Kia Concerned That Employee Forgot to Bolt Seats Down in Potentially Tens of Thousands of Cars

Hold onto your butts.

Bolt from the Blue

The sophomore year of Kia’s three-row electric SUV has come to a pretty inauspicious conclusion.

This week, the Korean automaker issued a recall for nearly 23,000 EV9 electric cars for the 2024-25 model year after discovering that some of them had seats that weren’t fully bolted down — and all purportedly because of a single employee. Whoops.

According to documents filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration last month, the second and third-row seat mounting bolts may be missing in EV9 cars manufactured between September 2023 and October 2024 at the Kia Autoland Gwangmyeong assembly plant in South Korea. As many as 22,883 vehicles may be affected.

“Seats with missing seat mounting bolts may not properly restrain an occupant during certain collisions, thereby increasing the risk of injury,” the recall report states.

My Bad

But the most eyebrow-raising detail, as spotted by TechSpot, is the scapegoat for the huge screw up.

In the recall report, Kia places all of the blame on an “error” made by a single “plant assembly worker,” who apparently didn’t make sure all the seat bolts were properly mounted.

Kia didn’t specify if the employee was working on a Monday or Friday when the costly flubs were made — though it did make sure to mention the employee in its manufacturer notice sent to car dealers, just so they know who to blame.

Holdfast

According to a chronology report filed with the NHTSA, the issue was first raised in a customer complaint back in September. In an inspection of 90 randomly selected EV9 SUVs performed by Kia North America, no loose or missing seat mounting bolts were found.

Subsequent inspections uncovered only three total cases of missing seat bolts — all leading back to the same employee, apparently, as of mid–December. And so in reality, the issue may be far less pervasive than the size of the recall suggests, though you can never be too careful.

Kia says that dealers will inspect the recalled EVs and perform the adjustments and installations needed free of charge.

More on EV recalls: Thousands of Cybertrucks Recalled for Bricking While Driving