2014 KIA OPTIMA HYBRID — Complaint #1868174
Open-data reference.
NHTSA Complaint about ELECTRICAL SYSTEM:PROPULSION SYSTEM:TRACTION BATTERY:MANAGEMENT SYSTEM/ENERGY CONTROL MODULE (BMS/BECM) filed January 25, 2023
NHTSA complaint #1868174 (ODI reference 11503599) concerns a 2014 KIA OPTIMA HYBRID and was filed on January 25, 2023. The owner reports the failure occurred on January 25, 2023. The vehicle had 84,000 miles on the odometer at the time of the incident. The report was geocoded to California based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as electrical system:propulsion system:traction battery:management system/energy control module (bms/becm), 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 OPTIMA HYBRID cohort independently describe similar electrical system:propulsion system:traction battery:management system/energy control module (bms/becm) 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 2014 KIA OPTIMA HYBRID shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.
Complaint Description
The contact owns a 2014 Kia Optima Hybrid. The contact stated while driving 40 MPH, the vehicle lost motive power with a battery management system (BMS) message displayed. The contact desperately depressed the brake pedal, but the pedal became firm, causing the contact to almost crash into another vehicle. The contact was able to pull into a parking lot, turned off and restarted the vehicle, but the BMS message and check engine warning was light illuminated. The dealer was contacted but the vehicle needed be diagnosed. The manufacturer was not contacted. The failure mileage was 84,000.
Complaint Details
| NHTSA Complaint ID | 1868174 |
| ODI Number | 11503599 |
| Date Filed | January 25, 2023 |
| Failure Date | January 25, 2023 |
| VIN | KNAGN4AD8E5 |
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.