AutoUtility currently tracks 17 official NHTSA owner defect complaints for the 2025 Hyundai Santa Cruz. Driver Assistance & Safety Tech issues are the most frequently reported category, appearing in 9 complaints (52.9% of submitted records). Among these NHTSA complaint records, 1 filing cites a crash, 1 cites a fire.

Key Problem Findings
  • Total NHTSA Complaints: 17 reports
  • #1 Reported Problem Area: Driver Assistance & Safety Tech (9 reports • 52.9% of submitted complaints)
  • Secondary Problem Areas: Exterior Lighting (3), Electrical System (3)
  • Crash-Citing Complaints: 1 filings
  • Fire-Citing Complaints: 1 filings
  • Complaints Reporting Injuries / Fatalities: 0 injury filings • 0 fatality filings
Reporting Methodology: Statistics describe unverified consumer submissions voluntarily filed with NHTSA. Complaint volume is not normalized for vehicle sales volume or miles driven. Multiple components can be cited within a single owner complaint submission.
Total Complaints
17
Submitted to NHTSA ODI
Crash-Citing Complaints
1
Filings citing a collision
Fire-Citing Complaints
1
Filings citing smoke or fire
Complaints Reporting Injuries
0
Filings citing one or more injuries
Complaints Reporting Fatalities
0
Consumer filings citing fatalities

Most Reported Problems for 2025 Hyundai Santa Cruz

Top automotive subsystem defect categories ranked by unique owner complaint volume in federal records

#1 Problem Area 52.9% of complaints

Driver Assistance & Safety Tech

9 owner complaints submitted to NHTSA ODI
⚠️ NHTSA Recall Context

NHTSA records list 1 official safety recall campaign for this model year involving the same broad component area:

*Component overlap means an official recall exists for the same broad vehicle system. It does not establish that an individual owner complaint was caused by, covered by, or resolved through that recall.
⚠️ 1 crash report
#2 Problem Area 17.6% of complaints

Exterior Lighting

3 owner complaints submitted to NHTSA ODI
✓ 0 crashes or fires cited
#3 Problem Area 17.6% of complaints

Electrical System

3 owner complaints submitted to NHTSA ODI
⚠️ NHTSA Recall Context

NHTSA records list 1 official safety recall campaign for this model year involving the same broad component area:

*Component overlap means an official recall exists for the same broad vehicle system. It does not establish that an individual owner complaint was caused by, covered by, or resolved through that recall.
✓ 0 crashes or fires cited
#4 Problem Area 11.8% of complaints

Brakes & Traction Control

2 owner complaints submitted to NHTSA ODI
⚠️ 1 crash report
#5 Problem Area 5.9% of complaints

Engine & Cooling

1 owner complaint submitted to NHTSA ODI
🔥 1 fire report
Domain Share Note: Share percentage represents the proportion of unique complaint filings referencing each vehicle system. Because single complaints may cite multiple systems (such as engine and electrical simultaneously), domain percentages represent individual category incidence and may sum to over 100%.

Recent NHTSA Owner Reports for 2025 Hyundai Santa Cruz

Representative defect filings submitted by owners to the NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation

Exterior Lighting NHTSA ODI ID: #11749015
Filed: 07/08/2026

"The contact owns a 2025 Hyundai Santa Cruz. The contact stated that while driving at various speeds at night on several occasions, the headlights were dim and created a shadow across the roadway. The vehicle was taken to a dealer on multiple occasions. The dealer was initially unable to duplicate..."

Incident Date: 05/01/2026 • Raw NHTSA Component: EXTERIOR LIGHTING
Engine & Cooling NHTSA ODI ID: #11736335
Fire Cited Filed: 05/07/2026

"The contact owned a 2025 Hyundai Santa Cruz. The contact stated that while driving at an undisclosed speed, a loud popping noise was suddenly heard coming from the engine compartment with no warning lights illuminated. The contact stated that immediately following the failure, the power steering..."

