NHTSA: Don’t Set Your Fan To Level 3 If You Drive A Kia Sorento

For centuries, humans have been using fans to cool down. From hand-operated to electric with a few misadventures into internal combustion along the way, we’ve been making our own breezes, playing god by creating extremely localized wind. Generally, it’s pretty foolproof, but the 2021 to 2023 Kia Sorento has found a way to make a certain amount of fan speed turn into fire. Yep, it’s recall time.

Indeed, Kia is recalling 39,536 Sorento crossovers from model years 2021 through 2023, specifically models of certain trims, due to annual sales during that period standing at more than double the quantity of recalled cars. Here’s what the defect report has to say:

Due to a suspected wire harness supplier quality issue, the connection between the blower motor resistor and connector can overheat when using the HVAC system on fan speed 3 while the ignition is on. In rare cases, this condition may lead to a fire.

There’s a whole lot packed into two little sentences here, so let’s expand. While an issue with the fan set to Level 3 sounds weird, it’s actually a fairly easy one to explain. In just about every car, a resistor pack is responsible for limiting fan speed, turning some of the current going to the fan into heat in order to make it spin slower. In affected Sorento crossovers, Level 4 is the maximum fan speed, and that means the blower motor is running at full tilt, so any blower motor resistor-adjacent issue should likely rear its head at lower fan speeds.

Indeed, this all started when a 2023 Sorento LX caught fire and Kia repurchased it in late 2024 to tear it down and see what went wrong. According to the defect recall chronology report submitted to NHTSA:

Further investigation of the repurchased 2023MY Sorento LX is conducted. X-ray analysis of the damaged blower motor resistor and adjoining wire harness indicate origin at terminal #2 of the connection between the two components. The circuit involving terminal #2 controls blower fan speed 3.

After digging a bit further, Kia found warranty claims for the same issue, terminal two getting melty. Specifically, one vehicle fire, one localized fire, and 25 connectors that got just a little bit too hot. The cause? Officially, it sounds like the parts weren’t all entirely up to spec. As Kia wrote: “production variances due to quality control including thinner than nominal wiring gauge are suspected as contributing factors for overheating while using fan speed 3 of the HVAC system.”

So, what’s the next move? Well, for now, drivers of 2021 to 2023 Kia Sorento crossovers are probably best off treating their HVAC fans as if one speed simply doesn’t exist. You know how the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch specified counting to three, no more and no less? This is basically the opposite. Count to anything but three, until you can get your Sorento in for the fix that includes a new blower motor resistor harness and a new resistor. Expect it to be available later this year.

On the plus side, this weird failure mode peels back the curtain on how small the threshold can be for an issue to turn into a recall. In this case, the recall covers 39,536 cars, and the investigation notes 27 known cases of failure, resulting in a known failure rate of just 0.06 percent. Translation: 99.94 percent safe isn’t safe enough. Isn’t that at least a little bit reassuring when you think about all the cars on the roads around you?

Top graphic images: Kia; Ebay seller

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