This data is from the NHTSA — the US gov't agency tasked with vehicle safety. Complaints are spread across multiple & redundant categories, & are not organized by problem.
So how do you find out what problems are occurring? For this NHTSA complaint data, the only way is to read through the comments below. Any duplicates or errors? It's not us.
I was stopped at a red light. The stop idol engaged and the vehicle did not start when I attempted to make my turn. The instrument panel indicated that I should shift to park. I did so and attempted to restart the vehicle but it did not start. After a number of attempts to restart it eventually turned on and I drove straight home. I was in the middle of a major intersection with my son in the car. Car zooming by me as my car was stuck in the turning lane. If a car failing to start as a result of a feature that was integrated by the manufacturer isn-??t a safety issue then I don-??t know what a safety concern would be classified as according the this institution. Permanently shutting off the feature is not an option as it renegades every time you start the car initially. The car has stalled a few times prior to today-??s incident but this is the first time it failed to restart. As I drove home I reengaged the system to see what would happen, if failed to restart again and began the stall every time once the idol stop was engaged. This is unsafe. If I forget to turn off the function of this feature and I am on an expressway what happens if the car fails to restart, my brakes lights may not be pressed as I am thinking I am simply going to drive off and I could get rear ended at 60 miles an hour. This is a safety issue. This is a ticketing time bomb and further delays are putting thousands of lives at risk. I did I not know about the problem until I research the internet to find a solution. Why haven-??t we been informed of this problem" Is this institution waiting for the body count to be high enough to warrant a consumer alert" This is a safety issue.
The Auto Start/Stop feature on my 2017 Honda Pilot has had issues for the last 2 year. It started with the engine occasionally "hesitating" to restart after I held the brake pedal down at a stop light. As it started to happen more frequently, I took it to my Honda dealer and they told me that they could not recreate the issue and thus could not diagnose and fix it. Within the last 6 months, the issue has become more and more frequent and severe to the point that I have been worried about the car not restarting and have been manually turning off the Auto Start/Stop feature when I drive the vehicle. It does seem to occur more frequently in hot weather when I running the A/C and there is more of load on the engine and system. On July 16, 2022, I forgot to turn off the Auto Start/Stop feature, and at the first stoplight that I stopped at, the feature turned on, shut off my engine and then failed to restart. I had to put the car in Park and then it took me a few moments to get the car to re-start. The vehicle was very slow to respond, as I was afraid of the car not restarting at all. After a couple of minutes the car did restart. I turned off the Auto Start/Stop feature and did not have any further issues on my drive home. After the failure to restart from the Auto feature, my dashboard told me to put the car in park and restart. I do not recall if any other warning lights appeared, as I was franticly trying to get car restarted in the middle of traffic and cars honking at me. Once the car restarted all warning lights disappeared. Upon returning home that day, I Googled the issue before making an appointment with my dealer again. I became aware of NTHSA's investigation into this issue. From my experience, Honda should recall these vehicles and fix the issue. Someone could have hit me from behind at speed, as it was a green light and not everyone is always fully paying attention, or has poor depth perception.
The engine fails to restart on its own from a complete stop at a traffic light or road intersection with the Auto Start/Stop function engaged. This has happened on numerous occasions and sometimes will not even restart manually, causing other vehicles to have to go around and dodge the stalled vehicle in the middle of busy intersections. Honda mechanic can not reproduce the problem when in the shop, leading to no resolution. Problem continues even after having the battery completely replaced and cleaning the fuel injectors.
auto stop/start feature. we have to insure to turn it off when we drive to avoid it not working properly...stops completely and we have restart the car manually and it sometimes seems it doesn't want to restart. if it does work, power to other systems, radio, all blink off then on. we don't trust this feature and thought it was battery issue but shop tested battery and no issues with it. we have been lucky when this has happened, with only one car behind us when it failed to restart in the city at night. my wife was scared. i had to talk her out of the situation on my phone, the other car was patient. this could cause an accident. this has been happening since 2018 and we only avoid by shutting the feature off. honda needs to reimburse us for this worthless and dangerous feature. they also should allow us to turn it off since it is a safety issue
I moved into the left lane to merge onto another road. I had to come to a stop because a car had was stopped ahead of me. After that car moved, I lifted my foot from the brake and pushed the gas to make my left hand turn. The car didn-??t move. A light flashed on the car that said something like -??to start engine push brake and push start-?? I looked down at the gear shifter and noticed it was on N. I tried to hit -??drive.-?? The car flashed the sign again. I put the car in park. I tried to put the car back in drive. The car would not change gears. I put on my hazard lights, turned off the car, and restarted it. The car transitioned from park to drive. There have been many instances where I-??m merging onto a roadway or slowing down to turn left where the car hesitates. I will be braking. I lift my foot from the brake to press the gas pedal and nothing happens. The car moves because it-??s going downhill, but the gas pedal is not causing the car to move. When the car does finally move, it moves with a huge lurch. There have been times that I'm unable to move my car with the gas pedal while crossing traffic. It's terrifying and Honda says that they are unaware of the problem and unable to replicate it.
