During the 6 months since I've purchased this vehicle, the power has intermittently, stalled upon pulling off from a traffic light, or excellerating onto the freeway, or while turning and pulling up onto a supermarket's parking lot. It revs up loudly, but without any power nor excelleration, without any warning. I'm always afraid that someone will run into my rear end because drivers behind me have no way of knowing that my car has suddenly stopped being able to excellerate. It keeps making the loud noise as if it's no longer in Drive, or the right gear as I'm pressing down on the excellerator peddle. It does this for approximately 10 seconds each time that it has happened. Had car in for service, first maintenance appointment, and for them to find out what's causing the transmission to keep failing, and to correct it, last Thursday, on 7/21/22. I was told that everything checked out okay, and that they drove the car, and couldn't reproduce the transmission problem that I've been having. Well, everything is clearly not okay, whether it's intermittent or not. This is very dangerous, but unfortunately, I can't will this to happen at any specific time, that I'm able to get a service appointment, in order for it be reproduced by the technician. I left the dealership with no resolution to my most important reason for scheduling the service appointment. I left with an oil change, tire rotation, a fluid level top off, but was notified that now, I had a screw in one of my tires. Then
2022 Hyundai Santa Cruz complaints
Owner reports filed with NHTSA about this vehicle, newest first and reproduced as filed. They are unverified accounts: one proves nothing, and a pattern across many is the thing worth reading. Back to the full 2022 record →
Complete transmission failure on the highway without warning. Issue occured at 12,237 miles on the vehicle. While traveling under cruise control at 75MPH on the highway in the far left lane and the dashboard lit up and told me to pull over immediately. There were no warning signs ahead of the failure. No warning lights or any mechanical noises/vibrations to indicate the transmission was about to fail. I had no drive and was unable to accelerate and had to make my way across 4 lanes of traffic without the ability to accelerate at all which was very dangerous and I was fortunate nothing happened to myself or anyone else. I pulled off to the side of the highway and once the vehicle was power cycled I had a check engine light. No drive was available and the vehicle refused to move under it's own power. The vehicle was immediately towed to a Hyundai dealership, who after a 2 week delay confirmed it was a total failure in the transmission. DTC Code: P1CD0 The dealership called it into the engineering team, and they stated there was a "fluctuation in oil pressure in the transmission and the engineering team recommend replacing the whole unit". As of right now I am still waiting on the transmission replacement.
My 2022 Santa Cruz experienced an apparent fault of the automatic transmission control during operation on a ~20 mile trip including city and highway driving. Weather was low 80s and dry. Symptoms were sluggish and delayed upshifting; loss of acceleration power. The issue was most noticeable while attempting to accelerate uphill; several times the vehicle topped out at 25-30 mph when going uphill and failed to accelerate further. As one of these occurred during moderate traffic while entering a highway on-ramp, I think this is a serious safety issue. I was able to pull to the side and eventually regained control of up/downshifting by placing the transmission shift lever in manual control - fortunately the transmission seemed to respond to manual up/down shifting and I was able to eventually accelerate to a safe highway speed (65mph). After a short ~2 mile drive on the highway I got off on the next exit and when stopped at the end of the exit ramp, turned the vehicle off and on. Following restarting the vehicle, automatic shifting seemed to operate correctly for the remainder of my travel (another ~20 miles of driving). During this malfunction I did not see any unusual indicator / warning lights on the dash or any indication that the vehicle wasn't in normal automatic driving mode. Reporting features such as the "vehicle health report" indicate that the vehicle had no issues, diagnostic messages or service due.
Left my neighborhood and as I pulled away from the stop sign the 1-2 shift felt abrupt, which has never happened before. No other issues were noticed until I got about a mile from home and my Santa Cruz wouldn't accelerate past 25-30 mph. The transmission wouldn't shift and the engine wouldn't rev past 3000 rpm. I pulled over at the closest spot I could find and restarted my vehicle and made it to work with no other issues. No warnings were present on my dash, and the problem seemed to remedy itself. I will keep an eye on it and also cross my fingers that this isn't the beginning of a DCT issue at 4300 miles.
The contact owns a 2022 Hyundai Santa Cruz. The contact stated while driving at undisclosed speeds, the vehicle lost motive power and failed to shift into gear. The contact was able to pull over and restart the vehicle. The “Stop Vehicle Immediately” message was displayed. The vehicle was taken to the local dealer but the vehicle was not diagnosed or repaired. The manufacturer was notified of the failure. The approximate failure mileage was 10,200.
Engine stuttering at random like it is going to die out. And a major safety issue four times, so far, with less than 1800 miles on the vehicle, the engine has died mid drive and flashes error on dash that engine is off and to put in neutral and restart. The last 2 dates being 6/12 & 6/26/2022. The first engine shutdown started with less than 500 miles on the vehicle. Very unsafe on the road.
