Electrical fire or melted wiring on the 2013 Kia Optima
4 fires 4 of the 6 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.
Only 4 reports for this mode came with an odometer reading, which is too few for percentiles to mean anything. The page is here because someone linked to it; treat the figures as anecdotes, and see the full report for this year instead.
When electrical fire or melted wiring gets reported
There are 6 reports of electrical fire or melted wiring on the 2013 Kia Optima, 4 with a mileage attached. That is too few to place the failure on the odometer with any confidence.
A part like this is normally expected to survive 90,000 miles. It is the 42nd most-reported problem on this model year.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | — | 70,000 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, 4 a fire 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 $1,500–$9,000 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 3 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2015, at a median of 55,000 miles, and latest on the 2012 at 75,000 miles.
By volume the 2015 carries the most reports, with 9; the 2013 has 6. 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.
Tick median reported mileage Solid middle half of reports Faint 10th to 90th percentile Colour how bad the failure is when it happens
What owners wrote
Verbatim from NHTSA complaint narratives, trimmed for length. The mileage is the one the owner gave.
The vehicle quit suddenly and without other warning on a toll road, approx speed of 70 MPH at night. I was unable to get to the vehicle to be towed due to the late night, I have towed later, originally thinking it was a bad battery, that turned out to be true, so we replaced that battery with a new one and it instantly smoked the starter, requiring a new one, which it destroyed, at that time further diagnosis revealed the engine was seized. I noticed later this is a known issue and a recall from kia has been issued for a replacement. The fire I note is the electrical fire from replacing the battery with a fresh battery, and since the engine was seized, the starter locked and caught fire, requiring a new starter, obviously after the motor is fully repaired, but I owe approx $350 for the starter and $400 approx for the electrical fire, I am uncertain of other damage caused be the engine seizing at such speeds/
On september 16, 2018 at approximately 930am, while on duty at work(correction officer) my kia optima gdi 2013 went up in flames in the parking lot of my job.. I was not present and the vehicle. I had already been on duty 530am that morning. Once I made it to the scene my car was completely almost burnt to the ground. The fire department labeled it as a electrical fire, which caused the car the burn from the inside out, starting from the engine. I had several personal items of mine burnt in the fire and also work equipment that was lost in the fire. Since the incident I've suffered mental, emotional and physical distress. I'm a single mother and I depended on my car to get me where I needed to go. Things have been very frustrating and hard. I'm seeking help from kia motors. *tr
On september 16, 2018 at approximately 930am, while on duty at work(correction officer) my kia optima gdi 2013 went up in flames in the parking lot of my job.. I was not present and the vehicle. I had already been on duty 530am that morning. Once I made it to the scene my car was completely almost burnt to the ground. The fire department labeled it as a electrical fire, which caused the car the burn from the inside out, starting from the engine. I had several personal items of mine burnt in the fire and also work equipment that was lost in the fire. Since the incident I've suffered mental, emotional and physical distress. I'm a single mother and I depended on my car to get me where I needed to go. Things have been very frustrating and hard. I'm seeking help from kia motors. *tr
Also reported on the 2013 Kia Optima
Other engine problem
Other steering problem
Other body or interior problem
Other electrical problem
Other brake problem
Other fuel system problem
How far this goes
This page is kept out of search results because 6 reports is not enough to publish percentiles from. It stays reachable because somebody looking at this exact car would rather see the reports than be told there are none.
Complaints are voluntary, so 6 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 electrical fire or melted wiring happen on the 2013 Kia Optima?
Across 4 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 70,000 miles. A quarter were filed before — and a quarter after —. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.
How common is electrical fire or melted wiring on the 2013 Kia Optima?
6 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.0 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