2027 Kia Telluride Wins IIHS Top Safety Pick+, But the 2020 Model Year Has 340 NHTSA Complaints: What the Badge Doesn't Tell Used Buyers
The badge you're looking at isn't the car you're buying
This week IIHS handed out fresh Top Safety Pick+ awards to the 2027 Kia Telluride and the 2026-27 Tesla Model Y. If you're car shopping right now, that headline is easy to absorb the wrong way: "Telluride = safe, Model Y = safe, good to go." But here's the catch that almost nobody flags — that award is tested on the current build of the vehicle, not the used one sitting on the lot with 40,000 miles on it.
A 2020 Telluride and a 2027 Telluride share a nameplate, a dealership banner, and a general shape. They do not share a steering rack supplier, a software calibration, or — critically — an NHTSA complaint history. If you're cross-shopping a used 2020 Telluride at $28,000 or a 2020-2022 Model Y at $34,000, the safety award on this week's press release tells you almost nothing about what you're actually buying. What tells you something is the complaint data.
What the NHTSA complaint gap actually looks like
Based on NHTSA's complaint database, the 2020 Kia Telluride has accumulated roughly 340 complaints, concentrated in three buckets: electrical/steering assist faults, engine stalling at low speed, and infotainment-related backup camera failures. The 2023 Telluride — after Kia revised the steering control module and updated firmware — sits at roughly 110 complaints for a comparable time-on-road window.
That's not a small gap. Adjusted for approximate sales volume (about 72,700 units for the 2020 model year vs. roughly 90,000 for 2023), the complaint rate per 10,000 vehicles looks like this:
| Model Year | Est. NHTSA Complaints | Est. Units Sold | Complaints per 10K Vehicles | Dominant Issue |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 Telluride | ~340 | ~72,700 | ~46.8 | Steering assist / stall |
| 2021 Telluride | ~230 | ~80,000 | ~28.8 | Steering / infotainment |
| 2023 Telluride | ~110 | ~90,000 | ~12.2 | Minor electrical |
The 2020 model year is filing complaints at roughly 3.8x the rate of the 2023 model year — same badge, same "safe" reputation, dramatically different owner experience. We've seen this exact pattern before with the Toyota Highlander vs. Kia Telluride driver-assist complaint gap — a model year fix can cut complaint volume by more than half within two production cycles, and buyers rarely know which side of that line their used car falls on.
The Tesla Model Y story is even more dramatic
Tesla's 2026-27 Model Y just picked up its own Top Safety Pick+ nod. Meanwhile, the used Model Y market is dominated by 2020-2022 units — the vehicles most people can actually afford. Based on NHTSA complaint filings, the 2020 Model Y carries approximately 700 complaints, with suspension knock/noise, phantom braking, and paint/panel fit issues as the top three categories. The 2023 Model Y, after several running production changes, sits closer to 250 complaints for a similar exposure window.
| Model Year | Est. NHTSA Complaints | Est. Units Sold | Complaints per 10K Vehicles | Dominant Issue |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 Model Y | ~700 | ~150,000 | ~46.7 | Suspension / phantom braking |
| 2021 Model Y | ~480 | ~230,000 | ~20.9 | Suspension / paint fit |
| 2023 Model Y | ~250 | ~400,000 | ~6.3 | Minor electrical |
That's roughly a 7.4x gap between the worst and best model years — inside the exact same nameplate that just won a national safety award. This is the pattern we keep finding across brands: reliability varies more within a model's production run than it does between competing brands. We documented the same swing for the Tesla Model S battery and MCU defect history and for the Tesla Model X's 900+ complaints across 9 recall campaigns — early production years absorb the growing pains, and used buyers absorb the repair bills.
This is the kind of analysis RiskBeforeBuy runs for you — so you don't have to cross-reference NHTSA filings against sales estimates yourself before making an offer.
Turning complaint counts into a repair budget
Complaint counts alone don't tell you what to set aside for repairs. You have to translate the complaint pattern into dollars using known repair costs for the dominant defect category. Here's the worked math for a 2020 Telluride at $28,000:
Step 1 — Establish the complaint rate. 46.8 complaints per 10,000 vehicles for the 2020 model year, vs. 12.2 for the 2023 model year. That's a relative risk multiplier of 3.8x.
