2020 Kia Telluride1st gen (2020–2025), pre-facelift

Updated 2026-08-28NHTSA counts read on this date — 746 complaints. They rise over time.

The 2020 Kia Telluride, Six Years and 746 Complaints Later

Every review of this car was written in 2019 by someone who had it for a week, and those reviews were glowing. They were also right, as far as they went. Nobody knew yet that the headlights would fail, because nobody had owned one long enough for that to happen.

Owners have since filed 746 complaints with NHTSA about the 2020 model year. Kia sold 58,932 Tellurides in calendar 2019 and 75,119 in 2020, and the 2020 model year went out across both years. Call it tens of thousands of cars. That is as far as the arithmetic goes — the model year sold across two calendar years, and 746 filings are not 746 separate owners. The count earns its keep because the five model years after this one are counted the same way. You can read every filing yourself; the database is public.

The basics

Kia built the Telluride in West Point, Georgia and aimed it at American families who wanted three rows without Highlander money. The 2020 through 2022 cars share a body and dashboard; the 2023 refresh brought a new front end, dual widescreen displays, and the X-Line and X-Pro trims.

Specs

From Kia’s official 2020 specifications.

Four trims — LX, S, EX, SX — with the same V6 in every one. There’s no engine to upgrade to. The LX seats eight, the rest seat seven with captain’s chairs, though the EX could be optioned back to eight. LX and S get synthetic leather, EX and SX the real thing.

The torque peak at 5,200 rpm tells you how it drives. Merging onto a highway with everyone in it means two downshifts and a lot of engine noise. It isn’t quick. It’s adequate in a way that never feels strained, which for most families amounts to the same thing.

Twenty-one cubic feet behind the third row is the number worth caring about. That’s a stroller and the luggage at the same time, with every seat still up.

How it was received

North American Utility Vehicle of the Year for 2020, voted by a panel of 50 jurors, beating the Hyundai Palisade and the Lincoln Aviator. A first for the Kia brand. Edmunds made it Top Rated SUV two years running. NHTSA gave it five stars overall, and IIHS rated it Good in all six crashworthiness categories and named it a Top Safety Pick. IIHS later added a tougher side-impact test that did not exist when this car was rated. The Telluride scores Marginal on it, a rating that covers the 2020 through 2022 cars and comes from crashing the structurally similar Hyundai Palisade. It is on the ratings page today and was not part of the award.

The Top Safety Pick only applied to Tellurides with the optional LED headlights. The award was contingent on them. Those are the same headlights that six years later account for more owner complaints than anything else on this car.

What owners filed

NHTSA’s database is a complaint database. Nobody files a report to say their Telluride has been fine for six years, so the picture below is lopsided by construction: a list of what breaks, not a portrait of ownership. The overwhelming majority of 2020 Tellurides on the road aren’t in here at all.

What it’s good for is ranking. There are two counts below and they are not the same thing.

The ranking is NHTSA’s own. Every filing carries a component label picked by NHTSA, not by me, and each filing is counted once — under the most specific label it carries. That is what puts exterior lighting at the top of this car.

The sections count what owners wrote, because the label alone doesn’t tell you what broke. Each one states its rule so you can run it yourself. Those counts overlap where the failures overlap, and I say so when they do.

In order:

Headlights — 168 complaints

This is the one that can actually hurt you. Owners describe the LED assembly failing outright while driving at night.

Exterior lighting is also the biggest group NHTSA has on this car — 179 filings, more than any other. This section counts the 168 of them that use the word headlight, headlamp, high beam, or low beam. The two numbers are close because the lighting complaints here are almost all about the same part.

From a complaint filed in August 2026 (ODI 11758772):

“The factory-installed driver/passenger side LED headlight assembly suffered a sudden, total internal electrical failure while driving at night, causing an immediate loss of forward visibility… The housing seals degrade prematurely, allowing condensation to become trapped inside”

That owner reports it hitting the SX and SX Prestige trims specifically — the premium ones with the nicer lights. NHTSA campaign 24V148000 covers high beam failures on some cars; Kia’s number for the same recall is SC299. Owners whose VINs fall outside that window are unhappy about it and say so in the filings.

Two of these complaints involve fire. One involves a crash.

