2020 is the busy year, and it is not the useful one
The ranking is not in dispute. The 2020 car holds 746 complaint filings, more than double any year that came after it.
From there it falls quickly. The 2021 car holds 349 filings, the 2022 car 318, and the 2025 car just 97.
Read only that and the conclusion writes itself: buy a later one. The problem is the shaded portion of each bar, which barely moves as a share while the totals collapse around it.
That shaded portion is glass. It appears in all six model years, and it is the reason a year ranking decides less here than it usually does.
Lighting is most of what made 2020 busy
The launch year's volume has a specific explanation rather than a general one.
Exterior lighting leads it at 164 filings, well ahead of everything else in that record. Engine sits some way behind at 88.
Kia eventually issued a campaign covering it. Campaign 24V148 covers high beam headlights that may fail on 2020 cars.
The timing is the interesting part. That campaign was issued in 2024, four model years after the cars it covers were built and long after owners had filed.
What clears a 2020 car
- 24V148, high beam headlights
- Dealer record showing the inspection or replacement was carried out
- Engine complaints
- Service history, since these are spread rather than concentrated on one component
- Seat fire campaigns
- Both entries, which the later section covers, not just the earlier one
- Glass
- Priced in rather than checked off, for reasons the next section explains
Once the lighting is accounted for, the 2020 car stops looking like a general warning. It looks like a launch year with one large, now documented, problem.
A windshield that cracks while the car is parked
Here is the part that survives every change of model year.
Across 2020 to 2025 the Telluride record holds 416 visibility filings. Three hundred and sixty five of those name the windshield or the glass directly.
The proportion barely moves as the volume falls. It runs 131 of 151 on the 2020 car, 83 of 92 on the 2022, 36 of 37 on the 2023 and 17 of 19 on the 2025.
What owners describe is consistent and unusual. Sixty-seven of the 365 record the crack appearing while the car was parked, in a driveway, a garage or a car park.
Twenty-seven state plainly that nothing struck the glass. One filing describes standing near the car for a full hour before finding the screen cracked on returning to it.
The way the damage travels is the other repeated detail. Seventy-five of the 365 describe a chip or crack spreading across the screen rather than staying where it started.
Driving down the highway and notice a small chip in the windshield. We heard no impact noise while driving. It went from a micro chip to the attached picture in approx an hour.
Replacement does not reliably end it. Ten filings record a second or third screen cracking after the first was changed, one of them less than a year after a goodwill replacement by Kia.
Another owner describes repairing the screen several times and replacing it, only for the new glass to crack from the smallest pebble.
The absence in this story matters as much as the volume. No recall campaign covers the Telluride windshield on any model year.
That places it outside the category most buyers check. A VIN search will come back clean and the glass will still be a live cost.
On this vehicle the recall lookup and the real running cost are two different questions. The screen belongs to the second one.
So treat it as a running cost rather than a defect waiting to be fixed. Check what glass cover costs on your policy before you agree a price, and inspect the screen carefully on any car you view.
It is also a cost no maintenance schedule lists. Add it yourself to whatever the Kia Telluride reliability record gives you for servicing, because a screen every few years appears in none of those figures.
The seat fire campaign that had to be reissued
The second persistent problem is the more serious of the two, and it is easy to mark as solved.
Campaign 24V407 covers 2020 to 2024 Tellurides. Kia states that the front power seat motor can overheat because of a stuck power seat slide knob, and that this can cause a fire while parked or driving.
The remedy fitted a bracket to the seat switch. Owners were told to park outside and away from structures until the work was done.
Then it came back. Campaign 26V430 covers the same 2020 to 2024 cars for the same fire risk.
Its stated causes are where this stops being routine. Kia names a stuck slide knob or an improper recall 24V407 repair as the reason the motor can overheat.
- Campaign 24V407Seat motor can overheat and cause a fire. Dealers fit a bracket to the switch. Owners advised to park outside
- Campaign 26V430Same cars, same fire risk. Kia now names an improper 24V407 repair among the causes
- Current remedyAn electronic fuse assembly replaces the bracket approach entirely
So a history report showing 24V407 as complete no longer settles the question. On these cars it can mean the repair that the second campaign was written about.
Ask specifically whether 26V430 has been carried out, by VIN, on any 2020 to 2024 car. That is the entry that matters now.