Was driving along and the truck said pull over immediately and the power train disengage . It slow down in a construction zone with no place to pull over and cars coming right at me . It stopped and was not able to get it at first to restart after four attempt was able to get it to startup but would not pull forward or backward restart again was able to pull forward and get it to go about 40 miles an hour to get off the road. Got it a mile to the dealership was told it will need a new transmission not sure how long to get it. No car or trucks to loan and no rent car to be had. Had to wait till the next week to get one and pay $150 in Tax money for a rent car and still make the payment on the truck this is so wrong .
Merging onto interstate and experienced loss of power. Slowly accelerated to 50 mph with gas pedal to the floor could not exceed 50mph. No warning lights just sudden loss of power. I had to drive onto side of the road to avoid being hit from cars behind me on interstate. Pulled over and restarted vehicle and drove normally back home.
2022 Hyundai Santa Cruz Limited, 2.5T with 8-speed DCT, with 11,765 miles. This has happened 3 times in a 3 day period. Upon accelerating from a stop, there was a complete loss of power. I applied more pressure to the accelerator and still no power. It seemed like the vehicle was out-of-gear or had an engine misfire. After about 10 seconds, a puff of thick, dark smoke came out from the tailpipe and acceleration resumed as if nothing happened. Upon coming to a stop and exiting the vehicle, there was a smell of burnt rubber coming from under the hood, but I could not locate the source. There have been at least 3 other instances in the last week where there was some hesitation when accelerating from a stop (again, it felt like it was in the wrong gear or there was a misfire) but not a complete loss of power and dark smoke like in the other instances. After each of the above instances, I attached an OBDII tool to look for error codes but there were none.
Vehicle took longer to start after pressing start button. Upon leaving my driveway, vehicle struggled to accelerate, taking nearly 60 seconds to reach 55 MPH. No warning lights indicated on dash. I manually changed gears with paddle shift, which did nothing. Also changed driving mode from "smart" to "normal" to "sport" which did nothing. Both from exiting my driveway, and later attempting to get up to speed on the highway after a stoplight a crash could have happened as the vehicle struggled to make it into the proper lanes in time. Vehicle is only 2 weeks old, 670 miles. Vehicle was not making any unusual noises. In summary, vehicle was barely accelerating despite peddle being all the way pressed.
Upon accelerating vehicle jumps rpms6000-7000 and does not accelerate. Vehicle needs to be turned off to function properly again, it gets stuck in high rpm’s with no acceleration.
Getting an error multiple times under 500 miles. It has been coming and going since 200 miles. Transmission system error! Check transmission oil immediately. This is going on with multiple Santa cruzs
The main concern is loss of power. Have non-turbo version and have no idea what is a cause of the problem. Probably is computer. Had this issue once or twice. Switched to Normal mode from Smart.
2022 Santa Cruz 764 miles. Washed vehicle April 1st with hose, water & soap bubbles in grill of DRL. I was told that its a lens cover & not the LED DRL, but it collects and holds water & soap. I can't clean in there. Field service engineer came out, deamed normal by Hyundai, grill & lens are not sealed. Unacceptable, water collecting by electrical component. Can't get behind lens cover to clean. Eventually im going to have a film in there, and DRL won't work as they should. If soap and water get in now, what happens during winter when it gets road spray from rock salt melting snow and ice turn things to a slush? Who's going to clean that? What happens when the water turns to ice? I mentioned windshield gets foggy and has to be cleaned inside, I was told to use my defroster to clean it. There is no defroster in grill. I'm seeing water collect by an electrical component and soap during a wash. Thats now, the winter road spray won't be as kind. Those are not individual lights, it's one component of 4 lights. The longer this goes on, the effectiveness of those lights will go down. That's not gonna help me at night. Those lights are expensive and you have to have the entire panel replaced. Im not a mechanic or body & fender man. Who's going to pay for that? But, the big question is, "why aren't these lights sealed?
On March 31, 2022 my Hyundai Santa Cruz SEL Premium flashed a warning to pull over immediately. The engine lost power. I had the gas pedal floored but it wouldn't move. I stopped in the middle of the road, shut the car off and turned it on again 3 times before getting the car to drive. The car sent an email saying it was a transmission problem. I called the dealership and had it picked up. They determined it was a bad chip on a pump for the transmission. Three weeks later, after numerous attempts to get an update, the dealership told me the Hyundai Corporation wouldn't allow the pump to be replaced. The dealership has to replace the entire transmission. The estimated date of arrival to California is June 16th! Then it will have to be shipped to Hawaii. This is infuriating. I leased the car 10/16/21 and it only has 2799 miles on it.
