AtWhatMileage
Electrical · 7 owner reports

Ignition switch, key fob or immobilizer failure on the 2016 Honda CR-V

1 crash 1 injury 2 of the 7 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.

Only 2 reports 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 7
With an odometer reading 2
Reports per 1,000 built 0.3 per 1,000
Filed below 36,000 miles 100%
Mention a crash, fire or injury 2
Typical repair $250–$1,500
What it means when it happens High
Rank among this year's problems 21st

When ignition switch, key fob or immobilizer failure gets reported

There are 7 reports of ignition switch, key fob or immobilizer failure on the 2016 Honda CR-V, 2 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 85,000 miles. It is the 21st most-reported problem on this model year.

The whole distribution

Percentiles of the 2 odometer readings owners gave.
10th25thMedian 75th90th
— — 6,100 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 $250–$1,500 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 19 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2023, at a median of 5,000 miles, and latest on the 1999 at 175,000 miles.

By volume the 2007 carries the most reports, with 59; the 2016 has 7. 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.

Median
  1. 1997 Honda CR-V ignition switch, key fob or immobilizer failure 70k
  2. 1998 Honda CR-V ignition switch, key fob or immobilizer failure 124k
  3. 1999 Honda CR-V ignition switch, key fob or immobilizer failure 174k
  4. 2000 Honda CR-V ignition switch, key fob or immobilizer failure 146k
  5. 2001 Honda CR-V ignition switch, key fob or immobilizer failure 159k
  6. 2002 Honda CR-V ignition switch, key fob or immobilizer failure 85k
  7. 2003 Honda CR-V ignition switch, key fob or immobilizer failure 46k
  8. 2004 Honda CR-V ignition switch, key fob or immobilizer failure 160k
  9. 2005 Honda CR-V ignition switch, key fob or immobilizer failure 75k
  10. 2007 Honda CR-V ignition switch, key fob or immobilizer failure 84k
  11. 2008 Honda CR-V ignition switch, key fob or immobilizer failure 67k
  12. 2009 Honda CR-V ignition switch, key fob or immobilizer failure 85k
  13. 2010 Honda CR-V ignition switch, key fob or immobilizer failure 67k
  14. 2011 Honda CR-V ignition switch, key fob or immobilizer failure 57k
  15. 2012 Honda CR-V ignition switch, key fob or immobilizer failure 53k
  16. 2013 Honda CR-V ignition switch, key fob or immobilizer failure 25k
  17. 2014 Honda CR-V ignition switch, key fob or immobilizer failure 6k
  18. 2015 Honda CR-V ignition switch, key fob or immobilizer failure
    no odometer readings given
    —
  19. 2016 (this one) 6k
  20. 2017 Honda CR-V ignition switch, key fob or immobilizer failure 36k
  21. 2018 Honda CR-V ignition switch, key fob or immobilizer failure 15k
  22. 2019 Honda CR-V ignition switch, key fob or immobilizer failure 10k
  23. 2020 Honda CR-V ignition switch, key fob or immobilizer failure
    no odometer readings given
    —
  24. 2021 Honda CR-V ignition switch, key fob or immobilizer failure
    no odometer readings given
    —
  25. 2022 Honda CR-V ignition switch, key fob or immobilizer failure
    no odometer readings given
    —
  26. 2023 Honda CR-V ignition switch, key fob or immobilizer failure 4k
  27. 2024 Honda CR-V ignition switch, key fob or immobilizer failure
    no odometer readings given
    —
  28. 2025 Honda CR-V ignition switch, key fob or immobilizer failure 11k

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.

Lock-out with key fob inside the car, car was not running, parked at work. The car basically 'locked' me out when I put my purse and keys into the car, opened the hood so I could fill the wiper fluid reservoir , closed the door to get wiper fluid out of the back and the car locked the doors. According to the locksmith that opened my car, this is a well known problem - and not just with honda cars. Thank goodness I was still at work and in a safe location.

11,600 miles NHTSA complaint 1432474 filed 2017-12-12

The car operates on a keyless ignition, and uses push button start. The issue is, once the car is running, it will stay running without the computer fab key in the car. This is a safety hazard, I can leave the door open and walk out of the car with the key in hand and it stays running, a child or someone can get in the car and shift the gear lever causing serious injury. Also there was no warning when I left the car with the computer key in my pocket and no flashing of lights or blinking or horn noise. This is a violation of the NHTSA laws that no vehicle should be running once the key has left the car. Well this vehicle continues to run without the key in the car, this is very dangerous. The vehicle should shut off after the key has left the car. This push button start is cheap and can cause serious injury. The car should shutoff without the key in the car. I left the car with the door open and key in my pocket, the car failed to shut off because the push button has to be pressed to shut off. The car is suppose to shut off without the key in the car per NHTSA rules and regulations

600 miles NHTSA complaint 1273544 filed 2016-04-07

Also reported on the 2016 Honda CR-V

Other engine problem

69 reports median 19k

Other fuel system problem

41 reports median 6k

Other electrical problem

30 reports median 25k

Other powertrain problem

29 reports median 22k

Other body or interior problem

21 reports median 26k

How far this goes

This page is kept out of search results because 7 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 7 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 ignition switch, key fob or immobilizer failure happen on the 2016 Honda CR-V?

Across 2 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 5,000 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 ignition switch, key fob or immobilizer failure on the 2016 Honda CR-V?

7 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.3 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