2016 KIA OPTIMA — Complaint #1979842
Open-data reference.
NHTSA Complaint about POWER TRAIN:DRIVELINE:DRIVESHAFT filed April 1, 2024
NHTSA complaint #1979842 (ODI reference 11580531) concerns a 2016 KIA OPTIMA and was filed on April 1, 2024. The owner reports the failure occurred on March 31, 2024. The vehicle had 115,000 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 power train:driveline:driveshaft, 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 cohort independently describe similar power train:driveline:driveshaft 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 KIA OPTIMA shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.
Complaint Description
The contact owns a 2016 Kia Optima. The contact stated that while driving at 5 MPH, the passenger side drive shaft fractured. The vehicle stalled and was unable to be restarted. The vehicle was pushed to the side of the road and then towed to the local dealer. The vehicle was not diagnosed or repaired as of yet. The manufacturer was not made aware of the failure. The failure mileage was approximately 115,000.
Complaint Details
| NHTSA Complaint ID | 1979842 |
| ODI Number | 11580531 |
| Date Filed | April 1, 2024 |
| Failure Date | March 31, 2024 |
| VIN | 5XXGU4L34G |
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.