thinkers there created “pollinator districts,” or communities designed, constructed and maintained in such a way that pollinator habitat demonstrates a net gain over time.  

And now, seven years later, the city of Manitou Springs is a certified municipal pollinator district, the city of Lafayette is working toward becoming one and a suburban development in Broomfield that was the first in the world to embrace the designation is showing how a new model of living built around saving bees and butterflies could change the definition of sprawl on the Front Range. 

Save butterflies! Save the world! Buy a condo! 

Baseline is a mixed-use community on 1,100 acres at the southwest corner of Interstate 25 and Baseline Road in Broomfield. 

It sounds like a sales pitch — Save butterflies! Save the world! Buy at Baseline! — but Yarger and developer Kyle Harris, senior vice president of community development and Baseline general manager at Realberry real estate firm, say it isn’t. 

First off, the land Baseline sits on was fallow agricultural land where wheat was the only crop grown, Yarger said. Wheat is wind pollinated, so no bugs were needed, and “with a few noxious weeds thrown in, it was very low in plant diversity,” she added. 

If you drive up and down U.S. 36 or Sheridan Boulevard, or out toward Denver International Airport, you’ll see miles of new housing development, she said. But it isn’t the main contributor to habitat loss — that was the farms. Even on land designated as open space, which seems natural, you’re looking at agriculture’s footprint, Yarger said.  

Construction in the Broomfield area isn’t stopping anytime soon — the population in the consolidated city and county grew by 35% between 2010 and 2022, and is on track to keep booming. That translates to housing needs, and the area faces the same housing crisis as all of Colorado. 

Baseline is a high-density neighborhood, with bike paths, walking paths and trails that thread 1,200 finished multifamily units. Every unit meets Home Energy Rating System requirements and other green building standards. There’s a “pocket park” no more than 1,600 feet away from any resident and plans for a linear park through the center of the development. And most important: The “plant palette” used in the majority of landscaping consists of mostly native plants that attract pollinators and are drought tolerant. 

“I won’t say we’ve negated turf everywhere,” Harris said, “but we use rock, mulch, native grasses and drip-irrigated xeric species.” Those include black-eyed Susans, blue mist penstemons, prairie zinnia, rubber rabbitbrush and various junipers, all of which support local birds and bees while thriving in the Colorado climate.

Harris said “environmental stewardship really means something” to Baseline tenants. Move-in-ready homes are for sale starting in the low $500,000’s. 

Sustainability is everyone’s responsibility 

Sean McKenzie, a Baseline resident, says when he sees the community rally around its annual Bees and Blossoms Festival, he’s reminded that they are “pollinating a new idea, planted in the roots of our very own habitat, watered with the courage and care with which we all show up for each other.” 

Yarger concurs, saying when she’s at Baseline, in the summer, doing a pollinator survey, “homeowners will come outside and want to tell me what they’ve been seeing. They just feel like I’m somebody that has things they want to talk about. They know I’m there for the pollinator district and they have ownership in that.” 

Those surveys are a requirement for a place to be pollinator district certified — “it’s not just, ‘Well, you say you’re one so we’ll certify you,’” Yarger added. It’s counting and counting again, like she and her team have done at Baseline since 2019. 

That year, on that dead, post-agricultural land, they found just 11 pollinator families. 

But as Baseline grew, that number grew too: last year, they counted 27.  

In 2023 they found 587 individual pollinators on the property; in 2025 that number jumped to 3,805.  

And in 2025, there were 3,031 sightings of Western honeybees compared with 815 a year earlier — a 272% increase, directly contrasting national decline trends. 

The question now is who wants to be Colorado’s next pollinator district, because a study by the state Department of Natural Resources shows pollinators are still in decline.

Yet even though there’s plenty to make Yarger worry, she says, “when I see what people are doing to respond to the situation, that makes me feel like, well, we have a way forward.”

A consumer products group is suing to block the keystone of Colorado’s recycling expansion effort, the “producer responsibility” fee on packaging, saying its launch violates both the U.S. Constitution and the state law that enabled it. 

The Independent Lubricant Manufacturers Association, or ILMA, made up of packagers and sellers not part of the major oil companies, says Colorado’s $200-million-plus program starting this year unlawfully charges them fees without giving them any say in how the money is used. 

A similar suit by trade groups in Oregon secured a temporary injunction against that state’s producer packaging fee, and the lubricant trade group hopes to either begin negotiations with Colorado officials to alter the program here, or get its own injunction. 

Far from the frictionless fraction-of-a-penny fee that recycling advocates have described in Colorado, the lubricant trade group says, the multinational packagers dominating the private committees developing the plan are setting high fees that will have to be passed on to consumers.

