AtWhatMileage
Lighting · 44 owner reports

Other lighting problem on the 2016 Kia Sorento

1 crash 1 of the 44 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 44
With an odometer reading 30
Reports per 1,000 built 3.1 per 1,000
Filed below 36,000 miles 37%
Mention a crash, fire or injury 1
Typical repair $120–$1,200
What it means when it happens Moderate
Rank among this year's problems 10th

When other lighting problem gets reported

Owners of the 2016 Kia Sorento report other lighting problem at a median of 47,500 miles. A quarter of the reports come in before 30,000 miles and a quarter after 80,000 miles, from 30 reports that carried an odometer reading.

A part like this is normally expected to survive 86,000 miles. It is the 10th most-reported problem on this model year.

The mileage distribution

The reported range runs from 17,500 miles at the tenth percentile to 102,500 miles at the ninetieth, a spread of 84,580 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.

37% of the dated reports were filed under 36,000 miles.

The whole distribution

Percentiles of the 30 odometer readings owners gave.
10th25thMedian 75th90th
17,920 miles 30,000 miles 47,007 miles 79,139 miles 102,500 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, 1 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 $120–$1,200 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.

The same failure on other years

The same failure is reported on 16 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2019, at a median of 300 miles, and latest on the 2011 at 120,000 miles.

By volume the 2017 carries the most reports, with 83; the 2016 has 44. 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.

Tl* the contact owns a 2016 kia sorento. While driving 65 MPH with the high beams activated, the contact attempted to switch to the low beams and the headlights failed. The vehicle was taken to the dealer to be diagnosed. The vehicle was not repaired. The manufacturer was not notified of the failure. The approximate failure mileage was 2,604.

2,604 miles NHTSA complaint 1212464 filed 2015-08-24

No accident or any such thing has happened yet but I think something should be done about the headlights as they are too easily covered with mud while driving on wet roads. I was driving to another city 2 hours away and it got dark out and when I noticed I couldn't really see ahead of me very far and I know the headlights on this car are amazing. So I stopped and sure enough the headlights were all covered with spatter from other vehicles tires splashing the wet road up onto them. Finally after clearin the mud off of the headlights I could see again far in front of me. But not even 30 minutes later did I have to stop again to clear off the headlights so I could see in front of me.

7,800 miles NHTSA complaint 1243680 filed 2015-12-07

Tl* the contact owns a 2016 kia sorento. While driving various speeds, the head lamps flickered and turned off without warning. The contact was given a loaner vehicle to drive, but the same failure occurred. The manufacturer was notified, but the cause of the failure could not be determined. The failure mileage was 10,000. Updated 05/16/17*lj updated 09/07/2017*js

10,000 miles NHTSA complaint 1337605 filed 2016-12-01

Also reported on the 2016 Kia Sorento

Other engine problem

340 reports median 79k

Excessive oil consumption

106 reports median 97k

Other body or interior problem

82 reports median 52k

Head gasket failure

72 reports median 108k

Other electrical problem

71 reports median 38k

Other powertrain problem

69 reports median 58k

How far this goes

Complaints are voluntary, so 44 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 other lighting problem happen on the 2016 Kia Sorento?

Across 30 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 47,500 miles. A quarter were filed before 30,000 miles and a quarter after 80,000 miles. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.

How common is other lighting problem on the 2016 Kia Sorento?

44 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 3.1 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