2027 Kia Telluride Review: Fancier and More Frugal

What Car Shoppers Need to Know

• Both powertrains offered in the new 2027 Kia Telluride — a new turbocharged 2.5-liter four-cylinder and a gas-electric hybrid — are excellent.
• The new styling is … a lot, but the new interior is more spacious and luxurious than ever.
• Some design quirks have appeared, like poorly designed touchscreen climate controls and hard-to-see backlit buttons.

Since its introduction for the 2020 model year, the Kia Telluride has been an unqualified success for the South Korean brand. But a new Telluride arrives for the 2027 model year, and Kia’s mission for it wasn’t so simple: Don’t screw it up. It’s always hard to update a popular vehicle — change too little, and current owners won’t see much of a reason to trade up for it, but change too much, and you’ll turn off those loyal buyers who may not like the new one. But Kia never does anything halfway it seems, with each new iteration of its models making a leap in styling, equipment, technology, appointments — and sometimes price.

Related: Kia Shows Off 2027 Telluride’s Bold New Look Ahead of Los Angeles Auto Show Debut

The new ‘27 Telluride is no exception. Its appearance is completely different from the outgoing model, with a bold, futuristic style that looks as if all of its designers spent countless nights playing Cyberpunk: 2077 on their gaming laptops. It’s larger in every dimension and heavier, too, by nearly 400 pounds. It has two new powertrains that have distinctive personalities, and it comes with a new X-Pro off-road trim that features slightly more capability than before. There’s an all-new, larger and more comfortable interior, too, with Kia’s latest technology. And it all comes in at a higher price than before, as Kia tries to put some daylight between the big Telluride and the next-smaller SUV in its lineup, the Sorento.

But we wanted to drive the thing for one specific reason: to see if the new standard turbocharged powertrain is a good replacement for the old lump of a V-6 it had before, and to see if this change makes the Telluride a better SUV than its sister ship, the Hyundai Palisade. The answer is a solid “yes” on both counts.

Distinctive Inside and Out

• The Telluride’s new styling is most dramatically different on the front end, with new hidden headlights and an imposing grille.
• X-Pros get a unique blacked-out cheese-grater grille, whereas other Telluride trims get body-color accents.
• The interior is even more premium than before, but some design quirks have arisen.

We’re always hesitant to get into a discussion about how a vehicle looks (all styling is subjective), but the Telluride’s new sheet metal is what immediately grabs everyone’s attention. It’s such a dramatic change from the last Telluride, with a blunt front end that hides the headlights either among body-color strakes or the gloss-black grid grille. The off-road X-Pro trim gets blacked-out trim all over, whereas other versions get body-color trim instead on places like the roof and wheel arches. The back end bears a very strong resemblance to the Land Rover Range Rover SUV, and I have a hard time believing that’s not intentional given Kia’s continued mention of benchmarking luxury vehicles and getting such vehicles as trade-ins at dealers.

And then there’s the new interior quality, which is even better than the last one to further the notion that the brand continues to move itself upscale to the near-luxury category. Kia stylists changed everything about the Telluride, and they had the perfect opportunity to do so since Kia made the thing bigger in every dimension. The wheelbase is stretched by 2.7 inches, and the SUV is 2.3 inches longer overall. That has resulted in more second- and third-row legroom, more cargo room, and a longer travel for the folding second-row seats to allow for easier third-row ingress and egress. There’s ample room in the second or third rows for full-sized adults. It’s the biggest, downright nicest Telluride ever, and you absolutely feel it, especially when looking out the limousine-length windows in the second row.

Not all of the new Telluride’s design changes have been successful — while the big multimedia screen and displays will be familiar to anyone who’s been in a Hyundai/Kia product lately, especially the electric models like the Kia EV9, they’ll also recognize the terrible placement of the climate control touch panel. It’s completely obscured from the driver by the thick squircle-shaped steering wheel, meaning you have to crane your head around the rim to see them; this is awful while driving. And the row of touch-sensitive menu buttons just below the center screen can be largely invisible — lightly backlit graphics on a light-colored panel make them very difficult to see in the daylight. But these are pretty much the only two foibles in the Telluride’s new interior.

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Hybrid Happiness

• The Telluride’s standard engine is now a turbocharged 2.5-liter four-cylinder making 274 horsepower and 311 pounds-feet of torque mated to an eight-speed automatic transmission.
• Optional is a gas-electric hybrid system that adds a dual-electric-motor setup to the turbo 2.5-liter engine and swaps in a six-speed automatic transmission.
• Towing capacity for the standard four-cylinder engine is 5,000 pounds, dropping to 4,500 pounds for the hybrid.

We expect each new Kia will be nicer than the last one, which has been Kia’s way of working for years now. What we’re more interested in are the powertrains it’s bringing to the new ‘27 model: The standard engine is a turbocharged 2.5-liter four-cylinder making 274 hp and 311 pounds-feet of torque; it’s mated to an eight-speed automatic transmission driving either the front wheels or all four. The optional gas-electric hybrid powertrain adds a dual-motor electric system to the 2.5-liter turbo engine and swaps the transmission for a six-speed automatic. This system makes 329 hp and 339 pounds-feet of torque, but towing capacity drops to 500 pounds.

