2020 Kia Telluride1st gen (2020–2025), pre-facelift

Updated 2026-08-26NHTSA counts read on this date — 746 complaints. They rise over time.

The 2020 Kia Telluride, Six Years and 746 Complaints Later

Every review of this car was written in 2019 by someone who had it for a week, and those reviews were glowing. They were also right, as far as they went. Nobody knew yet that the headlights would fail, because nobody had owned one long enough for that to happen.

Owners have since filed 746 complaints with NHTSA about the 2020 model year. Kia moved 58,932 Tellurides in calendar 2019 and 75,119 in 2020, and the 2020 model year sold across both — so the denominator here is somewhere in the tens of thousands and the complaint rate is on the order of one percent. You can read every filing yourself; the database is public.

This is what those complaints say, sorted by how often people say it, alongside the factory numbers and the awards the car collected on the way in.

The basics

Kia built the Telluride in West Point, Georgia and aimed it at American families who wanted three rows without Highlander money. The 2020 through 2022 cars share a body and dashboard. The 2023 refresh brought a new front end, dual widescreen displays, and the X-Line and X-Pro trims.

There is no 2026 Telluride, incidentally. Kia skipped the year. The first generation ended with 2025 and the redesign arrives as a 2027.

Specs

From Kia’s official 2020 specifications.

Four trims — LX, S, EX, SX — with the same V6 in every one. There’s no engine to upgrade to. The LX seats eight, the rest seat seven with captain’s chairs, though the EX could be optioned back to eight. LX and S get imitation leather, EX and SX the real thing.

The torque peak at 5,200 rpm tells you how it drives. Merging onto a highway with everyone aboard means two downshifts and a lot of engine noise. It isn’t quick. It’s adequate in a way that never feels strained, which for most families amounts to the same thing.

Twenty-one cubic feet behind the third row is the number worth caring about. A lot of competitors leave you twelve, which holds groceries. Twenty-one holds a stroller and the luggage.

How it was received

The Telluride didn’t just get good reviews. It won the things cars win when they’re genuinely good.

North American Utility Vehicle of the Year for 2020, voted by a panel of 50 jurors, beating the Hyundai Palisade and the Lincoln Aviator. A first for the Kia brand. Edmunds named it Top Rated SUV two years running and said Kia “thoughtfully executed just about every aspect of the vehicle.” Car and Driver pointed at the equipment list: “much of the Telluride’s allure is its raft of safety equipment.”

It tested well too. NHTSA gave it five stars overall. IIHS rated it Good in all six crashworthiness categories and named it a Top Safety Pick.

There’s a detail in that last one worth holding onto. The Top Safety Pick award only applied to Tellurides fitted with the optional LED headlights — the award was contingent on them. Those are the same headlights that six years later account for more owner complaints than anything else on this car.

Nobody dissented at the time, and they weren’t wrong to. Kia price, not-a-Kia finish. That was the whole story in 2019.

What owners filed

One thing to keep in mind before reading further. NHTSA’s database is a complaint database. Nobody files a report to say their Telluride has been fine for six years, so the picture below is necessarily lopsided — it’s a list of what breaks, not a portrait of ownership. The overwhelming majority of 2020 Tellurides on the road aren’t represented here at all.

What the data is genuinely good for is ranking. Within this car, these are the failures owners hit, in order.

Headlights — 165 complaints

This is the biggest one by a wide margin, and it’s the one that can actually hurt you. Owners describe the LED assembly failing outright while driving at night.

From a complaint filed in August 2026 (ODI 11758772):

“The factory-installed driver/passenger side LED headlight assembly suffered a sudden, total internal electrical failure while driving at night, causing an immediate loss of forward visibility… The housing seals degrade prematurely, allowing condensation to become trapped inside”

That owner reports it hitting the SX and SX Prestige trims specifically — the premium ones with the nicer lights. Kia issued service campaign SC299 for high-beam failures, and a separate NHTSA campaign, 24V-148, covers some cars. Owners whose VINs fall outside those windows are unhappy about it and say so in the filings.