Four campaigns are about what this car does while parked
Read the Telluride's campaign list in order and an odd theme appears. Most of the serious entries are not about how it drives.
Campaign 22V626 covers 2020 to 2022 cars fitted with a genuine Kia four-pin tow hitch harness. Debris and moisture can collect in it, and Kia gives fire while parked or driving as the risk.
Kia attached the identical parking instruction to this one. Two unrelated components on the same vehicle, and both remedies open by telling owners where they may leave the car overnight.
Campaign 24V214 is different again. On 2020 to 2024 cars the intermediate shaft and right front driveshaft may not be fully engaged, which Kia says can let the vehicle roll away while in park.
The parked-car campaigns, by model year
- 2020 to 2022: tow hitch harness 22V626, if the car has a Kia four-pin harness fitted
- 2020 to 2024: seat motor 24V407, the original bracket remedy
- 2020 to 2024: seat motor 26V430, the reissue that replaced it
- 2020 to 2024: driveshaft 24V214, where the remedy advice is to use the handbrake every time
- 2025: seat back frame 26V105, which is a crash campaign rather than a parked one
Three separate fire campaigns and one roll-away campaign all concern a car that is standing still. That is unusual enough to be worth checking as a group rather than one entry at a time.
For a buyer it simplifies into one request. Ask the dealer to run every open campaign by VIN in a single search, rather than checking the one your research happened to name.
That habit is worth carrying beyond this model. Kia has been working through a separate hydraulic control unit fault across its range, with campaigns covering the Kia Sportage from 2010 to 2021 for an engine compartment fire.
The Telluride is not in those entries. What it shares is the pattern of a single failure mode addressed in instalments, which is why a full VIN search beats checking one number at a time.
The 2021 and 2022 cars have a roof problem
The two years between the launch car and the current ones are usually skipped, and one of them has a fault worth naming.
The 2021 car holds 349 filings. Structure accounts for 31 of them, and 24 of those 31 name the panoramic sunroof, most often the wind deflector arm breaking.
Owners describe the deflector mechanism failing at ordinary mileage, in one case at 60,500 miles, with the broken arm left loose in the roof assembly.
So the roof is worth two minutes on any 2021 car. Open the sunroof fully, listen at the front edge as the deflector rises, and check it sits square rather than skewed.
The 2022 car is a different shape again. Its 318 filings are led by visibility at 65, which is the windshield story continuing rather than anything new.
Neither year belongs on an avoid list. Both simply have one named check that the popular rankings skip because they stop at the launch car.
What the newest cars add
Falling complaint volume is not the same as a finished vehicle, and the newer Tellurides show why.
The 2023 car holds 202 filings, the 2024 car 214 and the 2025 car 97. On volume alone they look settled.
The 2022 car is worth one note before leaving the older years. Its instrument cluster was recalled twice, first for software under 21V577 and then again under 22V344 for excess adhesive on a circuit board, both for the same blank display.
But campaigns keep arriving. Campaign 25V494 covers door belt molding trim that can delaminate and detach on 2023 to 2025 cars, which Kia describes as a road hazard for other vehicles.
| Model year | Filings | What it adds |
|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 202 | Door trim campaign 25V494, and the seat campaigns still reach it |
| 2024 | 214 | Same trim and seat exposure, plus engine campaign 24V077 for valve springs that may break |
| 2025 | 97 | Outside both seat campaigns, but carries seat back frame campaign 26V105 |
The windshield continues throughout, at 36 filings on the 2023 car, 31 on the 2024 and 17 on the 2025.
None of that makes a newer car a poor choice. It means the VIN search is worth running on a two-year-old car exactly as much as on a five-year-old one.
Which Telluride to look for
The useful criterion here is not volume. It is which campaign list is shortest, because that is the part a buyer can still act on.
The 2025 car is the only model year outside both seat fire campaigns. It carries a seat back frame campaign of its own instead, and it is the most expensive way to buy this vehicle.
The 2023 car is the better balance for most buyers. Its 202 filings sit well below the launch years, and its campaign exposure is two entries a dealer can confirm in one call.
Whichever year you choose, budget for glass and ask for the second seat campaign by number. Those two questions matter more on this vehicle than the model year that every other list is arguing about.