The quietest Telluride year by some distance — 197 federal complaints against the 2020's 736 — and the engine cluster has all but disappeared.

Recall 25V494, Kia code SC347, covers 2023 to 2025 Tellurides: "The door belt molding trim can delaminate and detach from the vehicle." The belt molding is the strip along the bottom edge of each side window; NHTSA's stated consequence is that a detached piece becomes a road hazard for the car behind. Dealers inspect and replace the assemblies as necessary, free, and letters went out 19 November 2025. The federal file shows both the failure and the delay. "The contact stated that while driving at an undisclosed speed, the driver's rear door belt molding trim detached." "Contact states large metal vehicle door trim came off while driving, unknown if [an] accident was caused or other damage to surrounding vehicles." "The body trim is starting to fall off. I have at least 2 trims that are barely hanging on… A recall was issued August 2025 but[…]" And most usefully, one owner spelling out the position: "SC347 / NHTSA 25V494 — Door belt molding trim may delaminate and detach. Remedy parts are not yet available, and there is currently no fix." Check the status when you look at the car rather than assuming, and inspect all four strips by hand.

The 2023 suspension cluster is specific and, unusually, it comes with money attached. Owners describe a thump or clunk over bumps: "Rear self leveling shock PN # 55367-S9KA0. Shock makes noise, clunking, going over bumps" — reproduced by the dealer. "Rear shocks failure at less than 20K miles. Dealership replaced both rear shocks, but will happen again in another 20K miles?" "Kia service admitted there is a known issue with the self levelling shocks on the '23 Tellurides and said I should replace them." Kia's warranty extension WTY040 covers exactly this: it inspects and, if necessary, replaces "the self-leveling rear shock absorber(s) on certain 2020-2024MY Telluride (ON) vehicles manufactured from January 10, 2019 through September 14, 2023, AND equipped with self-leveling rear shock absorber(s) produced through June 04, 2023", taking the term "from 5 years / 60,000 miles to 15 years / 180,000 miles". The symptom Kia names is "a noise from the rear suspension while traveling over bumps and/or a firm/stiff ride quality", and Kia adds that it "does not impact the drivability or safety of the vehicle". Self-levelling shocks came with the towing package, so this only applies if the car has them. An independent review of the model identifies them as Nivomat units and notes that a clunk can also be the upper insulator that sits on top of the shock, which Kia covers under a separate bulletin. One owner reports being refused a second replacement — the warranty extension is the document to quote in that conversation.

The Telluride runs one engine in every year of this generation: a 3.8-litre direct-injected V6 from Hyundai and Kia's Lambda family, code G6DN, shared with the Hyundai Palisade. In 2020 that engine accounts for most of the complaint file. In 2023 it is a trace — a handful of filings, one of them severe: "Kia/Hyundai inspected and found cylinder 2 to not fire along with oil leaking from lower O2 sensor. Engine block has hole, cylinder 2 piston and rod are no longer with[in] engine." The honest reading is that a 2023 has not yet reached the mileage window where the earlier cars fail. Failures in the 2020 and 2021 files cluster between roughly 80,000 and 140,000 miles, and an independent review of this engine family puts the onset of the underlying problem — oil control rings clogging with carbon, letting oil past into the combustion chamber — as early as 60,000 miles. A mechanic who dismantled a failed example found the rings "totally plugged up", the engine "starved of oil", and rod bearings wearing through their top shell at under 100,000 miles. One 2021 owner's filing even mentions "my parent's 2023 telluride is burning too much oil too". Treat a low-mileage 2023 as a car you can still get ahead of: shorten the oil interval to 5,000 miles, check the dipstick between services, and keep the receipts.

There is one genuine engine warranty extension on this car and it is narrower than the name suggests. Kia's WTY045 extends the new-vehicle warranty, in Kia's words, "to all owners" for repairs related to "an engine oil leak from the oil filter housing gasket" on 2020 to 2025 Tellurides built between 9 January 2019 and 12 June 2025, going "from 5 years / 60,000 miles to 15 years / 180,000 miles", with a reimbursement form mailed for owners who had already paid. The oil filter housing is the plastic assembly the filter screws into; when its gasket fails, oil escapes onto the road rather than through the exhaust. A 2022 owner in the federal file shows what catching it is worth: "This repair cost me a total of $425. If I had not replaced or repaired oil filter housing, the engine would have locked up as all the oil ha[d] escaped onto the pavement." A 2023 is squarely inside this coverage for years to come. The limits matter as much as the coverage: WTY045 pays for the leak, not for oil consumption, and there is no knock-sensor campaign and no short-block warranty extension anywhere in Kia's Telluride communication file.

Recall 24V407, Kia code SC316, covers 2020 to 2024 Tellurides whose front power seat motor "may overheat due to a stuck power seat slide knob, which can result in a fire while parked or driving", with a park-outside advisory and a free bracket and slide-knob replacement; letters went out 30 July 2024. Then in July 2026 NHTSA opened 26V430, Kia code SC374, on the same seat, because the first repair was not enough. It names "a stuck power seat slide knob or an improper recall 24V407 repair", the remedy changes to an electronic fuse assembly, 462,869 vehicles are affected, and Kia states that "vehicles already repaired under the previous recall will need to have the new remedy completed". Owner letters are expected 13 August 2026. This is the one item on the 2023 list that turns a straightforward inspection into a specific question: not "is the seat recall done", but "which of the two seat recalls is done". If the answer is 24V407 only, the car still needs work.