Two of these complaints involve fire. One involves a crash.

The repair is not cheap. Because the bulbs aren’t separately serviceable, a single failed signal bulb means replacing the entire assembly. One owner reported paying $1,900.

Windshields — around 130 complaints

They crack on their own. Not from a rock, not from anything. From a complaint filed in April 2026 (ODI 11730293):

“Windshield spontaneously cracked. I know it was spontaneous because the car was parked and I was near it for the full hour, nothing hit the windshield and when I got back in the car the windshield was cracked.”

This complaint appears in the first year and never stops appearing.

Oil consumption — 70 complaints

The engine drinks oil, and it tends to announce itself with a knock first. An owner who bought used at 77,000 miles found the dipstick dry at the first oil change (ODI 11753165). The dealer ran three consumption tests, each one came back at least a quart low, and the engine was condemned.

Kia’s bulletin ENG222 reportedly sets the excessive threshold at a quart per 1,000 miles. Some owners are well past that — one reports adding a quart per week.

The failure mode that worries me most in these filings is that the warning light doesn’t always come first. In one complaint (ODI 11748233), the car was driven to the airport with no lights and no noise, then shut down entirely on the next trip with every warning on the dash lit.

If you own one: check the dipstick. Don’t wait for the light.

Sunroof — 62 complaints

The wind deflector and the windscreen arm break, the glass goes off track, and then it won’t close. Owners cite Kia bulletin BOD319 and say dealers confirm it’s a known issue on 2020–2022 cars. There’s no recall.

One owner (ODI 11741888) was quoted $7,000 and had a reasonable reaction to it:

“The windscreen arm is a known issue! But there is no recall. I SHOULDN’T HAVE TO PAY $7000 to fix a known problem!”

Paint — 42 complaints

Snow White Pearl paint delaminates. It starts as chips on the hood or the roof edge above the windshield and progresses to sheets coming off down to bare metal, with no impact involved. Owners note this spans multiple Kia models and model years, not just the Telluride, and point out that exposed metal rusts.

Several filings mention paint flying off the car at speed and describe it as a hazard to other drivers.

Engine shutdown — 47 complaints

Loss of power while driving, sometimes tied to the oil problem above, sometimes not.

The seat fire recall, twice

In June 2024, Kia recalled roughly 463,000 Tellurides because a dislodged power seat switch could run the motor continuously until it overheated and caught fire.

That fix didn’t work.

On July 14, 2026, Kia recalled 462,869 vehicles from the 2020–2024 model years for the same defect. An internal investigation found additional failure modes in the switch, and also found that dealers may not have completed the original repair correctly. Kia is aware of seven seat fires and eleven melted seat motors. The remedy this time is an electronic fuse assembly, installed free, with owner letters going out August 13, 2026.

NHTSA is telling owners to park outside and away from structures until it’s done.

Complaints in the database show the predictable next problem: owners receiving the recall notice and being told the part isn’t available yet.

What doesn’t show up in the complaints

It’s worth naming what isn’t in this data, because absence is information too.

Nobody is filing complaints about the third row, which is the reason most people bought the car. Nobody is complaining about ride quality, or the interior, or how much equipment came standard. The 8-speed automatic barely appears — 25 mentions out of 746, and some of those are past 100,000 miles, which is a different conversation than a defect. The crash structure that earned five stars and a Top Safety Pick has not generated a pattern of complaints.

Read enough of these filings and the tone stands out. People are angry about a $1,900 headlight or a $7,000 sunroof. They are not saying they bought a bad car. Several go out of their way to say the opposite before getting to the part they’re upset about.

That fits what the sales figures did. This car sold nearly 59,000 units in its first full year with demand outpacing supply, and it stayed a segment benchmark through a full generation.

What the complaint curve says

Complaints ran 73 in 2019 and 71 in 2020, then settled to about 50 a year through 2022. In 2023 they jumped to 151, and they have stayed above 100 every year since.

That is not the shape of a normal ownership curve. Early complaints are usually assembly defects, and they taper as the build settles down. This car’s problems arrived late. Headlight housing seals degrade over years, not months. Paint lets go after a few summers. Oil consumption shows up somewhere past 40,000 miles.

