2020 Hyundai Palisade1st gen (2020–2025), pre-facelift

Updated 2026-08-28NHTSA counts read on this date — 526 complaints. They rise over time.

The 2020 Hyundai Palisade, Six Years and 526 Complaints Later

Cars.com put seven three-row SUVs through a comparison test in 2019 and the Palisade came out first, ahead of the Kia Telluride it shares a platform with. The test car was a Limited AWD, and Cars.com’s editor-in-chief said what set it apart was the controlled ride quality.

That was a fair call on the car in front of them. It was also a call made on a vehicle with a few thousand miles on it, and the hardware that does the most for ride quality on a Limited turns out to be a recurring failure point.

Owners have since filed 526 complaints with NHTSA about the 2020 model year. Hyundai sold 28,736 Palisades in calendar 2019 and 81,905 in 2020, and the 2020 model year went out across both years, so the denominator is somewhere in the tens of thousands. I am not going to turn that into a rate. The model year does not line up with either calendar year, and 526 filings are not 526 owners — some people file more than once. What the number is good for is comparison with the other model years in this series, counted the same way. Every filing quoted here is public and carries a number you can look up (nhtsa.gov/recalls).

The basics

Hyundai builds the Palisade in Ulsan, South Korea and sells it as the top of its SUV range — the same slot the Telluride occupies at Kia, on the same platform, with the same 3.8-liter V6. The 2020 through 2022 cars share a body and dashboard; the 2023 refresh brought a new front end and a redesigned interior.

One model-year trap worth knowing before you shop. The 2020 lineup is three trims — SE, SEL, Limited. The Calligraphy didn’t exist yet; it arrived for 2021 as a new top trim above the Limited. A 2020 advertised as a Calligraphy is mislabeled.

Specs

From Hyundai’s official 2020 Palisade specifications.

The SE seats eight on a second-row bench. The Limited seats seven in captain’s chairs and can’t be ordered with the bench. The SEL can be ordered either way, so two 2020 Palisades at the same price can have different seat counts.

Torque peaks at 5,200 rpm, which tells you how the car drives. Load it up, merge onto the highway, and the transmission drops two gears while the V6 gets loud. It isn’t a quick car. It’s a smooth one, and that distinction is the whole reason the ride hardware below matters.

Three things on the 2020 order sheet track the trim ladder, and the SE gets none of them:

How it was received

The 2020 Palisade won Cars.com’s Best of 2020 in February 2020 and, before that, the 2020 3-Row SUV Challenge against six rivals. NHTSA gave it five stars overall, with five stars in both frontal and side crash tests. IIHS rated it Good in all six crashworthiness tests and named it a Top Safety Pick. IIHS has since added a harder side-impact test that did not exist in 2019, and the Palisade rates Marginal on it — so does the Telluride. That result is on the current ratings page and is not what that Top Safety Pick was based on.

Cars.com ranked the Palisade first and the Telluride second. The North American Car of the Year jury went the other way and gave the Telluride Utility Vehicle of the Year, with the Palisade among the finalists it beat. Same two cars, same year, opposite verdicts.

The Top Safety Pick came with a condition. IIHS rated the LED projectors Good and the halogen projectors Marginal, and the award applies only to cars with the LEDs — standard on the Limited, optional on the SEL, unavailable on the SE.

The self-leveling rear suspension follows exactly the same trim split. So the trim that won a comparison test on ride quality is the trim carrying both the award-winning headlights and, six years later, the third-largest complaint category on this car.

What owners filed

What follows comes out of a database that only holds bad news. No one writes to NHTSA to say their Palisade has been fine for six years. Everything below is what went wrong for the people who went to the trouble of reporting it, and the tens of thousands of owners who never filed anything are not represented here at all.

Categories below are sorted by count and each complaint is counted once. They add up to 490, plus the eight snow filings noted under the wipers; the remaining 28 are one-offs that don’t form a pattern.

Windshields — 103

The largest category on this model year, and it peaks here. Counted the same way, the 2021 model year drew 45, the 2022 drew 15, and every year after that is in single digits.

Two versions of the same complaint run through these. In the first, something did hit the glass and the result was out of proportion to it. From April 2021 (ODI 11406444):

“A TINY STONE KICKED UP WHILE DRIVING ON THE FREEWAY BARELY MADE A NOISE AND CRACKED THE WINDSHIELD. I TRIED TO HAVE REPAIRED AND IT SPREAD.”

