2024 Kia Sorento Phev

On 3 separate occasions, while idling, the engine will sputter as if it’s about to cut off. The RPM will rise and fall and the engine will rev up and down and finally it will quiet down. Once the light is green, It is able to drive as normal. At the next light the same thing happens and the engine revs up and down sounds like it’s about to die. At a certain point the car will lose propulsion,(hard to notice at first when it’s stop and go traffic) even with the pedal all the way down, making it difficult to drive at a safe speed. The car will operate this way in a very limited capacity w stuttered propulsion for a minute or two then a warning symbol and alarm sounds letting me know there is a safety issue with the hybrid system and to stop safely. The car then becomes completely unresponsive and you must stop immediately and shut the car off. Once restarted the car jolts back up and operates somewhat normally.

We parked our vehicle and turned it off to go get dessert. Upon returning after 15 minutes, I pushed the "start/stop" button with my foot on the brake, and the car powered on but for some reason it thought it was in D. The car refused to start and kept showing a message to put the car into P. However, the P button wasn't responding when pushed, and no matter which direction I turned the shift dial, the car would not change from D. Pushing the P button did not change the status. We tried turning the car off by pushing the "start/stop" button, but it would not turn off and instead entered the accessory ON mode and kept showing a message to put the car in P in order for it to turn off. Our car would not turn off nor would it start. It was stuck in accessory ON mode. We did a Google search of our issue and discovered that this situation has happened to other HEV Kia Sorentos. It is through this search that we were able to try a quick solution of essentially doing a "hard reset" on the car by unplugging the main battery and plugging it back in. Thankfully, this worked so we could travel back home. However, access to rear battery was challenging because the rear hatch would not open while the car was in D. It required crawling to the back and adjusting the 3rd row to gain access to the battery. This strikes me as a computer system failure. It is not something consumers can fix on their own. Failure of this system strands drivers at their location of failure. We were lucky it happened in a parking lot but it could happen anywhere a person chooses to put their car into P. In addition, having the car stuck in accessory mode would eventually drain the energy out of the battery. At this point, the car would not operate. Prior to this incident, the car was operating fine. No symptoms or warnings. In fact, we had just finished lunch about 20 minutes before and had no problems turning the car on/off when parked. We have not had the car inspected as it just happened Saturday.