2025 KIA CARNIVAL Complaints

While driving in the cold the hybrid vehicle will not go over 31 miles an hour. I was turning on to a road that is 45mph and unable to reach a safe speed with traffic. This has happened twice to me now. The dealer can not make it repeat the issue at this time and no warning lights come on.

Turned out onto a busy city street and tried to accelerate but speed was electronically limited to 31mph. once it got to the 31mph, the car didn’t rev at all anymore. I had to pull over quickly. I drove around a parking lot a few times just to see if there was anything wrong in the settings. I couldn’t find anything. So I tried again. Same result - as soon as I pulled out and stamped on the accelerator, it revved just until 31mph and then cut out. I had to pull over immediately again and turn the car off and then back on again. After I did this, it drove as it normally does and the speed was no longer limited.

Van accelerates up to 31mph only. Top speed is 31mph even with accelerator/gas pedal completely pressed to the ground (RPMs increase to 4K with no acceleration.) No warning or display lights illuminated. This happens in cold weather (under 20 degrees F), first trip after sitting overnight or for a longer period of time. If I pull over and shut off/restart the car, it resolves. However this has happened in stretches of road with limits 55+, little/no shoulder and approaching cars and it's a safety hazard to 1) not be able to speed up and 2) not ideal to pull over to turn off/on car especially with children in the car. Van was inspected by Kia Dealer and found no issue/was able to recreate at the auto shop so it was given back to me. First instance happened at 1,500 miles and is continuing. I do have video of this instances happening.

I'm not sure which component caused the issue, but this happened a couple of times already, when I stepped on the accelerator pedal, but the vehicle didn't response at all. The first time, when I was turning into a parking lot, I had to let off the gas pedal, and try it again. The second time this happened was very scary, I was trying to get on to the main road, but I was coming up from a steep hill side road, and I saw a car was coming, but I should have enough/time distance to get on the road, but after the initial acceleration, the car moved forward, but when I applied more power, but it wouldn't move at all! Luckily the oncoming car slowered down and let me go, I was on the opposite lane (incoming traffic), and luckily no car was coming my way. This is 100% safety issue!!!

On [XXX], I was in a busy parking garage holding my [XXX] child on my hip and pushing the stroller, with my [XXX] safely procured inside, as I approached my Kia Carnival 2025 to load the children and depart. To avoid active traffic while allowing enough room for the automatic doors to open safely, I moved as close to the Kia Carnival as possible with my [XXX] and infant in the stroller, engaging the safety breaks of the stroller. Due to the tight space, I underestimated the length the door needed to fully open by approximately 3 inches; this should not have been an issue as there is a sensor in the door that stops when it senses any object in its way. However, the sensor failed. The door did not stop when it came in to contact with the stroller that had my [XXX] baby in it. With the safety brakes engaged to prevent the stroller from rolling away, I desperately tried to drag away the locked stroller as quickly as possible. The door hit the stroller, continuing to open regardless of the object (my infant in her stroller) in the way, hooking the stroller on the lip of the door and pushing it up and over. If I did not have my hand on the stroller and acted so quickly, my daughter could have been seriously injured or worse. If the stroller had been facing the other way, I fear what would have happened. In addition, had it been my toddler standing there, she would have been crushed. I also endured bodily injury, physical strain, and mental anguish while keeping my children safe from this malfunction. I was in shock by the pure fear created by that situation. It was devastating. The door will not physically stop opening if you try to pull on it. The sensor does not work in detecting any body when opening. It needs physical force exerted against it, the size of an adult male to kick in. It is negligent. (Kia was already sued for this in previous models- they know it’s an issue!) INFORMATION REDACTED PURSUANT TO THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT (FOIA), 5 U.S.C. 552(B)(6)

