Sunroof failure or glass breakage on the 2017 Lexus Es350
Only 6 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.
When sunroof failure or glass breakage gets reported
There are 6 reports of sunroof failure or glass breakage on the 2017 Lexus Es350, 6 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 78,000 miles. It is the 1st most-reported problem on this model year.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | — | 20,721 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 $700–$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 3 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2009, at a median of 20,000 miles, and latest on the 2016 at 55,000 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 traveling approximately 40 MPH on a sunny day (45 degrees) the front panoramic sunroof spontaneously exploded. It was about 2 pm est. There were no cars around me or anything above. It sounded like an explosion. I pulled over and looked around to see what the noise was. It wasn't until I looked up that I saw the hole in the sunroof. Glass did not come down, it went out.
While driving on the interstate at approximately 70 miles per hour at 6:45 pm on tuesday, march 6th, my sunroof suddenly exploded and glass fragments fell inside my vehicle. At the time of the explosion, there were not any cars around my vehicle nor did I hit any object on the road including a pothole. The explosion sounded as if a gun went off near my head and the glass immediately began to split into small pieces. Other than having some ringing in my ears as a result of the explosion noise, I did not suffer any other physical damage. I took the car into the lexus dealer and they stated that they had never had a case where a sunroof exploded without something hitting it directly. I know for a fact that nothing hit my vehicle or my sunroof as I was traveling on the interstate without any car or truck around me at the time of the explosion. I am filing this in order to get it documented and to see if any other lexus owner has had a similar issue with their lexus sunroof. I am attaching pictures of the sunroof which shows the damage done from the glass exploding without any type of foreign contact. I hope that someone from the nhta…
Also reported on the 2017 Lexus Es350
Other brake problem
Wheel bearing or hub failure
Other electrical problem
Other driver assistance problem
Airbag failed to deploy in a crash
Strut, shock or spring failure
How far this goes
This page is kept out of search results because 6 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 6 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 sunroof failure or glass breakage happen on the 2017 Lexus Es350?
Across 6 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 20,000 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 sunroof failure or glass breakage on the 2017 Lexus Es350?
6 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 3.4 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