In the second, nothing hit it. Sixteen filings say so explicitly and fifteen describe the car standing still at the time — parked, at a light, in a car wash. One owner went and got that in writing (ODI 11280516):

“PER THE DEALERSHIP RECOMMENDATION WE WENT TO SAFELITE FOR AN OPINION ABOUT THE CAUSE, SINCE WE HAD NO MEMORY OF ANYTHING HITTING THE WINDSHIELD, AND THE SAFELITE MANAGER PROVIDED A WRITTEN OPINION (VIA EMAIL) THAT THERE WAS NO EVIDENCE OF IMPACT, AND IT WAS HIS OPINION THAT THERE WAS A DEFECT IN THE GLASS.”

I’m not going to give you a clean split between the two. Free-text complaints don’t sort that way — several filings argue both at once, that a pebble hit the glass and that a pebble should not do this. What is countable: 21 describe the crack spreading after the fact, often after a shop tried to repair a chip, and 19 mention a second or third windshield. One owner (ODI 11492829) writes: “Four windshields in 2 years. Very small rocks cause major cracks. $6000 on windshields.”

Three filings are about the rear glass rather than the front, including one owner on their third rear windshield in a car that had never been struck.

There is no recall for this, and no service campaign.

It’s an out-of-pocket item. Owners quote insurance deductibles and replacement bills, not warranty claims.

Oil consumption — 73

Second-largest, and unlike the windshields it is still growing: 29 of these 73 were filed in 2025 and another 29 in 2026.

The pattern owners describe is a quart every 1,000 to 1,500 miles, usually appearing somewhere after 60,000 miles though a few report it much earlier.

No warning light comes first. That detail is in filing after filing.

From a complaint filed in October 2025 (ODI 11696193):

“Engine started burning oil at 65000 miles. It has now run almost completely out of oil twice at about 4200 miles since last oil change, not even close to reaching the manufacturer recommended interval of 7500 miles between oil changes. On top of the engine consuming oil at an alarming rate, there are no warning indicator lights that turn on to let you know your oil level is critically low.”

Read the engine shutdown section below together with this one. Thirty-four of these 73 also describe the car stalling or the engine failing outright, because running an engine low on oil is how you get there. Because each filing is counted once and oil takes priority in the count, all 34 are in this section instead of that one.

So the 30 in that section is not the count of owners describing a stall or an engine failure. It is what is left after this section takes its share, and the real figure is close to double it.

I am leaving it at that rather than adding the two together. Sorting free-text filings into “the engine quit” and “something else did” turns on judgment calls — a tailgate that would not open, a wheel that cracked, a car that burned in a driveway all land near this heading — and a precise-looking total would hide that.

Three of the 73 involved a fire.

Rear shocks — 60

This is the Palisade-specific one. Seventeen filings name the leveling suspension outright — Hyundai’s own documents call it both self-leveling and auto-leveling — and the rest describe rear shock or strut failure without saying which suspension the car had.

Owners describe the same sequence: a knocking or clunking noise from the back, then the ride turning bouncy and unsettled, then a replacement, then the noise again.

From a complaint filed in March 2024 (ODI 11577682):

“The rear self leveling shocks pop and rattle and ultimately fail. What used to be a comfortable ride is now a stiff bouncy response in the rear whenever traversing any but a smooth road. The bounce is so bad it affects the driver and at times the ability to maintain a straight course.”

Thirteen of the 60 describe a second or third replacement. Seventeen give a mileage, and they range from 20,000 to 86,000 miles — four put the failure at or under 20,000 miles, one of those on a car that had already been through two sets.

From July 2025 (ODI 11676457):

“Self leveling rear shocks failed at 21,000 miles leading to dangerous instability on the highway.”

There is no recall for this either. One owner describes Hyundai covering the first two replacements under warranty and declining the third.

Two things make this the item to check first. The self-leveling suspension is trim-dependent — never available on the SE — so an SE cannot have the self-leveling version of this failure. It can still have a rear shock fail. Seventeen of the 60 filings name the leveling suspension; the other 43 do not say.

And it repeats. A seller’s receipt for new rear shocks isn’t the reassurance it looks like.