Incident Date: 05/06/2026 • Raw NHTSA Component: ENGINE
Exterior Lighting NHTSA ODI ID: #11724893
Filed: 03/17/2026

"While driving at night I happened to notice that the headlights failed to illuminate the road sufficiently. Specifically, the truck was going downhill. As it approached the bottom and soon to go uphill, I noticed that there was a strict delineation in what was lit up and what was not. Being on a..."

Incident Date: 03/09/2026 • Raw NHTSA Component: EXTERIOR LIGHTING
Electrical System NHTSA ODI ID: #11721312
Filed: 03/01/2026

"I was driving on a highway at 55mph at night today 3/1/2026 and all of a sudden the headlights, instrumentation lights, and computer display went out, very scary, the all turned back on about 1.5 seconds later."

Incident Date: 03/01/2026 • Raw NHTSA Component: ELECTRICAL SYSTEM,EXTERIOR LIGHTING
Driver Assistance & Safety Tech NHTSA ODI ID: #11711454
Filed: 01/16/2026

"The contact owns a 2025 Hyundai Santa Cruz. The contact stated that after a month of owning the vehicle, while attempting to start the vehicle, the Forward Collision Avoidance warning light and other unknown warning lights illuminated. The contact stated that the Forward Collision Avoidance warning..."

Incident Date: 07/01/2025 • Raw NHTSA Component: FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE
Consumer Narrative Notice: Excerpts are sanitized text descriptions submitted by vehicle owners to the federal ODI database. They reflect the reporting consumer's observations at the time of filing and have not been independently confirmed by vehicle manufacturers or government investigators.

Complaint History for Hyundai Santa Cruz

Reported defect complaint volume across sibling model years (2022–2026)

Model Year NHTSA Complaints Crash Reports Safety Recalls Detailed Report
2022 Hyundai Santa Cruz 179 4 4 View 2022 Problems →
2023 Hyundai Santa Cruz 77 2 2 View 2023 Problems →
2024 Hyundai Santa Cruz 35 3 1 View 2024 Problems →
2025 Hyundai Santa Cruz Current Page 17 1 3 Current
2026 Hyundai Santa Cruz 0 0 3 View 2026 Problems →
Comparative Disclaimer: Complaint totals are unadjusted historical counts and are not normalized for vehicles sold, active fleet size, or total road mileage. Newer model years naturally have had less calendar exposure time to accumulate owner filings.

Detailed NHTSA Component Breakdown for 2025 Hyundai Santa Cruz

Complete distribution of consumer defect reports across all 10 granular NHTSA system and subsystem classifications

Vehicle Component / System Total Complaints Crash Reports Fire Reports Reported Injury Entries Reported Fatality Entries
Forward Collision Avoidance NHTSA category: FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE 6 0 0 0 0
EXTERIOR LIGHTING 2 0 0 0 0
Other / Uncategorized NHTSA category: UNKNOWN OR OTHER 2 0 0 0 0
Electrical System NHTSA category: ELECTRICAL SYSTEM 1 0 0 0 0
ELECTRICAL SYSTEM,EXTERIOR LIGHTING 1 0 0 0 0
Engine NHTSA category: ENGINE 1 0 1 0 0
FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE,ELECTRICAL SYSTEM 1 0 0 0 0
FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE,LANE DEPARTURE 1 0 0 0 0
Service Brakes NHTSA category: SERVICE BRAKES 1 0 0 0 0
SERVICE BRAKES,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE 1 1 0 0 0
Data Attribution & Reporting Methodology: Complaints are unverified voluntary submissions to the NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation (ODI). Because multiple vehicle components can be cited within a single owner complaint submission, component-level rollups may sum to more than the unique complaint count (17). Injury and fatality entries in the detailed table reflect raw values entered by reporting consumers across individual submissions; they are not deduplicated casualty statistics and may include duplicate or unverified entries. Complaint volume is not normalized for sales volume or vehicle mileage and does not represent an audited component failure rate.
Official US Government Data Provenance

The complaint records on this page are retrieved directly from the NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) public database.

Local Production Store Compiled: August 2026 • Deterministic Audited Dataset • Zero Dynamic External API Runtime Latency.