Unclassified problem on the 2015 Kia Soul
5 crashes 9 fires 5 injuries 1 death 20 of the 55 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 25 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 unclassified problem gets reported
Owners of the 2015 Kia Soul report unclassified problem at a median of 45,000 miles. A quarter of the reports come in before 5,000 miles and a quarter after 87,500 miles, from 25 reports that carried an odometer reading.
It is the 66th most-reported problem on this model year.
The mileage distribution
The reported range runs from 200 miles at the tenth percentile to 97,500 miles at the ninetieth, a spread of 96,560 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.
44% of the dated reports were filed under 36,000 miles.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 240 miles | 4,709 miles | 45,965 miles | 88,000 miles | 96,800 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, 5 a crash, 9 a fire, 5 an injury and 1 a fatality 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.
The same failure on other years
The same failure is reported on 13 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2020, at a median of 10,000 miles, and latest on the 2016 at 80,000 miles.
By volume the 2016 carries the most reports, with 72; the 2015 has 55. 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.
Car would not brake as it pulled into a parking spot. Ended up stopping in a storefront. No significant visible damage. No airbags deployed. All three passengers (incl one 3 yr old) were completely unscathed. *tr
Kia country of charleston, south carolina sold me a new 2015 kia soul while under an active recall, prior to the recall work being completed, in apparent violation of 49 u.s.c., section 30112(a)(3). Kia service campaign 116, a safety recall to correct a potential unsafe condition resulting from the fracturing of the accelerator pedal, appears to have been in effect well in advance of my purchase date of 02 april 2015. It seems that in the rush to sell me the vehicle, the recall work was not completed, and I was not notified that a recall was in effect. I only found out about the recall after registering on a kia website as a kia owner, when an automated system matched my new vehicle's VIN number to the recall, and indicating it as incomplete. The soul was taken in for service and the recall was completed on 24 april 2015, after the vehicle had been driven 1208 miles with the potential unsafe defect, with no other notification from the dealership or the manufacturer. *tr
I purchased a kia soul in 2012 (2013 car) and a month later was in intensive care for 5 days with mysterious symptoms. (I am a healthy woman and take no medications.) over the next 2 years I still had problems but they lessened. For the past 6 months, I have had no symptoms. Last month I purchased a kia soul 2015 and in the following week I was back at the er, again, no diagnosis whatsoever. Since then I have had similar symptoms. Putting the dates together, I then researched kia soul for toxicity, and it is the top car for high toxic levels. Is this not an important safety issue to be on your website? I am shocked that so little is known about this, but the sources I researched are most reliable. Kia soul is a dangerous car.
Also reported on the 2015 Kia Soul
Other engine problem
Catalytic converter failure
Excessive oil consumption
Other fuel system problem
Overheating
Other electrical problem
How far this goes
This page is kept out of search results because 55 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 55 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 unclassified problem happen on the 2015 Kia Soul?
Across 25 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 45,000 miles. A quarter were filed before 5,000 miles and a quarter after 87,500 miles. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.
How common is unclassified problem on the 2015 Kia Soul?
55 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.5 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