Seat belts — 51

Hyundai recalled the 2020–2025 Palisade in September 2025 for seat belt buckles that may fail to latch (25V607000, Hyundai’s number 283). Twenty-one of these 51 filings mention the recall, and ten of those are owners who can’t get the part. Counted here as every filing that names the belt, including the ones NHTSA also tagged airbags; NHTSA’s own grouping separates those, which is why the year-by-year table shows a smaller number.

That recall came out of an investigation. NHTSA opened PE24021 in August 2024 into belts unlatching on their own in 2020–2023 Palisades, and closed it in December 2025 once Hyundai filed the recall. Hyundai’s filing explains the mechanism: buckle parts made out of specification add friction inside the latch channel, worse when it is cold, and a belt pushed in slowly may not fully latch. A buckle that never fully latched is a buckle that can open later. That is the connection between the recall’s wording and what owners describe, and it is this page’s reading of Hyundai’s explanation rather than something Hyundai says.

Sixteen describe the other symptom: a buckled belt coming undone while the car is moving.

From a complaint filed in January 2025 (ODI 11636562):

“The seatbelt is unbuckling at random times, even when it is not tugged on and while driving. Drove 10-15 times and the buckle unlatched at least 6 times. Another driver of the same vehicle is also having problems. Dealer/mechanic cannot replicate the problem. No warning symptoms prior to it unbuckling.”

Twelve of those sixteen were filed before the recall existed, the earliest in December 2022.

The recall’s interim letters went out October 23, 2025 and told owners to push the belt in firmly and tug it to confirm. Final remedy letters started in June 2026 and Hyundai expects them to run through December 2026, so a 2020 Palisade on a lot today may well be waiting on this repair.

Engine shutdown and engine failure — 30

These 30 are the filings where a stall or a failure was the main complaint. Another 34 sit in the oil section above, which is why this heading understates the problem by roughly half.

These describe the car losing power or shutting off — at a light, on a highway, mid-shift — and a smaller group describe outright mechanical failure.

From a complaint filed in July 2026 (ODI 11748335):

“Cylinder 1 and 6 rod bearing failure, plus complete destruction of piston number 6. On highway engine failed, sudden loss of power to move vehicle.”

And from February 2026 (ODI 11717200):

“While idling at a traffic light on a busy city street all of the warning lights on the car went off and the car shut off on its own.”

One of the 30 involved a fire, and the owner attributes it to the tow hitch harness recall described below.

Screens and electrical — 25

Head unit reboots, black screens, backup cameras that don’t come on, and batteries that go dead. No recall covers these, and unlike the windshields there is no clean trend to report: counted the same way, the 2021 model year drew 25 as well, the 2022 drew 10, and the 2023 drew 20.

Transmission — 24

Harsh or delayed shifts and, in a handful of cases, a shudder at steady speed. The 8-speed doesn’t generate the kind of pattern the engine does — 24 filings against 73 for oil consumption.

Wind noise — 24

A whistle from the front doors, usually described as starting somewhere between 30 and 50 mph, coming from the driver’s side more often than the passenger’s.

From a complaint filed in December 2021 (ODI 11443708):

“It seems as though the seal of the door is not properly molded around the door allowing the wind to get in and create a very annoying noise while driving.”

Not a safety item, and you can check it in five minutes on a highway on-ramp. This is an early-car complaint: 22 of the 24 were filed in 2019 and 2020, and the 2021 model year drew two.

Sunroof — 20

Two different problems share this heading. Some describe the panoramic glass shattering; others describe the roof jamming partway open, often with a broken wind deflector. Owners cite TSB 23-BD-003H-1 for the deflector; it’s a bulletin, not a recall, so it doesn’t show up in a VIN lookup.

Wiper motor — 15

Hyundai recalled the 2020–2021 Palisade in August 2022 because the windshield wiper motor may stop working (22V627000, Hyundai’s number 233). The remedy is a driver-side wiper arm replacement and owner letters went out December 13, 2022.

From a complaint filed in March 2025 (ODI 11646441):

“The driver side wiper stopped functioning during a rain storm. Fortunately, I was not on a major road and was able to navigate. If I had been on the highway, I would have been blinded and potentially in a major accident if not able to pull over expeditiously.”

A separate group of eight filings, not counted here, is about snow packing into the wiper well and stopping the blades. That is a design complaint rather than a failure.