The low beam headlight position creates a "shadow shelf" in the middle of the windshield making visibility poor while using only the low beams. This is made worse in inclement weather. This is a hazard as the illuminated area distance is drastically less than that of most other vehicles.
I purchased a 2022 Hyundai Santa Cruz, Limited edition. The vehicle went into neutral while driving on a busy highway. There was no forward or reverse gear operation. I had to call the local police to block off the lane till a tow truck arrived. After 60 days the dealer finally located the problem. A ground wire to the transmission control module came loose and caused the vehicle transmission to fail. The ground ID Number was GE204 and is located inside the left front fender. This problem took 2800 miles to occur. I feel one ground connection should not cause this type of safety issue.
I was driving in a residential area, and my vehicle indicated that I should pull over immediately. During that time, the shifting was hindered and top speed was limited (below posted speeds). When I stopped, my vehicle would not move forward or backward again. This is the second time that this vehicle has had an issue where it would not shift or be able to achieve posted speed (the first time happened on an interstate highway and the top speed was about 40 miles per hour). This failure in being able to maintain appropriate speed and also not moving forward again after stopping is very concerning when in traffic. My vehicle was inspected, the high pressure pump was indicated to be at fault, and the transmission (housing the pump) was replaced.
Several times, when sitting at a stop sign or red light, I will press on the gas’s to go forward. The engine revs, the rpm’s go very high but there is little forward exceleration. This one time almost caused an accident as a car almost hit me because I could not make the car move faster. I have had the truck for just over two months and has happened many times.
E.ngine took longer than normal to start. After starting, I drove 1/4 mile and engine had no power at all. RPM would rev but no power. Pulled over and stopped. Restarted vehicle and everything returned to normal.
This car only has 150 miles on it. At 50 miles an hour the transmission refused to shift & the car RPMs surged with a loss of power. It remained at 5000 rpms with my fott OFF the accelerator. I then needed to manually shift out of automatic it to get it to drop the RPMS start driving again. It was dangerous & another person might not have known how to get going again & caused a chain reaction accident at highway speeds.
Sudden loss of power. I was pulling away from a traffic light. I stepped on the throttle and found the engine unable to respond. I had just enough power to reach 20 MPH. The engine never quit. No warnings or cautions were displayed. Pulled over and shut off the vehicle. Did a quick visual inspection and found nothing out of place Waited a few minutes, restarted and all is back to normal operating condition.
My Santa Cruz headlights have a dark shadow on the drivers side while driving at night. It is extremely distracting and it can be a danger. The blind spot is very obvious. It can lead the driver to look at the shadow instead of the road as well as a portion of the headlight projection is not illuminating the road. The 2022 Tucson has the same front headlight configuration and while searching the Hyundai forum, the same problem exists for that vehicle. This is a constant problem while driving at night.
Engine shut off on its own at low speed (4 mph) while driving in a parking lot and a warning light indicated to put the car in neutral and restart the engine.
While driving on a surface street, engine stopped responding while pressing the accelerator. Vehicle would not go faster than 28mph. Once turned off and restarted, engine acted normally. Vehicle is less than 1 week old with approximately 200 miles. This appears to be the same problem mentioned by multiple Santa Cruz owners on the following forum: https://www.santacruzforums.com/threads/loss-of-power-as-others-had.9477
Washer fluid does not distribute properly on the windshield especially at highway speeds causing the wipers to leave streaks in the middle of the windshield right in the driver's field of vision. The vast majority of the fluid hits at the base of the windshield and runs off at an angle towards the driver's side window. The only way to get it to clear is to pull over or slow down to less than 20 MPH (not always possible) or to pump a lot of excess fluid on the windshield to get enough in the middle to partially clear it. This puts the driver at a much higher risk of running out of washer fluid. I have actually run out of fluid once in this car already which is a big concern. I regularly fill my fluids and have only had this happen one other time in over 30 years of driving. I have checked the Santa Cruz owners forums and there are a lot of complaints for this same issue indicating there is a design flaw in the washer system or nozzle. I am asking NHTSA to please investigate this. I have owned many vehicles and have never had one that couldn't clear the windshield properly. I am attaching the dealer's repair invoice indicating they duplicated the concern and that it was considered normal as the nozzles are not adjustable.
Santa Cruz SEL Premium 70 miles on vehicle While driving at night at 40mph I tried to accelerate but the car acted like I was in too high of a gear. It would not go faster and I had traffic coming up behind me. Luckily I got stopped by a red light. Not being sure what to do I turned the car off and restarted. It ran fine after that. Car was in SPORT mode. Car not inspected, thought it was something I did since we bought it that same day. No warning lights or messages.
I accelerated at 10mph, the engine rpm's increased to 3000rpm but the vehicle speed did not increase. After I stopped at a stop sign the car accelerated normally. I did not restart the car. The car was in NORMAL mode.
