Table 1 shows one common electrical system related problems of the 2024 Kia Motor Sportage.
| Problem Category | Number of Problems |
|---|---|
| Electrical System problems |
Sudden unintended acceleration – 2024 kia Sportage – safety hazard. Incident date: April 18, 2026. Location: parking lot. While pulling into a parking space at low speed, I brought the vehicle to a complete stop with my foot on the brake. Immediately after stopping, the vehicle suddenly and forcefully accelerated forward on its own without my foot on the accelerator. I was actively pressing the brake pedal, but the vehicle did not respond as expected and continued to accelerate. The acceleration was strong enough that the vehicle jumped over the parking bumper with both front tires and struck a fixed post. Even after impact with the post, the vehicle continued to push forward as if still accelerating, until it hit another barrier and finally came to a stop. At no time did I press the accelerator pedal. The vehicle’s behavior felt completely uncontrolled and unsafe. This incident could have resulted in serious injury or death if it had occurred in traffic or with pedestrians in front of the vehicle. The vehicle has been towed to kia dealership and is pending inspection. I am reporting this as a serious safety defect. No injuries. Front-end damage after collision with post. This event was sudden, unexpected, and not driver-induced.
Blank instrument panel screen. Abnormal can message which can cause certain instrument clusters with a 4. 2” screen to reboot while driving. During this rebooting, the cluster will not show information such as the speedometer or telltales for approximately five (5) seconds. As a result, the subject vehicles do not comply with the visibility and illumination requirements of fmvss 101, §§ s5. 1. 2 and 5. 3. 1.
A month after buying my vehicle in February of 2024, while driving my vehicle the screen behind my steering wheel will black out and come back on and do a system check as if I had just turned my car on. It happens at all times of day, at all speeds. I kept a log of some of the incidences and there are no two that are the same. I have even been in park with the car on and it will happen. When you are driving with cruise control on and it does it the cruise control shuts off then comes back on after it has done the system check again. This is extremely dangerous while driving on the interstate and a line of cars around you. I have taken it to the dealership and they have worked with kia to try to figure it out and still have not been able to. I am now going on almost two years of this happening without any resolution. Below I put the last time it happened but this happens all the time and is not one isolated incident. I have attached a log I kept for two months of the incidences.
The contact owns a 2024 kia Sportage. While the contact’s daughter was driving approximately 70-75 mph, the vehicle suddenly lost motive power. The driver was able to coast to the side of the road, where the vehicle was turned off for several minutes. The driver then activated the jump-start system of the hybrid vehicle. The driver was able to continue driving. The message "hybrid battery - hybrid system failure" was displayed. The vehicle was taken to an unknown dealer, where it was confirmed that the vehicle was included in a voluntary emissions service campaign: sc338; and the dealer completed the service campaign repair. No further information was available. The manufacturer was informed of the failure, and a case was filed. The failure mileage was 19,832.
The dash on my Sportage will go black while driving, and then the system reboots showing "system check" the cruise control also goes out when this happens. This happens about once a month. Dealer has checked it more than 3 times and has found no issues except the first time I brought it in.
When we were entering a major intersection, car strolled and rolled forward and stopped 3/4 thru the intersection. It would not restart immediately while cars were speeding by on both sides. It finally started. This is the second occurrence we took the car into the kia dealership. [xxx] information redacted pursuant to the freedom of information act (foia), 5 u. S. C. 552(b)(6).
The doors won't lock. The button on the handle won't work sometimes. It's just random. This has happened 4 times in the last 2 years I have owned the car. I have to use app to lock and unlock the car. Once I drive it again everything is fine.
All the dash lights come on randomly has happened 3 separate times the 4th time they came on I also couldn’t shift out of park.
While driving my 2024 kia Sportage phev x-line awd the instrument panel went black for 3-5 seconds and appeared to be "re-booting/resetting". The first time this occurred was approximately March 2025 (odometer reading approximately 6000 miles) and the issue has re-occurred numerous times (30+) since then (current odometer reading is 12,410). There was no warning prior to this happening and there were no warning lamps, messages, or other symptoms of any problems with the vehicle. I took the car into my local kia dealer to have them check the instrument panel issue under warranty and to perform the recommended 8000 mile service. During the service visit they addressed the sc322 - hybrid control unit software upgrade recall. With regards to the instrument panel issue, the service department told me that they could not fix the issue under warranty unless they could reproduce the issue. Therefore any work that they would perform to address the issue would have to be paid for by me. They suggested that I try to capture the issue on video as evidence of the issue. Given that the event only happens over a 3-5 second period, there is no way for me to safely videotape the issue while I am driving the vehicle and I have no idea when it will happen again. This issue has continued to occur randomly multiple times since that service visit with the last event happening three days ago. When the instrument panel goes black it is very distracting to the driver and draws your attention from the road to the instrument screen which puts the occupants of the vehicle at risk as well as others driving/walking around your vehicle. I have read online of others having this same issue with no clear consistent resolution from kia. I strongly believe that this is a serious safety issue for many kia drivers and needs to be addressed via a recall or voluntary dealer campaign to avoid unnecessary crashes/injuries.