The rest is thin

Airbags 13, brakes 11, steering 10, tow hitch 9, seats 8, driver assistance 6, liftgate struts 5, paint 2, third-row seat folding 1. The airbag and tow hitch filings are mostly about the recalls below rather than about failures owners experienced.

Recalls

Five recalls cover the 2020 Palisade, and two of them are still working through their remedy phase as of August 2026.

19V802000 — side curtain airbag mounting bolts, reported November 2019. Dealers install a protective cover. Repairs began December 20, 2019, so this one is old enough that most cars have had it.

22V627000 — windshield wiper motor, reported August 2022, covering 2020–2021 cars. Driver-side wiper arm replaced. Letters mailed December 13, 2022.

22V633000 — tow hitch harness, reported August 2022, covering 2020–2022 cars fitted with a factory or dealer-accessory tow hitch harness. Debris and moisture on the harness circuit board can short and start a fire. NHTSA’s advice was to park outside and away from structures until the repair is done. Letters mailed May 18, 2023.

If the car has a hitch, ask about this one by name. The answer you want is a completed repair, not reassurance that it’s an old recall — one owner here reports a car that burned as a total loss while parked on the street and points to this campaign (ODI 11758456).

25V607000 — seat belt buckles, reported September 2025, covering 2020–2025 cars. Interim letters October 23, 2025; final remedy letters began June 2026 and are expected to continue through December 2026.

26V034000 — third-row side curtain airbags that may deploy improperly, reported January 2026, covering 2020–2025 cars. The vehicles do not comply with the federal ejection mitigation standard. Dealers install a protective film over the rear window and remove padding. Interim letters March 13, 2026; final remedy letters June through December 2026.

Both of the open ones are in the same position: Hyundai has told owners there is a problem and is still working through the fix. VIN lookup is the only way to know where a specific car stands.

What doesn’t show up in the complaints

Almost nothing comes in about the third row itself, which is the reason most people bought this car — not the space, not the access, not the cargo area behind it. Neither does the towing, beyond the harness recall.

The exception is the folding mechanism rather than the seat. Two filings describe a folding seat closing on a child. In one, the power-folding seat was triggered while a child sat in it and “did not detect that anyone was sitting in it” (ODI 11757193). In the other, someone pulled the lever to tip the seat forward for third-row access and it “collapsed, nearly crushing her grandson” (ODI 11734521). A third describes the seats folding down onto the belt buckles and crushing them (ODI 11690506).

Only one of those three appears under third-row seats in the count above. The other two were filed under airbags and seat belts, and each filing is counted once — so a category list will always understate a problem that shows up in three different places. Three filings is not a pattern the way 103 windshields is one. It is worth knowing that on the power-folding seats, the button doesn’t check whether the seat is empty.

Headlights barely appear. Four filings mention them across the whole model year, and not one is a headlight failure — they are an alternator that took the lights out with it, an instrument cluster, a front camera, and an electrical fault.

On the Telluride, which shares this platform and had the same award-contingent headlight setup, headlights are the single largest complaint category at 168. Two closely related cars, two very different headlight records.

Nothing clusters in the crash-safety categories either. Across all 526 filings there are 13 crashes and 16 injuries reported.

The tone in the filings is worth a line. “I love my palisade but quickly becoming tired of this issue” (ODI 11742108) is a fair sample of how these are written. What owners are describing is a car they still want, wearing out in one specific place.

What the complaint curve says

Filings by year: 14 in 2019, then 102 in 2020, 54 in 2021, 43 in 2022, 56 in 2023, 50 in 2024, then 119 in 2025 and 88 so far in 2026.

Two humps. The first, in 2020, is the windshields — new cars, new owners, a fragile part discovered fast. It drains away after 2022, though the filings do not say why — replaced glass, cars changing hands, or simply a fault that shows up early or not at all.

The second hump is different. Of the 119 filings in 2025, 30 are rear shocks and 29 are oil consumption. Neither of those is a new-car problem. Hyundai’s basic warranty is five years or 60,000 miles, whichever comes first, and a three-row SUV driven normally crosses 60,000 well before the five years are up.

What changed in 2025 may not be how often these parts fail. It may be who pays when they do.

