For every car sold, owners filed more complaints about the 2023 Tucson than about the typical Tucson year: 1.3 times as many. Among the 9 Tucson years with enough complaints to compare, owners filed the fewest about the 2020 (0.45 per 1,000 sold) and the most about the 2016 (5.84).
Safety complaints filed by owners in the first three years, per 1,000 sold.
1.3 times this nameplate’s own median
Counted from 136 complaints filed in the first three years, of 184 ever. 95% lower bound 0.59. Not counted: 1 complaint that reported only that a recall repair was unavailable, not a failure.
The model year carries far more information than the badge, so this is the comparison that matters. The bar is how many complaints each rate rests on.
| Model year | Per 1,000 | Complaints | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2008 | 0.53 | 10 | |
| 2010 | 0.38 | 15 | |
| 2011 | 0.58 | 25 | |
| 2012 | 0.56 | 27 | |
| 2013 | 0.37 | 17 | |
| 2014 | 0.38 | 17 | |
| 2015 | 0.25 | 14 | |
| 2016 | 5.84 | 448 | |
| 2017 | 2.47 | 253 | |
| 2018 | 0.50 | 64 | |
| 2019 | 0.75 | 105 | |
| 2020 | 0.45 | 59 | |
| 2021 | 0.17 | 23 | |
| 2022 | 1.86 | 304 | |
| 2023 | 0.71 | 136 |
No phrase appears often enough in these complaints to describe them reliably.
Failures cluster early, which is the signature of how the car was built rather than of wear. A low-mileage example has not yet passed the risk window.
The VIN an owner files names the engine, which places 181 of this year’s 184 complaints. Sales by engine are not published, so these are not rates and say nothing about which engine drew more complaints. What can be compared is what each engine’s owners reported.
| Engine | Complaints | About the engine or fuel system | Of those, before 30,000 miles |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2.5 L 4-cylinder | 125 | 29% | too few mileages |
| 1.6 L 4-cylinder turbo hybrid | 44 | 30% | too few mileages |
Engines as NHTSA’s VIN decoder (vPIC) reads them from the first eleven characters of each VIN. “Turbo” is shown only where every VIN records one; the decoder leaves it blank on many turbo engines. 15 complaints are not in the table: no usable VIN, an engine vPIC could not decode, or an engine with fewer than 25 complaints.
That is not a clean bill of health, and not a criticism of the agency: investigations open for many reasons and complaint volume is only one of them.
For every car sold, owners filed more complaints about the 2023 Tucson than about the typical Tucson year: 1.3 times as many. Among the 9 Tucson years with enough complaints to compare, owners filed the fewest about the 2020 (0.45 per 1,000 sold) and the most about the 2016 (5.84). The typical year is the median across its model years.
The parts owners named most often in complaints filed to date: Unknown Or Other (42), Electrical System (39), Engine (35).
Complaint records cannot settle that on their own. They count safety problems owners chose to report to the federal government, not every repair. What they do show is how this year compares with the other Tucson years: for every car sold, owners filed more complaints about the 2023 Tucson than about the typical Tucson year: 1.3 times as many.
Among years with enough complaints to compare, the 2020, at 0.45 per 1,000 sold. Every Tucson year, ranked.
No guide we read covers the Tucson.
Example records behind this page, each on NHTSA’s own site: