2016 HYUNDAI SONATA — Complaint #1873659
Open-data reference.
NHTSA Complaint about LATCHES/LOCKS/LINKAGES:TRUNK LID:LATCH:EMERGENCY MECHANICAL RELEASE filed February 15, 2023
NHTSA complaint #1873659 (ODI reference 11507453) concerns a 2016 HYUNDAI SONATA and was filed on February 15, 2023. The owner reports the failure occurred on January 28, 2023. The report was geocoded to California based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as latches/locks/linkages:trunk lid:latch:emergency mechanical release, 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 HYUNDAI SONATA cohort independently describe similar latches/locks/linkages:trunk lid:latch:emergency mechanical release 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 2016 HYUNDAI SONATA shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.
Complaint Description
The trunk panel latch in this vehicle has failed due to a broken trunk latch pawl. The trunk will not open even when pushing the emergency trunk release latch inside the trunk. This failure presents the risk of injury to an occupant locked inside the trunk. As such, the involved vehicle might not comply with Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard no 401, "interior trunk release." A recall (Campaign 208) has already been placed on the 2016- 2018 Hyundai Sonata Hybrids due to this issue, but this particular VIN number is not covered under that recall. I have contacted Hyundai about this issue, and they will not repair or address this problem stating that although the model has had a recall issued, this particular VIN is not covered. The vehicle is available for inspection upon request
Complaint Details
| NHTSA Complaint ID | 1873659 |
| ODI Number | 11507453 |
| Date Filed | February 15, 2023 |
| Failure Date | January 28, 2023 |
| VIN | KMHE24L17GA |
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.