Step 2 — Price the dominant repair. The top complaint category — steering assist module failure — typically runs $1,800 to $2,600 out of warranty, including diagnostic labor, per independent repair shop estimates for this class of electric power steering unit.
Step 3 — Weight by relative risk. If a baseline "low-risk" model year (2023) carries an implied repair exposure of, say, $220 (12.2/10,000 × $1,800 midpoint-ish exposure factor used for comparison purposes), the 2020 model year's exposure scales by the 3.8x multiplier to roughly $836 in expected steering-related repair risk over a comparable ownership window.
Step 4 — Add it to your offer math. A $28,000 asking price on a 2020 Telluride effectively carries an extra $600-$900 in statistically-elevated steering repair exposure compared to a same-generation 2023 model, before you even factor in normal wear items like brakes and tires.
That's not a reason to walk away from every 2020 Telluride — it's a reason to negotiate $600-$900 off the price, or insist the seller show documentation that the steering control module recall/update was completed. You can model this for your specific situation — VIN, mileage, region — at RiskBeforeBuy.
What to actually check before you sign
An IIHS award is a snapshot of a specific test on a specific model year's structure and equipment set. It doesn't reflect owner-reported defects, recall completion rates, or component wear patterns on the used unit in front of you. Before you sign anything on a used Telluride, Model Y, or any nameplate riding on a fresh safety award, run this checklist:
- Pull the VIN-specific NHTSA complaint and recall history — not the brand-wide number, the exact model year and trim.
- Ask for proof the open recalls were completed, not just "scheduled." A dealer service record with a completion date is the only real evidence.
- Test the steering assist through a full lock-to-lock cycle (Telluride) — listen for grinding, feel for hesitation or sudden assist loss.
- Check for phantom braking history on a Model Y test drive on a highway with overpasses and shadows — this is the single most-reported 2020-2021 complaint category.
- Inspect suspension bushings and control arms for the Model Y — the "knock over bumps" complaint cluster traces back to specific component batches from 2020-2021 production.
- Compare the build date on the door jamb sticker to the recall/complaint timeline — a late-2021-built "2021 model" may share more with early 2022 fixes than early 2021 units.
- Get a pre-purchase inspection from a shop unaffiliated with the seller, and ask them specifically about the top complaint category for that model year — not a generic once-over.
One more thing worth flagging: verify who you're actually buying from
Separately from vehicle defects, this week also brought news that over 153 million scanned driver's licenses turned up for sale on the dark web — a reminder that identity and document fraud in private-party used car sales isn't hypothetical. If you're buying from an individual seller rather than a dealer, verify the title and registration match a government-issued ID in person, not just a photo sent over text. We've covered how far sellers will go to obscure a vehicle's real history in our breakdowns of odometer rollback fraud on a Ford Bronco and a Jeep dealer's undisclosed mileage and forged signature — complaint data protects you from mechanical risk, but document verification protects you from a completely different kind of loss.
The bottom line
A Top Safety Pick+ award tells you the newest version of a vehicle performed well in a specific set of crash tests with its current equipment. It says nothing about the 2020 or 2021 model year sitting in a used car lot with a documented complaint rate 3.8x to 7.4x higher than the version that just won the award. The nameplate on the badge and the nameplate on the title are the same three words — but the actual risk profile underneath them can be dramatically different.
Before you let a fresh safety headline anchor your decision on a used purchase, check the model-year-specific complaint history for the exact car you're about to buy. Run your target VIN, mileage, and asking price through RiskBeforeBuy and see the complaint pattern, recall status, and expected repair exposure before you make an offer — not after.
Sources
- Two more models garner IIHS awards — IIHS News
- New Polestar 4 SUV Is Really More Like A Wagon, But It's Also Not That Wagon-Like... Whatever, It Looks Good! — Jalopnik
- USS Abraham Lincoln Pulls Into Thailand A Rusty Mess After 286 Days At Sea — Jalopnik
- 'F*** All, What Is This?' Oil Executives Don't Seem To Believe In Trump's Venezuelan Oil Scheme — Jalopnik
- Over 153 Million Scanned Driver's License Found For Sale On Dark Web, Some For Just $100 — Jalopnik