I had tested out both systems — a loaded Turbo-Hybrid-equipped model and an X-Pro with the standard four-cylinder. They both represent a massive improvement over the old V-6, but in different ways.

The Turbo-Hybrid powertrain is simply lovely. The Telluride is one of the quietest hybrid vehicles I’ve ever tested, due in large part to the system’s desire to keep itself in electric mode as much as possible. You’ll be driving down a road at speeds that would kick the engine on in many hybrids, but the silence of the Telluride makes you glance down at the gauge cluster to realize that the tachometer says “0.0,” meaning the engine is off. Even on light acceleration, uphill at 50 mph with the air conditioning on, it will maintain electric operation, favoring its electric powertrain components for improved fuel economy. And boy does it deliver here, with our 140-mile drive over multiple legs and elevated speeds delivering a trip-computer-estimated 41 mpg, besting the 35 mpg combined rating that Kia says certain versions can achieve. That’s impressive.

But when you want power, just plant your foot and everything works in concert to deliver plenty of punch to get the big SUV moving smartly. The integration of the electric and gas systems is expertly done, only revealing a little bit of unusual behavior if you’re braking over a bridge joint or frost heave — that’s when it hiccups a bit, causing a momentary jerking deceleration that’s noticeable, but not alarming. With an advertised maximum range of 637 miles on a tank, it’s likely you’ll be stopping for your own needs on highway trips before the Telluride’s needs are a factor.

Standard Turbo and X-Pro Off-Roading

• The new turbocharged 2.5-liter engine is peppy but quiet.
• The Telluride’s X-Pro off-road trim can go off-road but shouldn’t go too far off — and its all-terrain tires mean more road noise on pavement.

And how about that standard turbo four? It’s also excellent. While it’s down a few horsepower from the old V-6, that’s largely insignificant — acceleration is a factor of torque, not horsepower, and it has a lot more torque than the old V-6. That makes it snappy on launch despite the increased weight of the new Telluride thanks to the turbo’s torque curve and delivery. It’s also remarkably quiet, even at full throttle, which is due in large part to the Telluride’s excellent sound insulation. I didn’t get much of a chance to try it on solid pavement, however, or at highway speeds, so observed fuel economy will have to wait.

That’s because most of my seat time with the new four-cylinder engine came in the dirt, as I guided an X-Pro off-road trim through a mild off-road course at a 7,000-acre working cattle ranch in California’s Central Coast region as part of Kia’s media drive program. (Per Cars.com’s ethics policy, we pay for our own travel and lodging when attending such manufacturer-sponsored events.) With its 18-inch wheels shod with all-terrain tires, a higher ride height, special terrain modes and software, off-road camera displays and an electronic limited-slip differential, Kia bills the new X-Pro as its most capable off-road Telluride ever. And my drive of it through some two-track obstacles, significant inclines and loose sand proved that indeed it is, with its electronic systems and terrain modes helping to keep traction steady, even if the accelerator pedal gets a bit oversensitive in its off-road modes; it’s a little tricky to properly modulate the pedal on downhill routes, with the downhill brake assist keeping speeds steady and automatically controlled.

Suffice it to say that the X-Pro will easily tackle whatever off-pavement tasks its owners are likely to throw at it, but a lack of true underbody or front-bumper skid-plate protection or any kind of low-range gearing means you should not go too far past the trailhead, lest you risk damaging the greasy bits of your pricey SUV. Most of these X-Pros will rarely see any kind of off-pavement use, so the question then becomes whether or not the all-terrain tires generate more noise than they’re worth in daily on-road use. They’re definitely louder than the standard on-road tires I sampled with the Turbo-Hybrid, but their smaller size and weight also made the X-Pro’s steering feel lighter and more responsive. I am looking forward to trying a lesser-trim Turbo model with 18-inch wheels and tires to see if that might just be the sweet spot.

Pricier Than Before, But Worth It

• New ‘27 Telluride Turbos start at $40,735; Turbo-Hybrids start at $48,035 (all prices include destination fee).

Pricing for both the standard Turbo- and Turbo-Hybrid-equipped models has now been released, and it’s showing that Kia is getting increasingly confident in offering more vehicle for more money. The ‘27 might start at just north of $40,000, but a top-spec Turbo-Hybrid model can crest $60,000, which puts the loaded Telluride into near-luxury Acura MDX, Infiniti QX60, Lexus TX and Lincoln Aviator territory. The new U.S.-built Telluride is on sale now at dealers across the country.

What Kia has crafted is the best Telluride yet, with more of everything — space, tech, styling, power, luxury, fuel economy and, in the case of some of the display quirks, frustration. But overall, the positives outweigh the negatives by a large margin, making this new 2027 Kia Telluride likely another smash hit for the company.

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