Smaller, family-owned companies are shut out of the decisions, the trade group says, and will be hurt most by the system. Colorado’s producer responsibility concept, first passed by the legislature in 2022, uses the manufacturers’ self-administered packaging fees to fund a pool of money for grants to cities and nonprofits around Colorado to expand curbside and other easier recycling programs. 

The lubricant trade group for the largest oil and chemical companies has been given power in Colorado to set the packaging fee for all the related companies, and it comes to 56 cents a gallon, or 14 cents on a quart of oil, ILMA’s general counsel, Jeffrey Leiter, said in an interview. That will hurt consumer sales and also damage the smaller companies that have to pay the fees ahead of time before they get the money back in sales. 

A handful of states starting fee programs at different levels for companies doing business across the nation also violates  constitutional provisions for protecting interstate commerce, the trade group alleges. 

“Everybody agrees it’s worthwhile, but we need to find a better and more sustainable way to do this than the way they’ve structured this,” Leiter said. “There’s constitutional problems. There are transparency issues. Just a range of issues that have been brought out by not only ILMA’s lawsuit, but the one in Oregon. A number of states that are looking at this have said, wait a minute, let’s take time and do a better assessment of how this might work.”

The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, which must let the producers’ organization set the fees but which oversees the grant program, said it does not comment on ongoing litigation. The suit was filed in mid-March in Denver District Court. 

Colorado officials picked the Circular Action Alliance to administer the fee program. The alliance is dominated by some of the largest consumer packaging names in the world, including Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Molson Coors and Colgate-Palmolive. 

The alliance’s budget for 2026 envisions fees raising $215 million to $267 million in the first year for distribution to reimburse existing and new community recycling programs applying for the money. By 2030, the annual budget from fees is expected to rise to between $300 million and $400 million. 

The group is working to set the internal fees on packaging based on volume and actual recyclability. Companies will have incentives to shave new packaging to lower their overall fees, as well as use more recycled products in new packaging. 

The lawsuit from the independent lubricant packagers says in part, that the health department “has compelled ILMA members to enter into a ‘take it or leave it’ contract to pay.” It argues the state is set to impose “exorbitant fees which have no connection to the actual costs of running a recycling program in Colorado as required by the act, and which violates the act’s requirement that no more than 5% of those fees be used to pay for administrative expenses.”

The suit also takes on bigger legal issues, saying the way the health department is carrying out the legislative act “also violated ILMA members’ fundamental right to due process of law under the U.S. and Colorado Constitutions.” 

Over the past few days, it’s felt like Hyundai was going to steal the New York Auto Show. A secret debut, so confidential that not even members of the press knew about it in advance. While we expected something along the lines of a production-spec Crater, the vehicle actually unveiled is even cooler than that. This is the Hyundai Boulder, a body-on-frame concept SUV aimed straight at the Jeep Wrangler and Ford Bronco.

It’s no secret that Hyundai plans on building a body-on-frame midsize pickup truck in America by the end of the decade, but it felt naive to imagine that the marque would only use that platform for one thing. The Boulder Concept isn’t confirmed for production, but it would be foolish not to build it for real.

Right off the rip, Hyundai nailed the styling. It’s blocky in all the right ways, upright in the manner of a Bronco or a Wrangler or a Land Rover Defender. Speaking of Bronco, there’s definitely a whiff of 2004 Bronco concept to the shape of the grille panel, but that’s probably fine. Huge fenders and curved rear quarter windows definitely help add distinction, and that’s before we get into the details.

In profile, the dominant force on the Hyundai Boulder is the presence of coach doors. Are rear-hinged rear doors practical on an off-roader? Regardless, they look awesome and they’re something you can just do when you’re starting with a ladder frame. Right above those doors, you’ll find safari windows to let a little more light into the cabin without being blocked by a roof rack. Placing these windows right above the passenger compartment is a smart translation of a cue previously seen on the Land Rover Defender. It feels like tribute, paying homage to pioneers of the segment.

While Hyundai hasn’t stated what’s powering the Boulder concept, a possibly production version certainly wouldn’t be all-show and no-go. Just check out those huge 37-inch mud-terrain meats, on par with the largest tires offered on the Jeep Wrangler and Ford Bronco. That’s the sort of size that isn’t chosen on accident, and a full-size rear-mounted spare tire signal genuine trail intent. Speaking of the rear, let’s talk about that fifth door. Not only is it hinged on both sides for convenience, the rear window can motor down into the door 4Runner-style for a breezy feel. It really does feel like Hyundai’s compiled a greatest hits album here, just about every feature loved on iconic 4x4s combined into one vehicle.

