“I bought a Telluride,” new owners will say. And in most cases, they omit something — that it’s a Kia (000270.KS).

That’s because the first-gen Telluride looked nothing like a Kia. The three-row, full-size Telluride had rugged good looks, a cavernous interior, and a tantalizing $35,000 price. 

The Telluride is the brand’s flagship vehicle, popular with the masses and selling like it. Kia sold 73,602 Tellurides in the US in the first half of 2026, the nameplate’s best first half ever and up about 20% year over year. And Kia’s US hybrid sales more than doubled, up 115% in the first half. 

For 2027, Kia is bolting a hybrid onto its halo SUV, a strategic addition that will help move even more Tellurides.

In addition, the all-new 2027 Kia Telluride ups the luxe factor by several notches. It’s the closest thing on the road to a Range Rover that doesn’t cost Range Rover money. And in hybrid form in blacked-out X-Line SX Prestige AWD trim, I call it a winner.

The redesign is a big deal, even though the old Telluride was a handsome truck. This one is more brutish, rugged, and flat-out more imposing. The blacked-out grille looked a touch too futuristic when Kia first revealed the car online earlier this year, but it has grown on me.

The side profile and rear end are the real story. From behind, the Telluride genuinely looks like a Range Rover, especially in its black-jade-green exterior. I don’t know how thrilled Range Rover will be about that, but there it is.

Inside, Kia has built a cabin that nears other luxury brands. Our test vehicle came with SynTex suede seats that are soft, supportive, and a clear step up from the prior-gen Telluride. There are two captain’s chairs in the second row and a third row that’s genuinely usable. Fit and finish, and materials selection were quite good; not BMW or Mercedes level, but good.

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Yes, there are screens everywhere, with a pair of 12.3-inch panels running the show, though the screen appears to be one solid piece. The infotainment side is good: customizable tiles, CarPlay, and easy to live with. The driver’s cluster is sharp and high-res but frustratingly locked down. I couldn’t pull up navigation or what music I was playing, which most rivals’ displays can show.

My real gripe is that Kia moved the gear selector to a stalk on the center column — you need to push for park, flip forward for drive, back for reverse — and it never once felt intuitive. I spent the weekend hunting for the park button. What it buys you is space where the floor gear selector usually is, now providing two wireless charging pads, cupholders, deep storage, and a tray that flips out to the second row. 

Then there’s the refinement, which genuinely surprised me. This cabin is quiet — Cadillac, even Mercedes levels of silence. For an SUV wearing a Kia badge, that’s a real achievement.

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The flip side is what’s under the hood. The Telluride hybrid pairs a 2.5-liter turbocharged four with an electric motor for 329 horsepower and 339 lb-ft of torque, sent through a six-speed automatic and all-wheel drive. On paper, those are solid numbers, and they top the V6 in the outgoing car.

On the road, it doesn’t feel like 329hp. Moving a rig that carries every bit of its near-5,000-pound heft, the Telluride feels closer to 250hp. It gets going eventually, but it isn’t as urgent off the line as the spec sheet suggests. Floor it, and there’s no mistaking the four-cylinder hum. 

There is, however, fuel economy that’s a major plus. This is a conventional, self-charging hybrid (not a plug-in) drawing on a small 1.65-kWh battery that charges and discharges on the fly. At city speeds, it runs on electric power a shocking amount of the time. The EPA rates the hybrid AWD Telluride at 31 mpg combined, 30 city, and 32 highway, and in the real world, it’s almost hard to believe.

I drove approximately 50 miles of mostly local Brooklyn stop-and-go traffic over the weekend, and the gas gauge barely twitched. Because so much of that low-speed driving is EV-only, with the engine regenerating the battery in the background, the fuel tank indicator hardly moved. Drive a Telluride mostly around town, and you might not fill up for a couple weeks, or even a month. In a three-row truck this size, that’s remarkable.

That’s the trade the Telluride hybrid asks you to make by accepting a powertrain that’s more relaxed than rapid, while pocketing the fuel savings and reducing the C02 impact on the planet.

For a loaded X-Line SX Prestige AWD, our car stickered at $61,180. That’s a lot of money, but it’s a three-row SUV that looks good, rides quietly, and sips fuel.

The Telluride has always felt like its own brand, upmarket in a way the Kia brand isn’t known for. Call the Telluride the “Brooklyn Range Rover” if you want (and as I do), but it’s still a winner.

Pras Subramanian is Lead Auto Reporter for Yahoo Finance. You can follow him on X and on Instagram.

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