2012 HYUNDAI SONATA — Complaint #2161107
Open-data reference.
NHTSA Complaint about ENGINE AND ENGINE COOLING:ENGINE:OIL/LUBRICATION filed December 29, 2025
NHTSA complaint #2161107 (ODI reference 11707491) concerns a 2012 HYUNDAI SONATA and was filed on December 29, 2025. The owner reports the failure occurred on December 29, 2023. The vehicle had 158,000 miles on the odometer at the time of the incident. The report was geocoded to Maryland based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as engine and engine cooling:engine:oil/lubrication, 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 engine and engine cooling:engine:oil/lubrication 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 2012 HYUNDAI SONATA shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.
Complaint Description
The contact owns a 2012 Hyundai Sonata. The contact stated that the vehicle was experiencing excessive oil consumption, which required the oil reservoir to be refilled after 3-4 weeks. Additionally, there was no warning light illuminated. The contact stated that upon taking the vehicle to Jiffy Lube for a top off, the mechanic would inform the contact that the oil reservoir was empty and needed to be refilled. The vehicle was not taken to the dealer. The vehicle was not repaired. The manufacturer was informed of the failure. The failure mileage was approximately 158,000.
Complaint Details
| NHTSA Complaint ID | 2161107 |
| ODI Number | 11707491 |
| Date Filed | December 29, 2025 |
| Failure Date | December 29, 2023 |
| VIN | 5NPEB4AC2CH |
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.