I am from Central Florida and currently in the St Louis area visiting relatives. I had been doing a lot of research on a replacement vehicle for my NSX and took a day to visit various dealers on the Illinois side of the river. Every dealer told me that they never had a customer request a Niro PHEV. Had plenty of Niro hybrids on the lot. So, I did a search and found that a few dealers within 150 miles had PHEV's but no EX Premium, except for one dealer in Chesterfield, MO that had two. Needless to say, I bought one. I called my dealers in the Daytona Beach-Orlando FL area and they had none. In fact, nationally, there were only 8 available! When I made the deal for mine, a guy from NC purchased the other one at the dealer in Chesterfield.
I really would have preferred to wait and get one from my local dealer when we get back, but my closest dealer advised that they ordered two back in January and still have no idea when they will be built. Another dealer in Orlando told me I had better buy one if I could find one I like. The Kia dealer in Miami had a few PHEV's but no EX Premium.
No dealer was able to tell me why the shortage. I found it very unusual that the majority of the dealers I contacted locally had no plans to stock any model of the PHEV. Several dealers said they had a Optima PHEV, but I was not interested, and from my online browsing, none of them were the top line model anyway.
I suspect that many dealers are afraid to stock any PHEV or BEV because of the rapidly-changing landscape, both in terms of technology and new competitors coming online. Finding a top of the line Nissan Leaf is also difficult and Nissan is in a bad position with their newest model still not having active cooling.
-Bob