Recall 24V214, Kia code SC303, covers 2020 to 2024 Tellurides. The intermediate shaft and right front driveshaft "may not be fully engaged, which can result in vehicle roll away while in PARK". Until it is repaired, Kia's instruction is to set the electric parking brake manually every time before getting out. Dealers update the parking brake software and replace damaged intermediate shafts free, and letters went out 15 May 2024; a news clip covering the campaign put the fleet at "more than 427,000" vehicles. Kia then issued a subsequent repair action, SC303Z, to inspect and if necessary replace the right front driveshaft on 2020 to 2024 cars built through 19 October 2023 "that previously had the campaign SC303 completed". A 2023 owner in the federal file describes the practical consequence of having two open campaigns at once: "Due to these recalls: no dealerships will accept or b[uy the car]". So closing them is worth money as well as safety.

Recall 23V035, Kia code SC262, covers 2023 Tellurides only: "Due to a manufacturing error, the wire harnesses for the second row seat side air bags may become damaged, causing them not to deploy in the event of a crash." Dealers inspect and replace, or secure, the airbag wire harnesses free of charge, and owner letters went out 28 February 2023. This is the earliest campaign on the year and one of the easiest to have been closed before the car ever reached a second owner — but it is also the one with the least visible symptom, because an airbag that will not fire gives no warning until the moment it matters. One 2023 filing in the federal file describes a side impact in which "no side airbags deployed" and "the collision cause[d] over $16k in damage"; NHTSA lists no cause for that individual event, and it is a single complaint rather than a pattern, but it is a reason not to leave this one on trust.

The Telluride's glass story runs through all four years and it is present here too, at lower volume. "My sunroof randomly exploded upward while driving down the highway. No rock or debris hit me. It sounded like a gunshot." "The rear panoramic sunroof shattered without reason. It left about a golf ball-size hole in the middle and shattered the rest into small pieces." "Glass sunroof exploded while driving." And the windshield: "While parked, windshield started cracking from front left corner. Every few hours I go out to check it and the crack has spread halfway across." "I was driving 20 mph when I heard a loud crack, shortly after I noticed my windshield had a huge crack toward the bottom." There is no recall for either. What exists is a goodwill route Kia opened in writing on 1 November 2019, a Customer Satisfaction Initiative for all Telluride customers, launched because "customers have reported windshield chipping followed by extensive cracking within a short period of time, preventing repair of the chip", under which dealers were asked to "replace an affected Telluride customer's windshield under goodwill" and Kia offered to "reimburse customers for out-of-pocket expense previously incurred". Goodwill is a conversation rather than an entitlement, and the notice is old — but it is the strongest thing in writing on this subject and worth naming by date. One 2023 owner reports a track replacement after glass contamination at $5,000, and another reports paying a $500 insurance deductible.

A small 2023 electrical cluster with an unusually well-described mechanism. "The engine cooling fan activates at high speed and runs continuously for an extended period — in one instance, overnight — after the vehicle has been turned off, locked, and l[eft]." The same filer goes further: "the fan simply runs at full speed on its own, without the ignition on, for hours at a time. The component involved is the engine cooling fan and/or its control module. Based on owner community research, the likely cause is a faulty signal being sent to the Engine Control Module, which triggers the f[an]." Another 2023 owner reports simple parasitic drain: "Battery Drain. No lights left on, nothing plugged in. I suspect [the] IBU Module or some other wiring [is] causing a parasitic draw." It matters because of what a flat battery does on this car. A Telluride owner describes losing "all electronics and power steering" while driving to the dealership, and a review channel covering the model describes the same loop of jump-start, dead steering, dead battery again. If a car you are considering has had more than one battery, ask what was draining it rather than accepting that the battery was old — and note one owner was charged $540 for a battery that the fault had killed.

Worth stating plainly, because three of the earlier years' most expensive problems either shrink or disappear here. The oil-consumption cluster that accounts for most of the 2020 file is a handful of filings in this one. The sunroof mechanism failures that produce $5,000 to $7,000 quotes in 2021 and 2022 are largely absent — Kia's wind deflector and mechanism arms bulletin stops at cars built 19 January 2022, and so, broadly, does the complaint pattern. And the 2020-only headlight problem, which produced both a warranty extension and recall 24V148, does not reach this year at all. Two of the 2023's own three biggest clusters have free fixes behind them: recall 23V298 on the cluster and warranty extension WTY040 on the shocks, the latter running to fifteen years and 180,000 miles. A car reviewer covering this generation makes the fair summary point that the underlying vehicle is good — "the fit and finish and overall build quality with the Telluride is actually quite impressive for a modern car", and against the Honda Pilot, "Kia is offering more features for less money". On a 2023, that is closer to being simply true than on any other year in the range.