Other powertrain problem on the 2018 Chevrolet Equinox
1 crash 1 injury 2 of the 33 reports for this failure mention a crash, a fire, an injury or a death. Those are the owner's words on the complaint form, not a verified finding, and one report can mention more than one.
When other powertrain problem gets reported
Owners of the 2018 Chevrolet Equinox report other powertrain problem at a median of 10,000 miles. A quarter of the reports come in before 5,000 miles and a quarter after 30,000 miles, from 14 reports that carried an odometer reading.
A part like this is normally expected to survive 92,000 miles. It is the 3rd most-reported problem on this model year.
The mileage distribution
The reported range runs from 1,400 miles at the tenth percentile to 45,000 miles at the ninetieth, a spread of 41,339 miles across the middle 80% of reports.
Reports bunched into a band this tight usually mean the component has a life of its own: it goes at roughly the same mileage regardless of who owns it.
79% of the dated reports were filed under 36,000 miles.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1,361 miles | 4,125 miles | 12,000 miles | 29,019 miles | 42,700 miles |
Read the 10th percentile as “one report in ten arrived this early”. Exact figures are shown in this table because it is the table of record; everywhere else on the site they are rounded to the precision the sample can carry.
What a percentile can and cannot tell you here
These five numbers describe the readings owners gave, in order. The median is the middle one: half the reports arrived below it. The 10th and 90th are the edges of the bulk of the distribution, and the distance between them is the part worth reading. A tight spread — say 70,000 to 95,000 miles — points at something that wears out on a schedule, and the schedule is knowable. A wide one, 20,000 to 190,000, points at a fault that hits some cars and never troubles others, which means the mileage on the listing in front of you tells you very little about your odds.
What these figures are not is a survival curve. Every reading here comes from a car whose owner filed a complaint, so the sample contains only failures: it cannot say what share of the fleet made it past 150,000 miles untouched, because those owners had nothing to report. Nor is the mileage the moment of failure — it is the odometer reading as recalled at the time of filing, which may be weeks later and is sometimes rounded to the nearest ten thousand by the person typing it.
Percentiles are shown at all only once 8 readings exist for the vehicle and mode. Below that the middle of a handful of numbers is noise wearing a decimal point, so the figures are withheld rather than dressed up.
What happens, and what it costs
Of these reports, 1 a crash and 1 an injury are mentioned. Owners write their own complaints and the agency does not verify them, so read this as what the reports say happened rather than as a confirmed count.
Putting it right typically runs $400–$4,500 at an independent US shop. That range is an editorial estimate held in this site's failure-mode catalogue, not a figure from NHTSA, and it is a repair cost rather than a diagnosis cost.
The same failure on other years
The same failure is reported on 20 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2020, at a median of 5,000 miles, and latest on the 2009 at 105,000 miles.
By volume the 2011 carries the most reports, with 85; the 2018 has 33. A mode that appears across most years of a model is usually a design choice rather than a bad batch.
If one year stands out to the left, that is the year to avoid; if the whole line sits at a similar mileage, this is wear rather than a defect in one production run.
Tick median reported mileage Solid middle half of reports Faint 10th to 90th percentile Colour how bad the failure is when it happens
What owners wrote
Verbatim from NHTSA complaint narratives, trimmed for length. The mileage is the one the owner gave.
My 2018 chevrolet equinox has not been shifting into high gear (6th) for several weeks now. I brought it into a chevy dealer near me, and they informed me that this is a normal condition for this vehicle, when the ambient temperature is below 14 degrees.. The service manager cited a gm tsb #18-na-035. This tsb instructs the dealer to inform the owner that the vehicle is operating normally, and instructs the dealer not to attempt any repairs. This is definitely not normal vehicle operation to me. At highways speeds the engine RPM is running high and noisier than normal. The gas mileage has also dropped by 10% to 15%. I was not informed by gm or the dealer when I bought the vehicle that high gear would be disabled in normal minnesota winter temperatures. I believe gm misled buyers of this vehicle by not informing them of this vehicle defect, which they had to know about, because the vehicle was programed to do this. Also once the temperature did get above 14 degrees, the vehicle still did not shift into 6th gear. Several days later when the temperature was 36 degrees, the transmission finally started to shift normally. If chevrolet…
The car was idling and in park on a no-grade (flat),private road preparing for school drop off. A few minutes later in preparing to drive away, my foot was on the brake pedal as I moved the car from park into drive. Immediately after I took my foot off of the brake pedal, the car began moving backwards as if I was on a significant hill. I don't know how far the car would have continued to move backwards because I quickly pressed the brake pedal again to stop it so I didn't roll into the car behind me. I confirmed that the car was in drive and proceeded to quickly move my foot from the brake pedal to the gas pedal to ensure that I moved forward (as if I was stopped on a hill). I have been using the car for this drop off for months without this problem occurring previously. The car is scheduled to be examined by the dealer tomorrow.
My 2018 chevy equinox with the 1.5l turbo engine fails to shift into 6th gear when the ambient temperature is below 14 degrees fahrenheit. I have brought the car back to the dealer several times for this problem. The first response I got was "this is normal for this vehicle, just drive it as normal". Where I live the temperature is very often below 14 degrees in january and february. Driving at hwy speeds, the engine is often running 3400 RPM or higher locked in 5th gear. I have driven thousands of miles this winter in this condition. This is not normal to me, and the increased fuel consumption, engine noise and wear on the vehicle are not acceptable to me. In addition I was told by dealer service, that 6th gear would return as soon as the temperature rose above 14 degrees. It did not return until the temperature was above 32 degrees. Another trip back to the dealer, and they replaced the "charged air cooler". This worked only until the temperature dropped below 14 degrees again. Obviously this is not a fix. I had filed an online complaint with gm, and was shortly upgraded to a "senior customer service consultant". This consultant…
Also reported on the 2018 Chevrolet Equinox
Other brake problem
Other engine problem
Other electrical problem
Loss of braking
Sunroof failure or glass breakage
Master cylinder or brake booster failure
How far this goes
Complaints are voluntary, so 33 is a floor and not a count of affected cars. Mileages are typed in by owners and cluster on round numbers. And the mode itself is assigned by software reading the complaint text, which is reliable in bulk and fallible one report at a time.
Questions this page answers
At what mileage does other powertrain problem happen on the 2018 Chevrolet Equinox?
Across 14 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 10,000 miles. A quarter were filed before 5,000 miles and a quarter after 30,000 miles. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.
How common is other powertrain problem on the 2018 Chevrolet Equinox?
33 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 4.7 per 1,000 vehicles. Complaints are voluntary, so this is a floor rather than a count of affected cars.
What this is and is not. These are the mileages at which owners chose to complain to a federal agency, which is not the same as the mileage at which the part fails on every car. It skews toward failures that happened outside warranty, cost real money, or frightened someone. It is still the only public dataset that carries failure mileage at all, and the shape of a few hundred readings is informative even when a single one is not. Methodology · JSON · this failure on other cars
Source Owner complaints and recall records published by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, model years 1996–2027 Figures rebuilt Published by AtWhatMileage How every figure is computed