2011 KIA SORENTO — Complaint #1557765
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NHTSA Complaint about ELECTRICAL SYSTEM filed April 14, 2019
NHTSA complaint #1557765 (ODI reference 11196096) concerns a 2011 KIA SORENTO and was filed on April 14, 2019. The owner reports the failure occurred on January 11, 2019. The vehicle had 126,000 miles on the odometer at the time of the incident. The report was geocoded to Texas based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as electrical system, one of NHTSA's standardized taxonomy codes used to group defect patterns across make, model, and year.
The filer flagged the following severity indicators: crash: no, fire: no, injuries: 0, fatalities: 0. No crash, fire, or fatality was associated with this report, which places it in the early-warning stream rather than the priority-review stream. Because a VIN was supplied, this complaint is tied to a specific vehicle and not just a model-year cohort.
Individual complaints are consumer-submitted and unverified by NHTSA engineers — the agency's role at this stage is to collect, index, and make them searchable. What matters for federal action is the pattern: when many owners of the same KIA SORENTO cohort independently describe similar electrical system failures, defect investigators have grounds to open a PE and request manufacturer data. Related filings for the same vehicle and component appear below, and the detail page for the full 2011 KIA SORENTO shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.
Complaint Description
FIRST WARNING SIGN WAS THE HEADLIGHT, LOW BEAMS, AND ALL INTERIOR ELECTRONICS WOULD SHUT COMPLETELY OFF FOR ABOUT 2 SECONDS RANDOMLY WHEN THE TURN SIGNAL WAS USED. NEXT THE DRIVER SIDE HEADLIGHT, LOW BEAM, WENT OUT WHEN REPLACING THE BULB THE REPLACEMENT BULB WORKED UNTIL THE BULB WAS PLACED IN THE SOCKET. AFTER CLEANING THE SOCKETS TO CREATE A BETTER CONNECTION, STILL NOTHING WORKED. I SWITCHED BULBS FROM DRIVER TO PASSENGER TO SEE IF THE BULB WOULD GET A GOOD CONNECTION ON THE PASSENGER SIDE AND NOW NEITHER LOW BEAM HEADLIGHT WORKS. THIS IS A LIGHT SWITCH ISSUE THAT WAS RECALLED FOR 2012-16 KIA SORENTO'S BUT I'M HAVING THE SAME ISSUE IN A 2011.
Complaint Details
| NHTSA Complaint ID | 1557765 |
| ODI Number | 11196096 |
| Date Filed | April 14, 2019 |
| Failure Date | January 11, 2019 |
| VIN | 5XYKU3A12BG |
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Source: NHTSA Vehicle Complaints Database. Component taxonomy and severity codes are standardized by NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation.
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