2021 KIA NIRO EV — Complaint #1760467
Open-data reference.
NHTSA Complaint about BACK OVER PREVENTION: BACK-UP ALARM filed July 30, 2021
NHTSA complaint #1760467 (ODI reference 11427104) concerns a 2021 KIA NIRO EV and was filed on July 30, 2021. The owner reports the failure occurred on July 29, 2021. The report was geocoded to California based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as back over prevention: back-up alarm, 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 NIRO EV cohort independently describe similar back over prevention: back-up alarm 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 2021 KIA NIRO EV shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.
Complaint Description
I'm a new Niro Ev driver. The VESS noise when reversing the vehicle is very loud. It is too loud, I live in close proximity to neighbors and have to get up early for work and the sound is a major nuisance, I would not want a neighbor that has this car . I understand VESS in place for safety but the reverse backup beeping is just a step down from a garbage truck backing up, especially in the silence of a residential neighborhood in the early AM hours. Furthermore, I and others as seen on web forums will reverse faster than we normally would do to be able to take the car out of reverse as quickly as possible to stop the blaring beeping. This creates its own risk, as if there is less time to react if there is a pedestrian behind the vehicle. The volume of the noise should be greatly reduced. It is also unnecessary noise pollution. Kia, please fix this.
Complaint Details
| NHTSA Complaint ID | 1760467 |
| ODI Number | 11427104 |
| Date Filed | July 30, 2021 |
| Failure Date | July 29, 2021 |
| VIN | KNDCE3LG9M5 |
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.