2023 Kia Sorento Phev

When trying to accelerate from a standing stop, there is a one or two second delay, once the accelerator pedal is depressed, before the car moves. Extremely dangerous when pulling out into traffic. I had it back to the dealership to address this problem but they found nothing wrong. I guarantee you , the problem continues to exist.

1. First incident occurred on 10/29/24. My wife pulled into driveway and placed car into Park. When she shifted to reverse, the transmission didn't respond and the car revved to a very high RPM when she took foot off of brake, no foot on gas. Unable to shift it to go forward or backward. She then turned car off, back on, and was able to reverse it. This situation occurred numerous times. 2. Sometimes, after this happened, she'd place it into drive, and the vehicle would only crawl (<5 mph) forward and not accelerate, though gas pedal was touching the floor of car. She'd place it back into Park (in traffic!), shut it off, then restart it. 3. Sometimes she would place it into Reverse, the dashboard would show it in R, and the vehicle would be silent and non-reactive (no back-up beep). 4. She would place it into drive, the engine would do nothing for a few seconds, and suddenly drop into gear with a loud thud. 11/11/24 took car to KIA, they said nothing was wrong. 5. On 11/29/24, she placed the car into Park, loaded passengers, and tried to place the car into reverse and NOTHING happened. The vehicle would not move forward or backward. The dashboard indicated that it was in D, the gear shift dial indicated it was in D, but nothing happened. Car was then turned off in Drive. Drive indicator ("D") was lit up on dash, gear shift dial had "D" still illuminated too. Tried to restart, dash said to put car into Park to start. Car would not go into Park. When flatbed tow truck arrived (6 hours later) the battery was fully discharged The tow truck driver was able to charge the battery with a portable charger sufficiently to start the car (if it would have been in Park), but was still unable to get the transmission to respond. The dealership claims that they can find nothing wrong and KIA won't acknowledge any issue. We have multiple videos of the issues and witnesses. There are numerous reports on Reddit of similar issues with Kia 2023 Sorento PHEVs.

We were driving on the highway at about 65 MPH. Without warning, the vehicle suddenly started to struggle and slowed to about 40 MPH. We were able to safely pull over, but we were in an acceleration lane merging onto another highway and didn't feel safe due to the sudden deceleration. This is a plug-in hybrid. We have driven at 65+ MPH on long rides before, and this was the first time that we noticed that the battery had completely drained. We expect that when the battery is drained that the car would function like a normal hybrid and continue to function in a safe manner. The car's cluster displayed a message along the lines of "Maintaining hybrid mode," although it isn't clear if the speed-limiting behavior was an expected consequence of that. After being pulled over for a bit, the battery level recuperated enough that we attempted to resume driving on side roads. Battery level varied from red to blue (normal) and then back to red, but thankfully the battery didn't fully deplete again and we were able to return home safely. We're waiting on an appointment with a dealership to have the car checked out. It was last serviced 3 days prior to the incident (first oil change, filters changed, etc).