ILOSS OF POWER. My hyundai t has 400miles on it. In the morning started driving very sluggish- felt the loss or 30% power. On a highway trying to pass the vehicle/merge into traffic- could not get up past 2.5K RPMS and get up to traffic speed -60 MPH. Felt very unsafe- had to quickly take the exit, as I was impeding traffic. Taking car to a dealership
Loss of power. Car in drive, no snow going to make a right turn on a busy fast street. Typical speeds on this street are 50 +, speed limit is 45. To get out in to traffic you need to have power to get up to traffic speed. So I hit the gas I say 1/4 throttle and started to make a right turn. I had very little power. The engine revved up to 2000-3000 rpms but car was moving really slow. Its took several seconds to get to 5-10 mph. Top speed was 39-40 mph. If you hit the gas it would just rev higher but no increase of speed. The bad part was the on coming traffic had to come to a fast stop and swerving around me because I was going so slow. To get to 39 mph took 30 seconds. This car is a turbo and does 0-60 in 6 sec. I almost got hit in the rear and caused an accident. I made a case # with Hyundai but not response in several days. When I finally got a response said take car to dealer. Well I did that the next day. Dealer found not trouble codes and drove the car for 3 days putting on 100mi, no issues. I had no issues until 2200mi. This web site below has many others with the same issue which are making complaints to NHTSA as of the last week. I do have dealer service reports I can summit at a later time. See this forum where many others have same issue. Search loos of power. https://www.santacruzforums.com/threads/loss-of-power-as-others-had.9477/#post-191382
When taking off from a stand still the Santa Cruz will hesitate.. Not all the time but it's usually when you need to get into traffic... It will lose power and finally take off...
As other owners have reported, there is an issue that happens, seemingly at random, when accelerating from a stop. The vehicle feels as if it’s stuck in too high of a gear and accelerates very slowly despite high RPMs. The maximum speed I could achieve was 16 MPH after keeping the gas pedal nearly floored for 3-5 seconds, which normally would have had me to nearly 60 MPH. This happened to me in rush hour city traffic on a busy street with no shoulder. The only apparent solution is to shut off the vehicle and restart it, at which time the problem resolves itself and normal operation is resumed. In my case this caused a brief traffic backup that extended through the intersection of two major arterial streets and lots of upset drivers behind me. This has only happened once (occurred on 2/10/22) since purchasing the vehicle new on 12/28/21 and having driven it approximately 1,100 miles.
I was passing on a 2 lane road with the gas pedal to the floor. After I passed the vehicle, still in the passing lane i let off on the gas. At that moment I had no power. Had to brake and get back behind the vehicle I was passing. Thank god there was no on-coming traffic, or I would not be here telling you this story. It took what seemed forever before I had power again. Not sure what I did shifting gears or just timing out. I am aware of other people reporting a similar problem with no power on SantaCruzForums.com. I am concerned about this moving forward. The car was new to me at the time, i thought i had done something wrong, then i read about other people having the same problem. I have had this occur since where it was not a issue, more of a irritant.
The contact owns a 2022 Hyundai Santa Cruz. The contact stated that while accelerating from a complete stop, the RPM revved up; however, the vehicle would not exceed 25 MPH. The contact exited the highway and veered to the side of the road. The contact stated that as he turned off and restarted the vehicle, he was able to drive the vehicle with no further issues. The dealer was notified of the failure. The manufacturer was notified of the failure and a case was opened. The vehicle was not diagnosed or repaired. The failure mileage was approximately 1,200.
ALL DASH LIGHTS ARE ON WHILE DRIVING. OIL, ABS, TIRE PRESSURE, CHECK ENGINE. CAR IS AT DEALERSHIP NOW AND THEY ARE TRYING TO FIND THE PROBLEM. THEY HAVE BEEN VERY GOOD TO ME WITH A LOANER AND CONSTANT UPDATES. THEY HAVE BEEN IN TOUCH WITH CORPORATE AND THEY ADVISED THEM TO CHANGE SOMETHING IN THE ABS SYSTEM WHICH IS EXPECTED TO ARRIVE MIDDLE OF FEBRURARY. NOTHING TO DO BUT WAIT.
Halogen headlights too dim, even on high beams. Called dealership and was told they couldn’t switch to a brighter bulb. Was also told I couldn’t convert to LED headlights without voiding warranty; that if I wanted LED headlights I should have “purchased a higher trim model”. I purchased the SEL with activity package trim and you would think an almost $40,000 vehicle would have better headlights than this.
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NHTSA publishes every complaint as the owner wrote it and investigates only a fraction. Spelling, capitalisation and judgement are the filer’s own. What carries weight is repetition: the same component failing the same way across many filings, and whether the manufacturer eventually opened a recall for it.
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