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What 6 owners told NHTSA about the 2025 Kia Sportage Plug-in Hybrid

These are the actual owner complaints behind this car’s reliability verdict, filed with the federal government, unedited. They’re unverified reports, not confirmed defects: read them as leads for your pre-purchase inspection, not a diagnosis.

All (6)Crash / fire / injury (1)Driver assistance (2)Lane Departure (2)Backup camera & sensors (1)Fuel system (1)Speed control (1)Transmission & drivetrain (1)Wheels (1)

1 of 6 complaints match · Backup camera & sensors · clear filters

Jul 18, 2025Backup camera & sensors

I’m the owner of a 2025 Kia Sportage PHEV and I’m experiencing a critical software bug: the car does not retain my custom driver assistance settings. Specifically, I have a bike rack installed on the rear hitch. I disable automatic rear emergency braking to avoid false stops when reversing, but the setting resets every time I turn off the vehicle. This leads to the car emergency braking unnecessarily — the car will suddenly brake when trying to reverse out of a parking space. This is not a dealer-specific issue — it’s affecting other 2025 Sportage models as well. I’d like to know: Has Kia acknowledged this issue or issued a Technical Service Bulletin (TSB)? Is a software update being developed to allow driver-assist settings to persist through vehicle restarts?

NHTSA ODI 11674644

Working with the data? Download all 6 complaints as CSV · fetched from NHTSA July 19, 2026

How to use these: a complaint is one owner’s report, filed voluntarily and published unverified. Patterns matter more than any single story. If several owners describe the same failure at similar mileage, put that system at the top of your pre-purchase inspection list. Back to the full 2025 Kia Sportage Plug-in Hybrid verdict →