The repair is not cheap. The unit is sealed, so nothing inside it can be changed — the fix is the whole assembly. One owner was quoted $1,682.54 for both (ODI 11508299); others report $2,370 (ODI 11505907) and $2,500 (ODI 11507015).

Windshields — 122 complaints

Read them and they split two ways. Fifty-five of the 122 name a rock, gravel or debris, and the complaint is that a chip the size of a coin spread across the whole glass. The other 67 don’t name a rock — several say the crack showed up while the car sat parked. From a complaint filed in April 2026 (ODI 11730293):

“Windshield spontaneously cracked. I know it was spontaneous because the car was parked and I was near it for the full hour, nothing hit the windshield and when I got back in the car the windshield was cracked.”

This complaint appears in the first year and never stops appearing.

(Counted as filings that name the windshield and describe it cracking, chipping, spidering, or shattering — the glass, not the cause.)

Oil consumption — 78 complaints

The engine drinks oil, and it sometimes announces itself with a knock first — five of the 78 say so. An owner who bought used at 77,000 miles found the dipstick dry at the first oil change (ODI 11753165). The dealer ran three consumption tests, each one came back at least a quart low, and the engine was condemned.

Kia’s bulletin ENG222 reportedly sets the threshold for excessive consumption at a quart per 1,000 miles. Some owners are well past that — one reports adding a quart per week.

What worries me most in these filings is that the warning light doesn’t always come first. In one complaint (ODI 11748233), the car was driven to the airport with no lights and no noise, then shut down entirely on the next trip with every warning on the dash lit.

If you own one: check the dipstick. Don’t wait for the light.

(Counted as filings that mention oil consumption — burning, consuming, adding or running low on oil, a quart of it, or the dipstick.)

Sunroof — 66 complaints

The wind deflector and the arm that holds it break, the glass goes off track, and then it won’t close. Owners call that piece the windscreen arm, which is confusing on a car that also has 122 windshield complaints — it’s the sunroof part, not the glass in front of you. Owners cite Kia bulletin BOD319 and say dealers confirm it’s a known issue on 2020–2022 cars. There’s no recall.

One owner (ODI 11741888) was quoted $7,000 and had a reasonable reaction to it:

“The windscreen arm is a known issue! But there is no recall. I SHOULDN’T HAVE TO PAY $7000 to fix a known problem!”

(Counted as filings that name the sunroof, the moonroof, or the wind deflector and its arm.)

Engine shutdown — 55 complaints

This is not a separate pile of cars from the oil section above: 22 of the 55 also mention oil. Read those 22 as the oil problem seen from the other end.

The oil version, from ODI 11738539, filed at 117,000 miles:

“I was driving down the interstate when all of a sudden, I hear a bang, and my power went crazy, couldn’t push the gas at all, my car was suddenly shut off. We coasted to the side of the interstate and got out to see a pile of oil underneath my car.”

The rest are electrical. One owner (ODI 11747463) had the car shut off at 60 to 65 mph with the battery light flickering, coasted into a parking lot, replaced the battery, and had it happen again an hour later. That one turned out to be the alternator.

(Counted as filings describing a stall, a shutdown, or a loss of power while driving.)

Paint — 48 complaints

Owners report Snow White Pearl paint delaminating. It starts as chips on the hood or the roof edge above the windshield and progresses to sheets coming off down to bare metal, with no impact involved. Owners note this spans multiple Kia models and model years, not just the Telluride, and point out that exposed metal rusts.

Two filings describe paint coming off the car at speed and call it a hazard to other drivers.

(Counted as filings naming paint, clear coat, or delamination together with peeling, chipping, flaking, bubbling, coming off, or bare metal.)

The seat fire recall, twice

In June 2024, Kia recalled roughly 463,000 Tellurides because a dislodged power seat switch could run the motor continuously until it overheated and caught fire.

That fix didn’t work.

On July 14, 2026, Kia recalled 462,869 vehicles from the 2020–2024 model years for the same defect. An internal investigation found additional failure modes in the switch, and also found that dealers may not have completed the original repair correctly. Kia is aware of seven seat fires and eleven melted seat motors. The remedy this time is an electronic fuse assembly, installed free, with owner letters that went out August 13, 2026.

NHTSA is telling owners to park outside and away from structures until it’s done.

Complaints in the database show the predictable next problem: owners receiving the recall notice and being told the part isn’t available yet.