Moving inside the Hyundai Boulder Concept, it’s all surprisingly pragmatic. We’re talking rugged materials, grab handles, and plenty of interior storage. The multiple little gauge pods we saw on the Crater make a return, along with toggles for locking differentials and four-wheel-drive mode selection. There’s a little concept car flight of fancy to everything such as the ornateness of the shifter, but strip that away and it’s not hard to imagine the near future.

What’s more, there’s actually stuff underneath the Boulder. Long-travel remote reservoir dampers, a coil-sprung solid rear axle, huge upper A-arms up front. This looks like a platform made to actually go off-road, which is hugely exciting considering how many concept cars these days are just pusher models.

The more I look at the Hyundai Boulder, the more two distinct things become obvious. Firstly, Hyundai has a proper midsize off-road SUV concept for the 2020s before General Motors. That’s wild. Secondly, Hyundai needs to build this thing for real. With the off-road SUV market continuing to grow and a body-on-frame platform in development, there’s no reason not to. So come on, let’s see a version of this out on the trails in a few years.

Top graphic image: Matt Hardigree

The post The Hyundai Boulder Is A Body-On-Frame Bronco And Wrangler Rival That Deserves Mass Production appeared first on The Autopian.

It’s a weird time for electric cars in America. Honda just canceled its entire EV project, Volvo ditched the EX30, and Chevrolet’s set to discontinue the Bolt again shortly after bringing it back from purgatory. However, that doesn’t mean that some automakers aren’t trying to bring small EVs stateside, such as the Kia EV3. It’s essentially a subcompact hatchback-with-cladding laser-targeted at the new Nissan Leaf. However, it’s also launching in America with something almost all other entry-level EVs don’t offer. I’m talking about a performance variant, the EV3 GT.

Kia officially calls the EV3 GT an SUV, but that feels like a stretch. Sure, it’s 3.3 inches taller in stature than the dearly departed Fiat 500 Abarth, but that includes about six-tenths of an inch worth of roof rails. More importantly, it’s a whopping 25.3 inches longer than the Fiat. If I’ve done my math correctly, that’s 17.5 percent longer, 5.6 percent wider, and a 13.5 percent wider track. Proportionally and dimensionally, that’s hatchback stuff.

Granted, some Socrates will probably still argue that the criteria for an SUV lie in its acronym, at which point Plato will powerslide a Porsche Boxster into the Agora, popping the frunk to reveal a full keg tucked neatly in the luggage bay with enough spare room for several pizzas. See? Sport and utility. Even if we go by function, with no low range, no skid plates, and no real off-road pretensions, the Kia EV3 GT is almost a hot hatch, and one worth approaching with real curiosity.

Obviously, we’re looking at an electric vehicle, and its dual-motor all-wheel-drive system kicks out a respectable 288 horsepower. Based on that figure alone, I’d expect the zero-to-60 mph dash to happen in well under six seconds despite a somewhat porky curb weight. While an official weigh-in for the U.S.-spec model hasn’t been announced, the European version tips the scales at 4,409 pounds. Even though DIN curb weight and SAE curb weight have some measurement discrepancies, that still makes a Tesla Model 3 look feathery. Hey, an 81.4 kWh battery pack is an 81.4 kWh battery pack, even if 400-volt charging isn’t state-of-the-art.

However, the really interesting parts of the EV3 GT don’t lie in dragstrip prowess. For one, it has a similar sort of simulated manumatic mode as the ones in the EV6 GT and the Hyundai Ioniq 5 N. Now, this is something manufacturers can get extremely wrong, but everything I’ve driven on the Hyundai-Kia E-GMP platform with the feature has got it extremely right. It’s the sort of thing that adds dimensionality to what would otherwise be a fairly flat commuting experience.

Then there are the other typical performance accoutrements. Firmer MacPherson strut front and multi-link rear suspension, an edgier steering calibration, seats with taller bolsters, and large brake calipers. The EV3 GT doesn’t seem like just a go-quicker-in-a-straight-line proposition, and if its EV6 GT big brother is any indication, this subcompact performance EV should have some proper stick in the corners.

In keeping with other applications of the GT trim, the EV3 GT will be hard to pick out in traffic from its GT-Line sibling. There’s a splash of retina-searing green on the calipers, a few bits of unique trim, new wheels, a subtle badge, and that’s about it. Your coworkers wouldn’t need to know that you selected the hot version, and there’s something nice about that. More importantly, the interior’s outfitted like an actual car. A screen for your gauges and a separate one for infotainment, a top-level climate control display, a bunch of real buttons and knobs, shortcuts for important functions. Nothing inside looks obviously cost-cut, and that should pay dividends in user-friendliness.