My wife and I have a 2025 Carnival SX Prestige Hybrid. We live in northern Maryland (lots of cold days lately!). This exact issue has happened three times and counting. While driving, our car will randomly lose all ability to accelerate. You can press the gas pedal all the way to the floor, and it will not gain speed. It seems to happen at lower speeds, around 30mph and it just caps off and will not accelerate and lose all power. The only thing that fixes the issue is literally pulling over and restarting the car, and then it drives fine. We took it into the dealer after the second incident and they claimed that a camera was just obstructed by ice, so the car probably thought it detected something in front of us so it stopped accelerating as a safety feature. To that, I said “but if the car thought there was something in front of us, it would have applied emergency braking, not just simply stopping any acceleration”… to which they replied “yeah I don’t know. Cars these days are just a giant rolling computer”. The dealer just could not replicate the issue, so they had no way of really seeing or diagnosing it, which I understand but still frustrating. They said they drove it 3 times but it didn’t happen. But again, it happens randomly (though cold weather seems to be a common factor). So we left and said okay, they tried, they cleared off the camera, let’s see what happens. One week later (this morning) happened again. Taking into the dealer this evening. We have a Case open with the Kia Customer Care “Escalations” team. But they’ve been no help.

On a day which had a high temperature of 16F our Kia Carnival Hybrid SXP, after not being used most of the day, when driving would not exceed 31 miles per hour. The engine would not rev loudly or give any indication of an error but would not go over 31 mph even with the gas pedal fully depressed. After pulling over and turning the car off and on the problem did not repeat.

Today I had an issue with my 2025 Kia Carnival Hybrid SX Prestige where it would not allow me to accelerate past 31 mph. I was on an on-ramp to the highway with my baby in the car and I was flooring the gas, yet it still would not go past 31 mph. I put on my hazards and pulled off, and checked that the max speed setting was not on. I even tried setting the max speed to something higher like 50 mph, and the screen confirmed this, but the car still did not go past 31 mph. Luckily I figured out that cruise control still works past this speed limit, but it was super dangerous getting onto the highway going 25 mph slower than everyone else. When I eventually got to a red light I turned the car off and on and that seemed to solve it, as I was able to go past 31 mph. Later that day on a different drive, this exact issue happened again where I could not accelerate past 31 mph. I am taking my car to Kia in a few days to get it checked out. There was no warning messages and the screen's max speed did not match with what the car was actually doing.

The following has happened 4-5 times now on our Kia Carnival 2025 SXP Hybrid: After turning on the car, the car can be driven but does not allow the driver to increase the speed beyond ~30 miles per hour. No warning indicators or messages are displayed when this occurs. Turning the vehicle off and then on again temporarily resolves the issue. One of the times it occurred, I went straight from a 25 mph city street onto a highway onramp that didn't have a safe place to pull off. When I got on the onramp, I discovered that the issue was happening as I was unable to accelerate beyond 30mph. The highway had a speed limit of 65mph and a minimum speed limit of 55mph. Joining the highway at 30mph was both illegal and unsafe and could have absolutely caused a fatal crash. ---- To troubleshoot this issue, we took it into the dealership and they didn't find any errors recorded or anything abnormal in diagnostics. They told us it was probably just a malfunctioning of the "Auto Highway Speed Change" setting that is intended to slow you down around curves when using cruise control on the highway. We told them that didn't make sense because it happened to us on city streets where that setting isn't even in play, but they insisted it was still the culprit and didn't investigate further. It happened again to us today with AHSC disabled, so clearly the AHSC setting doesn't explain things(and would be an issue that needs fixing even if it did).

I was driving on a secondary road that has a 45 MPH speed limit when the vehicle decelerated to 31 MPH on its own. I could not make it go faster with any application of the accelerator. This lasted for about 5 minutes. I called the dealer service and they said it was probably a "glitch" and they could not investigate unless I left the vehicle with them until they could reproduce it. One unusual fact is that it was very cold the morning it happened, 9 degrees fahrenheit. I believe this could be very dangerous, particularly if hit happens on a highway. I spoke to another owner on Reddit who had the same thing happen twice.