What 107 owners told NHTSA about the 2025 Hyundai Tucson Hybrid Hev

The Driver Attention Warning continues to go off shutting the cruise control off. This happens continuously and is a safety issue when driving in traffic and the vehicle suddenly decelerates. This causes traffic behind you to almost reared you because the vehicle decelerates so quickly. Hyundai suggests to move seat, not to wear glasses and other options that in themselves are additional safety concerns as seat positioning and glasses are needed for driving. So far my car has had the sensor located on top of the steering column shimmed up, and wiring harness replaced all to no satisfactory conclusion. Hyundai is aware of the issue, but has no solution to the issue. I’ve been in a loaner for almost 2 months while they string me along looking for a solution. Something needs to be done to fix this safety concern.

NHTSA ODI 11654830

I have had two incidents where the emergency braking system applied itself when there was no reason for it to do so. Both times there was a car in the distance, over 20 feet away that was slowing, and I was slowing as well. The second time it happened, it was with great force and I was fortunate that the car behind me was able to brake in time and avoid rear ending me.

NHTSA ODI 11646647

The contact owns a 2025 Hyundai Tucson. The contact stated while driving 15 MPH and depressing the brake pedal to decelerate, an unknown warning light was illuminated and a beeping sound was engaged. The contact stated that the vehicle failed to decelerate as intended and came to a sudden stop, causing another vehicle to crash into the rear of the vehicle. The air bags did not deploy. There was no injury sustained. The contact was able to drive the vehicle away from the scene. No police report was filed. There was no property damage. The vehicle was taken to the dealer, where it was test-driven, but the failure could not be duplicated. The dealer informed the contact that they had turned off all the sensors, except for the rearview camera sensors, to prevent the failure from reoccurring. The vehicle was diagnosed or repaired. The manufacturer was not notified of the failure. The failure mileage was approximately 760.

NHTSA ODI 11646076

While driving in a 70 mph speed zone on [XXX] , I tried to engage the cruise control but it would not activate. After repeated tries i finally was able to get a response and the cruise control engaged but only for about 15 seconds then warnings saying I was not paying attention to the road flashed on the windshield monitor along with check engine light, followed by vehicle slowing. I turned off the cruise control and was able to resume control of the car. This happened twice within 15 minutes so I gave up trying to use the cruise control. I wear progressive prescription transition eyeglasses which turn gray upon contact with sunlight. It was a bright sunny day when this event took place. I bought the car Dec 4 2024. When I contacted the dealers service department, they said the nearest appointment was not until February and they might need the car for up to two weeks to determine the problem. I went online and found that other owners had been complaining about this since April claiming that sunglasses were a problem for the radar camera used in this system. One driver put black tape over the camera to stop the problem. One driver switched sun glass makes and was able to use the system. Another driver adjusted the steering column to solve the problem, but all of these are work arounds for a defective design. You can locate these other complaints by searching "adaptive cruise control problems of Hyundai Tucson" complaints go beyond April 2023. INFORMATION REDACTED PURSUANT TO THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT (FOIA), 5 U.S.C. 552(B)(6)

NHTSA ODI 11633796

The 2025 Hyundai Tucson's Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) system does not operate properly due to either a design flaw or a flawed implementation of the design. Hyundai's integration of Forward Attention Warning (FAW) with the ACC prohibits the driver from using ACC while wearing sunglasses. If one is driving the vehicle with ACC engaged and puts on sunglasses, the FAW flashes a warning on the dashboard and disengages the ACC. In order to engage cruise control the driver must interact with the onboard video display system to switch from ACC to "dumb cruise". Obviously the driver's attention is distracted while manipulating the selection of cruise control. The driver is also forced to compromise driving safety because they are forced to choose between wearing sunglasses and being able to use ACC. Use of ACC enhances safety especially when driving into the sun or in low visibility situations. The incompatibility of ACC with sunglasses wear then compromises safety. To make matters worse the FAW options screen provides erroneous information. It indicates that the driver can turn off FAW, but turning it off does not in fact turn it off. Turning it off stops the FAW warnings only until the driver turns on and engages ACC at which time ACC apparently forces FAW back on and active. I took the problem to my local Hyundai dealer who confirmed the problem and indicated they could not repair the problem. Since I am considering a Georgia Lemon Law claim, I asked whether I needed to bring the car back since the lemon law gives the dealer/manufacturer 3 tries to fix the problem. The dealer indicated that would be a waste of time because Hyundai will not support/allow the issue to be corrected. The dealer indicated this is a known issue. An Internet search also confirms that Hyundai's FAW + ACC integration is flawed. Additionally it is not clear whether other enhanced vehicle safety systems such as automatic emergency braking are compromised by the wearing of sunglasses?

NHTSA ODI 11628367

Forward attention warning is a system with a camera on the top of the steering wheel column that is supposed to check if the driver is looking forward when assisted driving like lane keeping is active during cruise control. This system does not work with sunglasses. Wearing sunglasses to drive on a sunny day is a normal activity. If this system can not see your eyes then it assumes you are not looking forward and will try to shut off driver assistance like lane keeping and then goes another step with a threat to shut down the car no matter where the car is or how fast the car is going. I was going 70 down a highway and I get the forward attention warning and before I can do anything to convince the system I was looking ahead I got the warning that car was about to be shut down. This is the second day in a new car so I was lucky to think to turn off cruise control, but it was a scary incident that could have gone bad quickly. This is not a safe system and and needs to be able to be turned off without disabling the driver assistance features.

NHTSA ODI 11622089