- Arnold, MD, USA
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When exiting the interstate and stopped at stop sign, vehicle shut off due to auto stop/start feature. When I released the break to go, the vehicle did not start and completely shut down. The vehicle had to be placed in park, break pressed and ignition button pressed again. It took a little bit but it did start again. After this incident, this has also happened about 10 more times stop lights around town. It has always started again but it takes a minute to restart and multiple steps are needed for it to be restarted. Traffic has been backed up while I attempt to restart the vehicle.
The Idle/Stop function stopped operating at a stop light. The car completely shut off. My wife pressed the brake and ignition but the car did not immediately restart. After a few long minutes, the function worked. This is the second incident with the Honda Pilot. In May 2022, the vehicle stopped at an intersection and cut off. I took it to the Honda Service and had diagnostics ran. I was charged for the test but the Service Department did not find anything wrong. They recommended a new battery which I purchased. This was in May 2022. There is definitely an issue. No use taking it back to the dealer, they don't know the source of the problem.
While driving I first noticed the radio would shut off- almost like an electric surge (Spring 2021). I brought in to local dealer to assess. Dealer couldn't replicate so was dismissed. Car slipped into "sport" mode randomly (July 2021). Brought in to dealer and couldn't be replicated.Then the car would take longer to start at a stop light. Eventually, at times, the car would NOT START when the brake was released and gas paddle depressed (August 2021). There is no warning or indiction that this will happen. It is periodic, random and unpredictable. The stall out has happened on long and short rides. This has occurred at stop lights, stop and go traffic on a busy highway and entering traffic circles. I could have easily been rear-ended at any of these stalls. I am afraid when driving this car. The dashboard lights up with alerts and the car must be put in park and the start button used to get the car turned on. This takes time to restart the car- further increasing chance of an accident. I have brought the car to the dealer on at least 5 service visits and the problem persists. The dealer reports they were able to reproduce the stall at most recent service visit (6/16/2022). Fuel injector replacements (8/2021), PCM software reboot (10/2021), battery replacement (3rd battery in life of car), and now awaiting valve adjustment (part on national back order). Battery #1 replaced 3/2020, battery #2 replaced 1/2022. The problem persists despite these "fixes". I have requested that the dealer escalate this problem to Honda Corporate.
The auto start\stop feature doesn't work and is extremely unsafe and dangerous. I will be sitting at a stop light and when the light turns green I take my foot off the break and the car will completely turn off and error messages will appear. Multiple times it has completely turned off the car and the car couldn't be restarted right away, leaving us stranded in the middle of the street trying to restart the car while cars are going by me. It takes at least a minute for the car to restart once it turns itself off. This has happened at least 10 times. We always turn the feature off when we drive now but sometimes we just forget because it's extremely inconvenient and difficult to remember that we have to turn off the feature every single time we start the car. When we took it to the dealership mechanic they told us we needed a new battery and that would fix the problem. Our battery was still at 50% and yet we still changed it but the problem has never gone away.
The idle shut off feature has shut the car off and then not restarted when it was supposed to. This has happened in two intersections and a stoplight. When it doesn-??t restart, I am unable to do anything, shift in to park or restart the car. It is extremely unsafe as it leaves you sitting in the middle of traffic or wherever it decides to leave you and you can-??t do anything with the vehicle. There is no warning when it does it. I have not approached the dealer since there is a button to override the feature I figured they would not listen. However I think it is ridiculous that you have to push a button to make sure your vehicle doesn-??t die on you while driving. I would like to see the auto idle feature removed from the vehicle.