Since day one of my purchase I noticed all warning light turned on and goes off while driving over an hour I thought it was normal as it’s my first kia so continue to drive and it did same when ever I go on long drive and after 2 months it started vehicle to loose power and I always has to stop and restart the engine. Continued with same issue and all of a sudden it stopped on interstate and this time the car bogged out and engine shut off which was a dangerous situation for my whole family as cars behind would have hit us and cause multiple car collision I called my dealership to add this issue on my appointment for first service so it can be taken care of and I dropped off the car at dealership and after road test they confirmed that yes it has issue where multiple lights comes on and off so they don’t really know what’s causing the issue but will try to change the infotainment screen which they think is the issue might solve it so they kept my car for more than 90days and got my car back with scratches on dash and digital display bit shaky but according to milestones look like they tested if the issue been solved. ????.
We had ~2100 miles on our vehicle. We had been driving on the highway for an hour when engine temperature warning light came on. We pulled over and turned off the car. We waited 30 minutes then opened the hood to inspect the coolant level. The coolant level was at "min. " we looked under the car to see if any coolant was leaking and no coolant was visible under the car. We turned the car back on and sat in park for ~1 min. The engine temperature warning light came back on. We turned the car off and waited one hour. We turned the car back on, stayed in park, and the engine temperature warning light came back on. We called kia and were towed to the nearest dealer. They inspected the car the next day and found no issues. Looking online, it appears that others have experienced similar issues with kias and I am writing this in case it is a systemic issue that can help myself and others.
Stopped at traffic light, light turned green and went to accelerate. Car died, all lights came on dash in oncoming traffic and car would not restart for minutes.
The dashboard with all the instrumentation goes blank while driving causing loss of all instrumentation gauges and headlights shut off. This has happened repeated times since the car was purchased new in June 2024 and has been in the service department since October a total of six times. They have replaced fitments, the dashboard cluster, the phone charging pad and have done multiple software updates and it continues to go blank while operating. The dash then lights back up with system check and all the instruments lights in dash glow and it stays like that for several seconds. I am repeatedly told they cannot recreate the problem to properly diagnose so they have been cherry picking solutions to fix and it’s dangerous to drive. I have filed a complaint with the nc attorney general, a bbb auto complaint, a complaint with the manufacturer directly and they are telling the dealer to return car to me because they can’t recreate the problem and so in their opinion nothing is wrong when I have video of this happening while driving. Please help me.
The digital instrument cluster panel goes blank intermittently and without warning while I am driving. Within moments, the instrument panel reads: "system reset". The information then reappears on the panel, displaying important information (speedometer, fuel gauge, etc. ). My speed, however has been significantly reduced. I was driving on the highway at 70 mph when the instrument panel shut down (went blank). When it reappeared after "system reset", I was going 48 mph. I believe this is a safety issue as it fails to comply with the requirements of federal motor vehicle safety standards 101 "controls and displays and 138, "tire pressure monitoring systems". Also, the car is dangerous as I have no control over my speed. I could easily get rear ended by another vehicle which is another safety issue because the lithium batteries in this hybrid plug-in are in the back of the vehicle. This has occurred four times. The 2023 kia Sportage plug-in vehicles were recalled due to this same problem. I am requesting the 2024 kia Sportage plug-in vehicles are issued a recall also.
The infotainment screen goes out randomly while driving and can stay off for the entirety of the trip. That includes the speedometer, check engine light, fuel gauge, etc.
Audible route navigation, turn by turn instructions, majority of the time is silent, either it works or doesn’t during each instance of starting engine; next time engine is started, unpredictable whether navigation will be heard, usually no. Visual instructions always appear on center dashboard map display; danger is frequent driving distractions of not hearing audible instructions and taking eyes off road to look down at map display. This is not a volume setting issue, navigation guidance volume level is set to 30 or higher (very loud), navigation guidance priority is selected that causes radio/media playing volume to temporarily be lowered significantly so route instructions will be heard louder, but often fails. Joe b. , dealer service dept mgr at rick case kia (r. C. K. ), sunrise, FL during a test drive with me duplicated this problem every time using different route destinations and input methods on a morning I was there for a scheduled service dept appt, however after confirming my problem, my kia was not taken back for a mechanic diagnose and repair the problem. Instead I was sent away to download navigation sw update on my own usb flash drive and install it because r. C. K. I was told does not perform this task for customers, without them first checking the sw version already installed on my vehicle that turned out to be the current one. I allowed sw from thumb drive to overwrite installed sw per kia customer care mgr; problem remained. I’ve also performed factory and soft resets following instructions provided by kia. During subsequent call, while the audible route instructions could not be heard, kia asked me to test voice recognition (vr) system from the steering wheel button; it also failed to produce audible results visible on same display. Rck told kia for come back in a couple weeks when they weren't so busy. Per kia's suggestion, I took my vehicle to a different dealer, hollywood kia, where its now at. Intermittent wipers also don't work.
Infotainment panel on this vehicle flickered on and off. In certain occurrences the whole infotainment cluster would go out while driving and would not come back on. Kia dealer was told from their tech line which is through kia corporate that it could be faulty electrical wiring or this coaxial cable. Kia dealer specifically stated that they had no idea that this coaxial line was there and had to fix the connection by welding it again. After this so far the infotainment system seems to be working properly. Now we are dealing with a battery discharge warning problem that kia dealer can’t seem to figure out after they fixed the infotainment system. Before this the battery discharge warning never came up.
Cluster screen goes black the dealership has replaced the screen & completed a software update. I have several videos. The dealership states they can’t fix it because they can’t replicate it. So I send them a video when it occurs. I called kia direct and was informed to get a new car. It’s been going on for a year. We purchased the car brand new.