The oil numbers back that up better than the shocks do. Oil ran 29 in 2025 and another 29 in 2026, while the shocks went 30 in 2025 and then 5. One caveat on the oil side: Hyundai’s powertrain coverage runs ten years or 100,000 miles for the original owner, so a first owner who still has the car may be covered. Most 2020 Palisades on a used lot in 2026 aren’t on their first owner.

The comparison test that made this car’s reputation was run on a Limited AWD with the self-leveling suspension fitted and working. Everything the judges wrote about the ride was true of the car they drove.

The question six years later is not whether they were right. It is whether the car in front of you still has what they were driving.

If you’re looking at one

None of this is a verdict on the car. It is a list of things to check, ordered by what costs you the most if you get it wrong — which is not the same order as the complaint counts.

Find out which trim it is, and whether it has the self-leveling rear suspension. Standard on the Limited, optional on the SEL, unavailable on the SE. This one item sets the shape of everything below. If the car has it, you are looking at the part 17 filings name outright. If it doesn’t, those 17 don’t apply to it, and the other 43 filings never say which suspension they were on — so this data can’t tell you much about an SE either way.

Drive it over something rough, at low speed, with the windows down. The failure owners describe announces itself as a knock or clunk from the rear before the ride goes bouncy. A parking lot speed bump taken slowly is enough.

If the seller shows you a receipt for rear shocks, ask when. Thirteen of the 60 filings are second or third replacements. One owner (ODI 11612706) had a dealer fit OEM shocks in February and reported the replacement leaking “approximately 6.5 months after install.” New shocks are a data point about this car’s history, not a clean slate.

Pull the dipstick before you drive it, and ask for oil change records. Seventy-three filings describe oil consumption, 24 of them measuring it in quarts — a quart or worse per 1,000 miles — and the recurring detail is that no warning light came on first. If the records show top-offs between changes, that is the pattern.

Ask whether recall 22V633000 has been completed, and get the answer in writing. That is the tow hitch harness fire recall. “Scheduled” and “done” are different answers. If the car has no hitch it may not apply, but confirm rather than assume.

Run the VIN yourself at nhtsa.gov/recalls. Two recalls on this car are still mid-remedy — the seat belt buckles and the third-row curtain airbags — and Hyundai’s final letters run through December 2026. A seller who says everything is done may believe it.

Buckle every belt and pull on it. Sixteen filings describe a belt coming undone while driving. It takes a minute in the parking lot.

Know that the buckles carry a 15-year warranty that follows the car. Alongside the recall, Hyundai issued warranty extension Z06 in April 2025 covering the seat belt buckles on 2020–2025 Palisades for 15 years or 150,000 miles, whichever comes first, from the original in-service date, valid for subsequent owners. On the oldest cars in this series the calendar side of that runs to 2034. Nobody will mail you the letter; it went to whoever owned the car in 2025.

Get on the highway with the radio off. The door whistle shows up between 30 and 50 mph, and you won’t hear it on a residential test drive. Twenty-four filings describe it.

The transmission is not where this car’s money goes. Twenty-four filings out of 526, against 73 for oil. Check it the way you would on any used car; just don’t let it crowd out the list above.

Numbers worth writing down

Next in this series: the 2021 Palisade, which added the Calligraphy and cut the windshield filings by more than half.

Sources

• NHTSA complaint database — 526 filings for the 2020 Palisade, retrieved 2026-08-27
• Hyundai warranty extension Z06 — seat belt buckles, 2020–2025 Palisade, 15 years/150,000 miles, April 2025
• NHTSA preliminary evaluation PE24021 — inadvertent seat belt unlatch, 2020–2023 Palisade, 37 complaints at opening, August 2024; closed December 2025 per NHTSA’s investigations database
• Hyundai 2020 Palisade specifications (official)
• Hyundai 2020 Palisade features and trim availability (official)
• IIHS — 2020 Hyundai Palisade ratings
• NHTSA — 2020 Hyundai Palisade safety ratings
• Cars.com — Best of 2020
• Cars.com — 2020 3-Row SUV Challenge
• GoodCarBadCar — Hyundai Palisade sales figures

Specifications checked against Hyundai’s media site. Complaint counts and quotes came from NHTSA’s public database on 2026-08-27, and each quote carries its ODI number. Recall applicability varies by VIN. This is a summary of what owners and the press have reported, not buying or repair advice.