AtWhatMileage
Transmission · 4 owner reports

Other powertrain problem on the 2009 Hyundai Elantra

1 crash 1 of the 4 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 3 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 4
With an odometer reading 3
Reports per 1,000 built 0.1 per 1,000
Filed below 36,000 miles 33%
Mention a crash, fire or injury 1
Typical repair $400–$4,500
What it means when it happens High
Rank among this year's problems 17th

When other powertrain problem gets reported

There are 4 reports of other powertrain problem on the 2009 Hyundai Elantra, 3 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 17th most-reported problem on this model year.

The whole distribution

Percentiles of the 3 odometer readings owners gave.
10th25thMedian 75th90th
— — 58,000 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 is 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 26 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2020, at a median of 5,000 miles, and latest on the 2016 at 100,000 miles.

By volume the 2013 carries the most reports, with 42; the 2009 has 4. 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. 1996 Hyundai Elantra other powertrain problem
    no odometer readings given
    —
  2. 1997 Hyundai Elantra other powertrain problem 67k
  3. 1998 Hyundai Elantra other powertrain problem 69k
  4. 1999 Hyundai Elantra other powertrain problem 71k
  5. 2000 Hyundai Elantra other powertrain problem 57k
  6. 2001 Hyundai Elantra other powertrain problem 27k
  7. 2002 Hyundai Elantra other powertrain problem 47k
  8. 2003 Hyundai Elantra other powertrain problem 66k
  9. 2004 Hyundai Elantra other powertrain problem 53k
  10. 2005 Hyundai Elantra other powertrain problem 50k
  11. 2006 Hyundai Elantra other powertrain problem 46k
  12. 2007 Hyundai Elantra other powertrain problem 77k
  13. 2008 Hyundai Elantra other powertrain problem 89k
  14. 2009 (this one) 58k
  15. 2010 Hyundai Elantra other powertrain problem 40k
  16. 2011 Hyundai Elantra other powertrain problem 70k
  17. 2012 Hyundai Elantra other powertrain problem 24k
  18. 2013 Hyundai Elantra other powertrain problem 64k
  19. 2014 Hyundai Elantra other powertrain problem 95k
  20. 2015 Hyundai Elantra other powertrain problem 55k
  21. 2016 Hyundai Elantra other powertrain problem 100k
  22. 2017 Hyundai Elantra other powertrain problem 41k
  23. 2018 Hyundai Elantra other powertrain problem 41k
  24. 2019 Hyundai Elantra other powertrain problem 63k
  25. 2020 Hyundai Elantra other powertrain problem 5k
  26. 2021 Hyundai Elantra other powertrain problem
    no odometer readings given
    —
  27. 2022 Hyundai Elantra other powertrain problem 15k
  28. 2023 Hyundai Elantra other powertrain problem 15k
  29. 2024 Hyundai Elantra other powertrain problem
    no odometer readings given
    —
  30. 2025 Hyundai Elantra other powertrain problem
    no odometer readings given
    —

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.

Tl* the contact owns a 2009 hyundai elantra. While driving approximately 35 MPH, the transmission exhibited hesitation. The failure recurred numerous times. The vehicle was taken to the dealer who flushed the transmission. The failure persisted after the service was performed. In addition, the horn failed to operate intermittently. The vehicle was not repaired. The manufacturer was notified. The approximate failure mileage was 20,000.

20,000 miles NHTSA complaint 1176839 filed 2015-04-22

Tl* the contact owns a 2009 hyundai elantra. While driving at an unknown speed, the vehicle made an abnormal noise. The contact took the vehicle to an independent mechanic where it was diagnosed that the transmission needed to be rebuilt. The vehicle was not repaired. The manufacturer was not notified of the failure. The VIN was not provided. The failure mileage was 58,000.

58,000 miles NHTSA complaint 1360439 filed 2017-03-03

Also reported on the 2009 Hyundai Elantra

Other steering problem

85 reports median 78k

Steering column or shaft failure

26 reports median 73k

Loss of power steering

15 reports median 87k

Other speed control problem

14 reports median 87k

Other electrical problem

13 reports median 71k

How far this goes

This page is kept out of search results because 4 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 4 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 2009 Hyundai Elantra?

Across 3 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 60,000 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 other powertrain problem on the 2009 Hyundai Elantra?

4 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