Loss of braking on the 2011 Kia Sorento
2 crashes 2 injuries 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 5 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 loss of braking gets reported
There are 6 reports of loss of braking on the 2011 Kia Sorento, 5 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 78,000 miles. It is the 51st most-reported problem on this model year.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | — | 43,276 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, 2 a crash and 2 an injury are 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 $400–$3,000 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 10 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2013, at a median of 5,000 miles, and latest on the 2004 at 150,000 miles.
By volume the 2006 carries the most reports, with 10; the 2011 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.
Was driving along at about 35mph and noticed a vehicle turning in front of me. I brake to stop or slow down at least. The brakes failed completely, no brakes, did not stop vehicle. It was like the anti-lock system was trying to work, but worked faulty, almost in a reverse fashion. I pressed brake pedal to no avail, like it was slipping, but nothing to slip on. Long story short I ended up going in the ditch to avoid running into the vehicle. Previous to this about 2months the shifter would not go into the park position, no matter what I tried, thankfully I was near the dealership. They replaced the brake controller and it seemed to fix the problem until now. Furthermore, when I go around a corner at a reasonable speed the engine kills power for a split second, and the anti-sway lights kick on. This seems to be more of a safety concern than a safety fix. I feel having 3 serious potentially life threatening situations in the last 3 months merits further investigation into this model of kia, before it literally is killed in action, kia. I recently watch the news and saw a stuck accelerator problem on this model as well, hope you will…
I bought my 2011 kia sorento preowned certified car on 12/07/2012, the next evening 12/08/2012 I was driving home from town and about one block before I got to my residence I heard a noise like something hit the bottom of the car. I then turned into my driveway and as I began to come to a stop I realized I had no brakes in turn hitting another persons car that was parked in my driveway. 911 was called because my son and myself were injured, as the fire department inspected the car he found on the drivers front wheel that most of the brake had fallen apart, the brake fluid was low also, later one of the brake pads was found on the road not far from my driveway none of the other missing parts were found. I have been trying to talk to kia and they don't seem to care nor have they tried to rectify the problem after a solid month. Today when I was looking up a phone # for yet another kia dept I found that there was a recall for 2011 kia sorento for the exact same thing with my car. Kia's "preowned certified" program guarantees that the car went through a 150 point inspection brakes being a top priority. All they will say is they can…
I bought my 2011 kia sorento preowned certified car on 12/07/2012, the next evening 12/08/2012 I was driving home from town and about one block before I got to my residence I heard a noise like something hit the bottom of the car. I then turned into my driveway and as I began to come to a stop I realized I had no brakes in turn hitting another persons car that was parked in my driveway. 911 was called because my son and myself were injured, as the fire department inspected the car he found on the drivers front wheel that most of the brake had fallen apart, the brake fluid was low also, later one of the brake pads was found on the road not far from my driveway none of the other missing parts were found. I have been trying to talk to kia and they don't seem to care nor have they tried to rectify the problem after a solid month. Today when I was looking up a phone # for yet another kia dept I found that there was a recall for 2011 kia sorento for the exact same thing with my car. Kia's "preowned certified" program guarantees that the car went through a 150 point inspection brakes being a top priority. All they will say is they can…
Also reported on the 2011 Kia Sorento
Other body or interior problem
Other engine problem
Other powertrain problem
Airbag warning light or occupant sensor fault
Other electrical problem
Door latch or handle failure
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 loss of braking happen on the 2011 Kia Sorento?
Across 5 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 45,000 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 loss of braking on the 2011 Kia Sorento?
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