Other electrical problem on the 2017 Chevrolet Volt
2 crashes 7 fires 3 injuries 12 of the 177 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 electrical problem gets reported
Owners of the 2017 Chevrolet Volt report other electrical problem at a median of 37,500 miles. A quarter of the reports come in before 27,500 miles and a quarter after 50,000 miles, from 73 reports that carried an odometer reading.
A part like this is normally expected to survive 85,000 miles. It is the 1st most-reported problem on this model year.
The mileage distribution
The reported range runs from 20,000 miles at the tenth percentile to 70,000 miles at the ninetieth, a spread of 52,176 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.
45% of the dated reports were filed under 36,000 miles.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18,964 miles | 27,000 miles | 37,000 miles | 50,000 miles | 71,140 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, 2 a crash, 7 a fire and 3 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 $250–$2,000 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 9 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2018, at a median of 30,000 miles, and latest on the 2012 at 80,000 miles.
By volume the 2017 is the worst of them, which makes this a problem of this specific year rather than of the model as a whole.
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.
While driving the vehicle on a freeway a light came on stating all systems would shut down and all systems did shut down immediately. There was hardly time enough to pull over to the side of the road. Even the onstar system was inoperable to call for assistance. The door fob would not work to open the car doors. The car was towed to the nearest dealership. The tow company was unable to place the car in neutral so skates were used to place the vehicle on a flatbed tow truck. The chevrolet dealership, singh, riverside, ca that received the tow vehicle stated the problem was due to 3 defective fuses that had something to do with the battery system of the vehicle. I was told that the fuses were produced overseas and that there were no parts available for the car and no estimated date when the parts would become available. The service representative at the dealership informed me that gmc had sent out a flyer relating to this problem and that it was a known problem. After 3 weeks I was told the car was repaired and I picked it up. Three days after picking up the car I had the same problem. The car was towed back to the same dealership…
If the car loses power, and the doors have locked (do automatically), there is no way to manually unlock the doors. The plunger is recessed so much it's impossible to raise it to unlock. I contacted chevrolet, they have no answer on how to overcome this. I have a friend who was locked in another type of vehicle when lost power, but could manually unlock the doors. Tv news this morning showed a person trapped in a car with no power, but was able to manually unlock the doors. The message was to learn how to manually unlock the car in case of emergency. Please see if this can be remedied, it may save lives. Thank you, grateful taxpayer. *tr
The car literally just stopped working as I was turning on a busy road, so I was stuck right in the middle of the road with cars nearly smashing into the back of me. The steering wheel locked up. The accelerator stopped working. I couldn't turn it off or on- it was kind on just stuck in an alternate mode. There was an orange engine symbol that was lit up and it kept saying "shift to park" but I would shift and nothing would happen. I couldn't put it in neutral so I could push it to a safer location. Nothing. The technician on the phone didn't know what was wrong with it, but someone who stopped to help said he used to work on these cars and said it happens quite often and it there was absolutely nothing I could have done to fix it (I thought I remember him saying something about an engine switch problem, but I was so frazzled I wasn't really listening to him) . If this had happened on a highway I could have been killed. I don't know how these cars have no been recalled.
Also reported on the 2017 Chevrolet Volt
Other powertrain problem
Control module (ECM/PCM/BCM) failure
DPF, EGR or DEF system failure
Other fuel system problem
Other engine problem
No-start or intermittent start failure
How far this goes
Complaints are voluntary, so 177 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 electrical problem happen on the 2017 Chevrolet Volt?
Across 73 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 37,500 miles. A quarter were filed before 27,500 miles and a quarter after 50,000 miles. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.
How common is other electrical problem on the 2017 Chevrolet Volt?
177 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 25 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