Kia Soul EV 'won't be priced to stimulate demand'

Anyone waiting for sales of the Kia Soul EV to set the human and hamster worlds on fire, here's a chill pill. Autocar (via EV World) is reporting that, in the UK at least, the all-electric hatch "won't be priced to stimulate demand." What that means, exactly, we don't know, but we assume it means the Soul EV won't be sporting any $199 lease price tags any time soon.

The quote comes from Kia's UK commercial director, Yaser Shabsogh, who ballparked the price of the car at the low-to-mid £20,000 range. That'd be roughly $35,000-$40,000 US, also known as the upper end of the non-luxury EV market. The regular, gas-powered Soul (pictured, review here) starts at $14,400 in the US.

Even with that price different, the Soul EV is officially headed to the US, and we'll be surprised if we see it "priced to stimulate demand" here in any way. There is some good news though, EV World says, and that is that since the car will also be sold overseas, it's likely to be more than a so-called "compliance car" available in the US in more places that just California. We shall see.