Which means the 2019 reviewers were not wrong. They were reporting accurately on a car they had for a week. Everything that has since turned out to define ownership of a 2020 Telluride was invisible to them, and would have been invisible to anyone.

It’s also worth being careful about what 746 does and doesn’t mean. Model years and sales years don’t line up — a 2020 Telluride could have been sold in calendar 2019 or 2020 — so any complaint rate here is an approximation, and it lands somewhere around one percent. Rates also aren’t comparable across models without running the same arithmetic on each: a car with a loyal, engaged owner base files more reports than a forgettable one. I’m not going to call this a reliable car or an unreliable one on the strength of a raw count. What the data supports is the ranking: within this car, headlights dominate, and it isn’t close.

If you’re looking at one

Everything below comes straight out of the complaint data above. None of it is a verdict on the car — a well-reviewed, award-winning SUV that most owners never file anything about. It’s simply the list of things worth ten minutes before you hand anyone money, because when a 2020 Telluride does go wrong, these are the ways it does.

Start the car at dusk and turn on the high beams. Headlights are the single largest complaint category at 165 filings, and the failure is the whole LED assembly, not a bulb. Look into the housings for condensation or fogging — owners describe the seals degrading and letting moisture in before the unit dies. Check the SX and SX Prestige especially. Replacement runs into four figures.

Pull the dipstick before you drive it, not after. Cold, on level ground. If it’s low on a car that was supposedly just serviced, that’s the pattern in 70 complaints. Ask for oil change records and ask directly whether a dealer ever ran an oil consumption test — that’s the process Kia uses, and a seller who has been through it will know the phrase. An oil analysis costs about $30 if you want to know before you commit.

Open the sunroof all the way and close it. Twice. The wind deflector and the windscreen arm are what break, and once the glass is off track you’re looking at a repair one owner was quoted $7,000 for. Kia bulletin BOD319 covers it and there is no recall.

If it’s Snow White Pearl, walk the hood and the roof edge above the windshield. Look for chips lifting at the edges rather than pits from stones. The delamination starts small and goes to bare metal, and bare metal on a roof edge rusts.

Ask whether recall 26V430000 has been completed, and get it in writing. This is the second attempt at the seat motor fire fix — the 2024 repair failed, and Kia found that some dealers hadn’t done it correctly the first time. Complaints filed in mid-2026 show owners being told the part isn’t available yet, so “it’s scheduled” and “it’s done” are different answers. Until it’s done, NHTSA says park it outside.

Look at the windshield you’re getting. Not because a cracked one is a dealbreaker, but because roughly 130 owners report these cracking with no impact, and a replacement you pay for may not be the last one.

Numbers worth writing down

These are the references the complaints keep citing. All of them are things you can look up rather than take anyone’s word for.

Recall applicability is per-VIN. NHTSA’s lookup is free and takes the VIN off the windshield or the driver’s door jamb. The same site holds all 746 complaints, searchable by the ODI numbers quoted above.

We’ll do this for the 2021 and 2022 cars next, and the numbers change — some of these problems got fixed, and some didn’t.

Sources

• NHTSA complaint database — 746 complaints for the 2020 Telluride, quoted above by ODI number
• GoodCarBadCar — Telluride US sales figures
• Kia Media — 2020 Telluride Specifications (official)
• Edmunds — 2020 Kia Telluride Review
• NHTSA — Park Outside recall, Kia Telluride
• IIHS — 2020 Kia Telluride ratings
• Kia Media — Telluride wins 2020 North American Utility Vehicle of the Year
• Kia Telluride Forum
• CarComplaints — 2020 Telluride high oil consumption

Specs checked against Kia’s media site. Complaint counts and quotes come from NHTSA’s public database, retrieved 2026-08-26; each quote lists its ODI number so you can look it up. Recall applicability depends on the VIN — check yours at nhtsa.gov/recalls. This summarizes what owners and reviewers reported. It isn’t buying or repair advice.