Too few owners filed complaints about the 2023 Kicks in its first three years to say whether it is a better or a worse year than the others. Among the 4 Kicks years with enough complaints to compare, owners filed the fewest about the 2019 (0.53 per 1,000 sold) and the most about the 2018 (1.29).
Safety complaints filed by owners in the first three years, per 1,000 sold.
too few complaints to rank against its other years
Counted from 21 complaints filed in the first three years, of 34 ever. 95% lower bound 0.20.
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 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | 1.29 | 30 | |
| 2019 | 0.53 | 31 | |
| 2020 | 0.55 | 32 | |
| 2021 | 0.65 | 46 | |
| 2023 | 0.35 | 21 |
No phrase appears often enough in these complaints to describe them reliably.
Too few complaints record mileage for this model year to show a pattern. NHTSA largely stopped capturing mileage after 2021.
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.
Too few owners filed complaints about the 2023 Kicks in its first three years to say whether it is a better or a worse year than the others. Among the 4 Kicks years with enough complaints to compare, owners filed the fewest about the 2019 (0.53 per 1,000 sold) and the most about the 2018 (1.29). The typical year is the median across its model years.
The parts owners named most often in complaints filed to date: Forward Collision Avoidance (11), Electrical System (8), Engine (8).
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 Kicks years: too few owners filed complaints about the 2023 Kicks in its first three years to say whether it is a better or a worse year than the others.
Among years with enough complaints to compare, the 2019, at 0.53 per 1,000 sold. Every Kicks year, ranked.
Of the 2 guides that rate the 2023 Kicks, none list it among the years to avoid and none among the best. The complaint records here hold too few complaints about it to rank it.
| Guide | Its verdict on 2023 | Based on |
|---|---|---|
| REREVcomplaint and recall records, and owner forums | Not singled out | complaint and recall records, and owner forums |
| Auto Reliability IndexNHTSA recalls and complaints, as a 0-100 score | Not singled out | NHTSA recalls and complaints, as a 0-100 score |
Read on 2026-11-14. Each verdict is the guide’s own: we record only the years it names, and link to it. A guide that counts complaints without dividing by sales can flag a year simply because more of it were sold.
Example records behind this page, each on NHTSA’s own site: