NHTSA Complaint #11545948 — 2017 HYUNDAI VELOSTER

I own a 2017 hyundai veloster with roughly 122,000 miles on it, recently I got in my car to go to work, started the vehicle and exited my apartment complex onto a local road drove roughly a half mile to the on ramp for the highway, the car was just about up to its usual operating temperature when I accelerated down the on ramp and merged into traffic, at this time there were no warning lights, the engine temperature was normal, the car reached roughly 55/60mph and immediately lost power, pressing the gas pedal harder caused the car to lose more power and buck. At this time there were still no warning lights on the dash, the car slowed down to roughly 30/35mph presenting a significant danger to myself and other traffic as this was on a major highway with heavy amounts of traffic. It was approximately 4 miles to the next exit and the only safe place that I could exit the highway/ flow of traffic. The car was turned off and sat for roughly 5 minutes at which time I restarted the vehicle and drove it home on a local side road, the vehicle had no power and would not accelerate or maintain a speed above 30mph, at this time there were still no check engine lights on. A tow truck was called to haul the car to a local repair shop as the dealer had no openings for service, at the time the tow truck showed up to load up my car the vehicle was started breifly and a check engine light was now on, the local repair shop diagnosed the issue as a failed catalytic converter and the engine code as indicating inefficient emissions control readings on an 02 sensor. The repair shop could not come up with a reasonable answer as to how the catalytic converter had failed other than saying it had completely melted the material in the converter. The engine had no misfires, fuel issues, excessive oil consumption at this time and no engine codes were active or stored indicating any of theses issues. The catalytic converter failure is a major saftey issue that is happening on hyundai engines.