2008 KIA SORENTO — Complaint #1681919
Open-data reference.
NHTSA Complaint about ENGINE filed August 4, 2020
NHTSA complaint #1681919 (ODI reference 11343129) concerns a 2008 KIA SORENTO and was filed on August 4, 2020. The owner reports the failure occurred on October 1, 2018. The vehicle had 140,000 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 engine, 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 engine 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 2008 KIA SORENTO shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.
Complaint Description
WHEN IT'S HUMID OUTSIDE OR THERE IS ANY KIND OF MOISTURE IN THE AIR MY CHECK ENGINE LIGHT COMES ON ALONG WITH THE ESC LIGHT. THE CAR SEEMS BOGGED DOWN AND WONT GO ABOVE 2000 RPM. IT TAKES 15 MINUTES JUST TO GET THE CAR UP TO 50 MPH AND THATS WITH THE GAS PEDDLE PUSHED ALL THE WAY TO THE FLOOR. IT DOES IT MAINLY WHEN I'M DRIVING ON THE HIGHWAY WHICH IS SCARY. IT LOOSES MOST OF ITS ACCELERATION POWER
Complaint Details
| NHTSA Complaint ID | 1681919 |
| ODI Number | 11343129 |
| Date Filed | August 4, 2020 |
| Failure Date | October 1, 2018 |
| VIN | KNDJD735485 |
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Source: NHTSA Vehicle Complaints Database. Component taxonomy and severity codes are standardized by NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation.
Read our methodology — how this data is sourced, computed, and verified.