There is a major and potentially dangerous issue with the idle stop/start feature. When the car is at a stop and the engine shuts off (gas saving feature) and sometimes the car will fail to start again, leaving me stranded in the middle of an intersection or whatever road I'm on. Sometimes all of the collision systems fail to start again (dash warning), sometimes it takes minutes to get it restarted which results in angry drivers behind me and the potential to create an accident. This issue began within a few months of buying the car. I had informed the original Honda dealership where I purchased the car but they failed to properly document the issue because there were no error codes populated by the on-board computer. After it happened dozens of times I took the vehicle to a different dealership and was able to demonstrate the problem directly to a technician after two separate appointment attempts. They then agreed to replace the battery. This helped for a time period of about 9 months and then it started again. I believe there is a wide-spread issue with the computer's ignition system and I'm not alone, although Honda seems to pretend they've never heard of the issue. I have attached my first 'documented' (although it was reported YEARS before this) service report followed by the second in which they finally replaced the battery and admitted fault. I am hopping the NHTSA can investigate and help the owners of these Pilots come to a permanent resolution. Thank you for your time. [XXX] INFORMATION Redacted PURSUANT TO THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT (FOIA), 5 U.S.C. 552(B)(6).
The auto engine idle engaged when car came to a stop and then stalled out my car. This has happened about 4 times. I am unsure of the exact date of first incident but this has been happening for a couple of years. This required me to turn off the car and then restart. Usually at a red light causing the driver behind me to be confused and angry. Usually I will turn off this feature when I turn on the car but if I don-??t remember and this feature engages it it doesn-??t always stall out the car but the sound of the engine sounds like it-??s having a hard time restarting and sometimes the radio will cut out (like the battery is off for the car) for a second. This was reported to my dealer a couple years ago and they found no issue (took it out for one test drive) and had never heard of this happening as they say.
i was stranded multiple times at redlight signal and while taking left on yeild due to idle stop and it took me 30 seconds to start the vehicle. When i went to show room they replaced the battery which fixed the problem. Problem is everything else work fine except idle stop start and it caused lot on anxiety when i got stuck in middle of intersection.
Our car is 1,100 miles over warranty and the air conditioner system broke. The dealer cannot tell me anything about why it happened, just that they need to replace the entire system, including the compressor and condenser. Our AC is blowing hot air now (and we live in Georgia and it's the summer), so the car is basically undriveable. It's going to be $5900 to replace.
The auto stop/start feature does not always restart the car when I release the brake after stopping. Mostly in town at stop signs and red lights but recently it happened while I was in stop and go traffic on an interstate. At all locations I was blocking traffic (flashers on of course) and hoping no one hit me while I sat for a few minutes trying to restart my car. From experience I have found that I have to release the brake and push my engine start button a couple times to completely turn off everything then push the brake and button to start the car. A few times it I had to do that cycle several times before it actually restarted. Meanwhile I am in the middle of the road completely blocking traffic. My dealer was -??unable to replicate-?? so my solution has been to turn off that feature. Unfortunately, auto stop/start is automatically on every time I start my car -?? so this happens when I forget to turn it off. There are times that it works and the car restarts but even then the electrical system shuts down. Radio turns off and back on as the car is restarting and dash lights turn off then on, which reminds me to once again turn the feature off. I have had a lot of electrical issues with this car due to a sunroof leak so I chalked it up to my ongoing electrical problems until I saw the article today about other complaints from people having the same issue. The date listed below was the most recent incident but it has occurred many times.
2017 Honda Pilot does not restart when auto idle feature is engaged. The engine idles, as designed, but does not restart. Instead, the engine shuts off entirely and we lose all power features. On one occasion, we were stopped on hill on a coastal highway and began rolling backwards. Fortunately, I was able to stop our Pilot before it rolled into the vehicle behind us but it was difficult as the power brakes were not working. This has been an issue since we purchased the car new and the dealership has not been helpful in the least. We've taken it to them several times and they had it for roughly a month on one occasion. They've told us repeatedly that they haven't heard of this issue before (a simple Google search will show that other consumers have experienced the same thing) and are now telling us the issue is no longer covered under the vehicle warranty. Since the dealership was unwilling to help us, I opened cases with Honda America but they, too, have been unresponsive.
The automatic start/stop killed the engine at a stop light, and took several tries to restart the engine. I always disengage this feature now to avoid being stranded.
We have had several instances when our Honda shuts off and will not restart. Several times we either a) have to leave it sit for hours b) press really hard on the brake pedal and hold the start button down for an extended period of time c) get the other set of keys which seems to then allow the vehicle to start or d) jump it to reset the issue so it will start and run. We also think this is somehow tied to the auto start stop or restart function.
A D V E R T I S E M E N T S
- Westchester , IL, USA