Of course, curb weight is still a concern, but let’s not forget that this isn’t replacing a beloved combustion-powered hot hatch. The EV3 GT is Kia trying something it hasn’t really done before, and a performance EV in this sort of footprint with real buttons and stuff feels like something worth experiencing. It’s a gamble given the current state of the EV market in America, but automakers taking risks and doing completely new-to-them stuff is something I like to see. Expect pricing and further details to come later this year, closer to the EV3 GT’s on-sale date in late 2026. Who’d have thought that America’s first electric hot hatch would be a Kia?

Top graphic image: Kia

The post The Kia EV3 GT Is Basically A 288-Horsepower Hot Hatch And It’s Coming To America appeared first on The Autopian.

Gov. Jared Polis wants to prohibit Coloradans from using food-assistance benefits to purchase soda and other sugary drinks that are bad for their health. 

But getting buy-in from other state leaders to put the ban in place now hinges on the governor’s broader plan for curbing soda drinking not just for low-income people, but for all Coloradans, starting with those attending taxpayer-funded events.

An executive order that will address sugary beverages and promote healthy eating statewide is expected soon, though the governor’s office has declined to reveal details. A Colorado Sun request for public records about the upcoming executive order, filed through the Colorado Open Records Act, turned up “no public records responsive” to the request, the governor’s office said. 

But Michelle Barnes, the executive director of the Colorado Human Services Department, spilled the news during an intense debate March 6 among members of the nine-member, governor-appointed human services board about whether to ban the use of food stamps to purchase sugary beverages. 

Barnes, who was told by her staff during the meeting that she wasn’t supposed to mention the upcoming executive order after she mentioned it, was trying to tell the human services board that the governor wasn’t just targeting people on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP; he wants to limit soda drinking more broadly. 

“I don’t know if I can say this,” Barnes said. “The governor is working on an executive order that would take the SNAP restrictions and apply it to all state purchases. He’s looking to expand it throughout the state, so you can’t buy sugary beverages with taxpayer dollars, functions can’t have pop, functions can’t have diet pop.”

The governor’s cabinet, including leaders of the state departments of Agriculture and Health Care Policy and Financing, “have been persuaded” by the dialogue happening before the state human services board in the past couple of months about banning soda purchases, Barnes said. She said the executive order was nearly ready but was being reviewed by lawyers.

“You’re right, this does feel like we are only doing it to low-income people,” Barnes said. “So why wouldn’t we do it with all state purchases? We shouldn’t be buying it either.”

The board was so put off about enacting the restrictions only for “poor people” that after seven hours of debate and testimony at that March meeting, it pushed the vote to its April meeting, which is Friday. An executive order with strategies to limit sugary beverages statewide has not been announced in the meantime. And the vote on the change in SNAP rules was removed from this week’s board meeting. 

“This sugar plague is affecting all of us and yet we are going after poor people,” board member John Kefalas, also a Larimer County commissioner, said at the March meeting.

The human services department has until Aug. 7 to bring the issue back up for a vote of the board, which sets rules for human services programs. 

Polis, who sought and received approval from the federal government to ban the purchase of soda with food assistance, still supports the ban and said it’s part of a “broader strategy to improve the health of all Coloradans,” according to a statement from his office. 

“SNAP supports the nutritional needs of families struggling to put food on the table,” the governor’s office wrote via email. About 330,000 households in Colorado receive the food-assistance benefits.

Colorado has also asked the federal government to allow people with SNAP to use it to buy prepared hot foods, including rotisserie chicken, and to make it easier to buy local produce at farmers markets. “I hope that Colorado can proceed with these important waivers to help reduce diabetes, obesity, and tooth decay,” Polis’ office said. 

The upcoming executive order could include bans on sugary beverages at certain events or venues, and could promote sales of fresh foods grown by the state’s agriculture industry, according to people who are familiar with the planning process. 

Officials at the state human services department said the agency “stands ready to deliver a comprehensive policy package” to the human services board at a later date. 

Polis announced in August that he had won approval from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for the “healthy choice” plan for SNAP. He needed the human services board to put the rules in place, but the board stalled after dozens of opponents, including 27 state lawmakers who are Democrats, argued the ban was an overreach that would harm the dignity and autonomy of low-income families. 

The rule would prohibit the purchase of soda as well as juices with added sugars or artificial sweeteners. 

Hunger Free Colorado was among the opponents of the ban and praised the delay. “The board listened to the community’s concerns and chose dignity over stigma, and access over restriction,” the group’s senior public policy manager, Mariah Guerrero, said in a news release.