AtWhatMileage
Engine · 5 owner reports

Misfire or rough idle on the 2012 Ford Fusion

Only 1 report for this mode came with an odometer reading, which is too few for percentiles to mean anything. The page is here because someone linked to it; treat the figures as anecdotes, and see the full report for this year instead.

Reports of this failure 5
With an odometer reading 1
Reports per 1,000 built 0.1 per 1,000
Filed below 36,000 miles 0%
Mention a crash, fire or injury 0
Typical repair $250–$1,600
What it means when it happens Moderate
Rank among this year's problems 42nd

When misfire or rough idle gets reported

There are 5 reports of misfire or rough idle on the 2012 Ford Fusion, 1 with a mileage attached. That is too few to place the failure on the odometer with any confidence.

A part like this is normally expected to survive 92,000 miles. It is the 42nd most-reported problem on this model year.

The whole distribution

Percentiles of the 1 odometer readings owners gave.
10th25thMedian 75th90th
— — 46,160 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

Putting it right typically runs $250–$1,600 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 13 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2011, at a median of 40,000 miles, and latest on the 2008 at 135,000 miles.

By volume the 2016 carries the most reports, with 137; the 2012 has 5. 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.

What owners wrote

Verbatim from NHTSA complaint narratives, trimmed for length. The mileage is the one the owner gave.

I bought this car from a hertz dealer 1 week ago with 45, 589k miles before the indecent happened as follows. I was driving my 2012 ford fusion sel in the fast lane on the freeway going aprox 70 MPH. The car suddenly lost power and entered into what I assume was safe mode. There was no throttle response and the car was at 1k rough idle. A wrench symbol was shown on the display. I could not accelerate and had to coast across 4 lanes of traffic while losing speed. I was able to get to the shoulder in time before I lost all momentum. It was a very dangerous situation and I was lucky to have made it to the shoulder. (despite several near misses from car traveling at full speed. Thank god my wife was not driving with our son in the car) while on the shoulder, the car was not responsive to throttle input and stayed in rough idle. I had to turn the car on and off several times before safe mode was deactivated. First attempt to get under way failed with only traveling a 100 feet. Second attempt to turn on and off the car worked and I was able to safely get off the freeway and take side streets home. The car once again went into safe mode…

46,160 miles NHTSA complaint 1115440 filed 2014-10-01

Also reported on the 2012 Ford Fusion

Other steering problem

896 reports median 82k

Airbag inflator rupture

277 reports median 86k

Loss of power steering

275 reports median 77k

Other powertrain problem

112 reports median 45k

Other body or interior problem

106 reports median 57k

How far this goes

This page is kept out of search results because 5 reports is not enough to publish percentiles from. It stays reachable because somebody looking at this exact car would rather see the reports than be told there are none.

Complaints are voluntary, so 5 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 misfire or rough idle happen on the 2012 Ford Fusion?

Across 1 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 45,000 miles. A quarter were filed before — and a quarter after —. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.

How common is misfire or rough idle on the 2012 Ford Fusion?

5 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.1 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