AtWhatMileage
Engine · 27 owner reports

Stalling while driving on the 2013 Hyundai Sonata

3 crashes 3 of the 27 reports for this failure mention a crash, a fire, an injury or a death. Those are the owner's words on the complaint form, not a verified finding, and one report can mention more than one.

Reports of this failure 27
With an odometer reading 22
Reports per 1,000 built 0.1 per 1,000
Filed below 36,000 miles 9%
Mention a crash, fire or injury 3
Typical repair $300–$2,500
What it means when it happens Critical
Rank among this year's problems 21st

When stalling while driving gets reported

Owners of the 2013 Hyundai Sonata report stalling while driving at a median of 90,000 miles. A quarter of the reports come in before 50,000 miles and a quarter after 125,000 miles, from 22 reports that carried an odometer reading.

A part like this is normally expected to survive 75,000 miles. It is the 21st most-reported problem on this model year.

The mileage distribution

The reported range runs from 45,000 miles at the tenth percentile to 180,000 miles at the ninetieth, a spread of 137,056 miles across the middle 80% of reports.

When the reports scatter this far, the mileage is telling you about how these cars were driven more than about the part itself.

9% of the dated reports were filed under 36,000 miles.

The whole distribution

Percentiles of the 22 odometer readings owners gave.
10th25thMedian 75th90th
42,944 miles 50,770 miles 90,000 miles 126,750 miles 180,000 miles

Read the 10th percentile as “one report in ten arrived this early”. Exact figures are shown in this table because it is the table of record; everywhere else on the site they are rounded to the precision the sample can carry.

What a percentile can and cannot tell you here

These five numbers describe the readings owners gave, in order. The median is the middle one: half the reports arrived below it. The 10th and 90th are the edges of the bulk of the distribution, and the distance between them is the part worth reading. A tight spread — say 70,000 to 95,000 miles — points at something that wears out on a schedule, and the schedule is knowable. A wide one, 20,000 to 190,000, points at a fault that hits some cars and never troubles others, which means the mileage on the listing in front of you tells you very little about your odds.

What these figures are not is a survival curve. Every reading here comes from a car whose owner filed a complaint, so the sample contains only failures: it cannot say what share of the fleet made it past 150,000 miles untouched, because those owners had nothing to report. Nor is the mileage the moment of failure — it is the odometer reading as recalled at the time of filing, which may be weeks later and is sometimes rounded to the nearest ten thousand by the person typing it.

Percentiles are shown at all only once 8 readings exist for the vehicle and mode. Below that the middle of a handful of numbers is noise wearing a decimal point, so the figures are withheld rather than dressed up.

What happens, and what it costs

Of these reports, 3 a crash is mentioned. Owners write their own complaints and the agency does not verify them, so read this as what the reports say happened rather than as a confirmed count.

Putting it right typically runs $300–$2,500 at an independent US shop. That range is an editorial estimate held in this site's failure-mode catalogue, not a figure from NHTSA, and it is a repair cost rather than a diagnosis cost.

This mode is classified as critical, which means a failure can leave the car unable to stop, steer, or stay out of the way of traffic. It is weighted accordingly in the risk score.

The same failure on other years

The same failure is reported on 9 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2016, at a median of 15,000 miles, and latest on the 2017 at 175,000 miles.

By volume the 2011 carries the most reports, with 74; the 2013 has 27. A mode that appears across most years of a model is usually a design choice rather than a bad batch.

If one year stands out to the left, that is the year to avoid; if the whole line sits at a similar mileage, this is wear rather than a defect in one production run.

What owners wrote

Verbatim from NHTSA complaint narratives, trimmed for length. The mileage is the one the owner gave.

Engine shuts off while driving resulting in two minor accidents/off/road incidents, battery (which has tested in excellent condition) needs to be jump started 4-5 times a week, sometimes more. Radio, charging ports, and steering wheel controls are not currently working, lights inside car flash, headlights become locked on, every single function in car has ended twice locking me out completely. These incidents have happened on many different dates and the dealer will not help us, but I am entering the date of the last incident below.

32,000 miles NHTSA complaint 1231840 filed 2015-10-24

Engine shuts off while driving resulting in two minor accidents/off/road incidents, battery (which has tested in excellent condition) needs to be jump started 4-5 times a week, sometimes more. Radio, charging ports, and steering wheel controls are not currently working, lights inside car flash, headlights become locked on, every single function in car has ended twice locking me out completely. These incidents have happened on many different dates and the dealer will not help us, but I am entering the date of the last incident below.

32,000 miles NHTSA complaint 1231841 filed 2015-10-24

Tl* the contact owns a 2013 hyundai sonata. While driving at unknown speeds, the vehicle made an abnormal knocking noise and the engine stalled without warning. The vehicle was towed to the contact's residence. The local dealer was not contacted. The vehicle was not diagnosed or repaired. The manufacturer was not contacted. The failure mileage was 48,027.

48,027 miles NHTSA complaint 1382664 filed 2017-06-05

Also reported on the 2013 Hyundai Sonata

Other engine problem

499 reports median 97k

Other steering problem

258 reports median 45k

Other electrical problem

146 reports median 80k

Other fuel system problem

135 reports median 102k

Other lighting problem

94 reports median 83k

How far this goes

Complaints are voluntary, so 27 is a floor and not a count of affected cars. Mileages are typed in by owners and cluster on round numbers. And the mode itself is assigned by software reading the complaint text, which is reliable in bulk and fallible one report at a time.

Questions this page answers

At what mileage does stalling while driving happen on the 2013 Hyundai Sonata?

Across 22 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 90,000 miles. A quarter were filed before 50,000 miles and a quarter after 125,000 miles. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.

How common is stalling while driving on the 2013 Hyundai Sonata?

27 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.1 per 1,000 vehicles. Complaints are voluntary, so this is a floor rather than a count of affected cars.

What this is and is not. These are the mileages at which owners chose to complain to a federal agency, which is not the same as the mileage at which the part fails on every car. It skews toward failures that happened outside warranty, cost real money, or frightened someone. It is still the only public dataset that carries failure mileage at all, and the shape of a few hundred readings is informative even when a single one is not. Methodology · JSON · this failure on other cars

Source Owner complaints and recall records published by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, model years 1996–2027 Figures rebuilt Published by AtWhatMileage How every figure is computed