I have been around cars since I was 12, I am 62 years old. I was driving from Las Vegas to Los Angeles. Mind you now I had just had my 15,000 mile service 4 days earlier. I had only put 115 miles on the car since the service when it broke down. I had only entered California by 20 miles in the middle of the desert, when I heard internal noises under the hood, ( clanking and grinding). The one thing in my favor I was next to the emergency lane, because it was jerking and loosing power.

First thing I thought of was the mechanic hadn't tightened the drain plug after the oil change, then I realized that couldn't be because I had no oil leaks under the car, where I park it In the same spot everyday. When the tow company arrived and started rolling it onto the flat bed there at was a trail of oil at least 5 ft. long. I had it towed 60 miles to the nearest dealer Findlay Kia in Las Vegas. Michael my service advisor, who was fantastic. I had mentioned to him in our introduction about me knowing cars that I thought my engine was Gone. After about 1 hour he informed that the engine was gone and needed to be replaced. The drain plug was missing, so all the oil ran out. He believes for some reason vibration caused it to come out, and something had cracked causing the problem.

Kia is footing the entire bill for replacing the engine under the warranty. it will take 2 weeks just to get the engine from Korea. The reason I wrote this is that I saw some else had a problem with the drain plug coming out. Is this becoming a common problem, because I believe 2017 Hybrids engines had changed from past years.

Update from Dec 6, 2018: I now see there is a 3rd engine that needs to be replaced complaint. Its under 2018 Optima Hybrid. Is there something Kia is hiding? Like I stated earlier about my knowledge of cars. I'm going to contact Kia myself, and I will be able to see if there is a smoke screen or (BS) that they are trying to cover up.