What doesn’t show up in the complaints

The third row, which is the reason most people bought the car, has not generated a pattern of complaints — four filings mention it at all. Neither has ride quality, the interior, or the equipment list. The 8-speed automatic barely appears — 25 mentions out of 746, and some of those are past 100,000 miles, which isn’t the same as a defect. The crash structure that earned five stars and a Top Safety Pick has not generated a pattern of complaints.

Read enough of these filings and the tone stands out. People are angry about a four-figure headlight or a $7,000 sunroof. They are not saying they bought a bad car. Several go out of their way to say the opposite before getting to the part they’re upset about.

What the complaint curve says

Complaints ran 73 in 2019 and 71 in 2020, then settled to about 50 a year through 2022. In 2023 they jumped to 151, and they have stayed above 100 every year since.

That is not the shape of a normal ownership curve. Early complaints are usually assembly defects, and they taper as the build settles down. This car’s problems arrived late. Headlight housing seals degrade over years, not months. Paint lets go after a few summers. Oil consumption announces itself late enough that a second owner is usually the one who finds it.

None of which was visible to anyone driving the car for a week in 2019.

Rates aren’t comparable across models without running the same arithmetic on each, and a car with a loyal, engaged owner base files more reports than a forgettable one. So I’m not going to call this reliable or unreliable on the strength of a raw count. What the data supports is the ranking: within this car, headlights dominate, and it isn’t close.

If you’re looking at one

Start the car at dusk and turn on the high beams. Exterior lighting is the largest group NHTSA has on this car — 179 filings — and the failure is the whole LED assembly, not a bulb. Look into the housings for condensation or fogging — owners describe the seals degrading and letting moisture in before the unit dies. Check the SX and SX Prestige especially. Replacement runs into four figures.

Pull the dipstick before you drive it, not after. Cold, on level ground. If it’s low on a car that was supposedly just serviced, that’s the pattern in 78 complaints. Ask for oil change records and ask directly whether a dealer ever ran an oil consumption test — that’s the process Kia uses, and a seller who has been through it will know the phrase. An oil analysis costs about $30 if you want to know before you commit.

Open the sunroof all the way and close it. Twice. That’s the whole test. One owner was quoted $7,000.

If it’s Snow White Pearl, walk the hood and the roof edge above the windshield. Look for chips lifting at the edges rather than pits from stones. The delamination starts small and goes to bare metal, and bare metal on a roof edge rusts.

Ask whether recall 26V430000 has been completed, and get it in writing. This is the second attempt at the seat motor fire fix — the 2024 repair failed, and Kia found that some dealers hadn’t done it correctly the first time. Complaints filed in mid-2026 show owners being told the part isn’t available yet, so “it’s scheduled” and “it’s done” are different answers. Until it’s done, NHTSA says park it outside.

Look at the windshield you’re getting. Not because a cracked one is a dealbreaker, but because 122 filings describe these cracking, more than half of them without naming a rock or gravel, and the replacement you pay for may not be the last one.

Numbers worth writing down

NHTSA lists seven recall campaigns against the 2020 Telluride. The seat fire is the one making news, but it isn’t the only one worth a VIN check — 24V214000 in particular is a rollaway risk, and the complaints barely mention it.

NHTSA’s site holds all 746 complaints, searchable by the ODI numbers quoted above.

We’ll do this for the 2021 and 2022 cars next, and the numbers change — some of these problems got fixed, and some didn’t.

Sources

• NHTSA complaint database — 746 complaints for the 2020 Telluride, quoted above by ODI number
• GoodCarBadCar — Telluride US sales figures
• Kia Media — 2020 Telluride Specifications (official)
• Edmunds — 2020 Kia Telluride Review
• NHTSA — Park Outside recall, Kia Telluride
• IIHS — 2020 Kia Telluride ratings
• Kia Media — Telluride wins 2020 North American Utility Vehicle of the Year
• Kia Telluride Forum
• CarComplaints — 2020 Telluride high oil consumption

Specs checked against Kia’s media site. Complaint counts and quotes come from NHTSA’s public database, retrieved 2026-08-26; each quote lists its ODI number so you can look it up. Recall applicability depends on the VIN — check yours at nhtsa.gov/recalls. This summarizes what owners and reviewers reported. It isn’t buying or repair advice.