AtWhatMileage
Wheels · 4 owner reports

Tire blowout or tread separation on the 2013 Kia Soul

1 injury 1 of the 4 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.

Reports of this failure 4
With an odometer reading 4
Reports per 1,000 built 0.1 per 1,000
Filed below 36,000 miles 100%
Mention a crash, fire or injury 1
Typical repair $200–$1,500
What it means when it happens Critical
Rank among this year's problems 33rd

When tire blowout or tread separation gets reported

There are 4 reports of tire blowout or tread separation on the 2013 Kia Soul, 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 38,000 miles. It is the 33rd most-reported problem on this model year.

The whole distribution

Percentiles of the 4 odometer readings owners gave.
10th25thMedian 75th90th
— — 24,308 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 an injury 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 $200–$1,500 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, every year of the Kia Soul

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.

Median
  1. 2010 Kia Soul tire blowout or tread separation 43k
  2. 2011 Kia Soul tire blowout or tread separation 13k
  3. 2012 Kia Soul tire blowout or tread separation 121k
  4. 2013 (this one) 24k
  5. 2014 Kia Soul tire blowout or tread separation 75k
  6. 2015 Kia Soul tire blowout or tread separation 90k
  7. 2016 Kia Soul tire blowout or tread separation
    no odometer readings given
    —

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.

Opened drivers door, got in and shut the door and the rear hatch window blew out. Vehicle is now at dealership and they called to say car is not to be touched because products investigations is going to look at the car before another window can be installed. There are other complaints that are the same as mine and the window broke in shards and splinters uncommon to a normal car window. *tr

1,000 miles NHTSA complaint 983759 filed 2013-06-04

I was driving on a highway when, without any provacation, the two tires on the drivers side blew out the sidewall. Hole was the size of a 50 cent piece. This happened again on march 26, 2014. We were driving on a highway and the rear tire on the driver's side blew out the sidewall again. Mileage was 36,646. *tr

26,616 miles NHTSA complaint 1050860 filed 2014-03-30

I was driving on a highway when, without any provacation, the two tires on the drivers side blew out the sidewall. Hole was the size of a 50 cent piece. This happened again on march 26, 2014. We were driving on a highway and the rear tire on the driver's side blew out the sidewall again. Mileage was 36,646. *tr

26,616 miles NHTSA complaint 1050861 filed 2014-03-30

Also reported on the 2013 Kia Soul

Other engine problem

162 reports median 110k

Other steering problem

106 reports median 69k

Other brake problem

79 reports median 55k

Catalytic converter failure

57 reports median 125k

Other electrical problem

50 reports median 71k

Steering column or shaft failure

28 reports median 67k

How far this goes

This page is kept out of search results because 4 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 4 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 tire blowout or tread separation happen on the 2013 Kia Soul?

Across 4 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 25,000 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 tire blowout or tread separation on the 2013 Kia Soul?

4 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