AtWhatMileage
Transmission · 13 owner reports

Other powertrain problem on the 2015 Mercedes Benz C300

Only 4 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 13
With an odometer reading 4
Reports per 1,000 built 1.5 per 1,000
Filed below 36,000 miles 75%
Mention a crash, fire or injury 0
Typical repair $400–$4,500
What it means when it happens High
Rank among this year's problems 9th

When other powertrain problem gets reported

There are 13 reports of other powertrain problem on the 2015 Mercedes Benz C300, 4 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 9th most-reported problem on this model year.

The whole distribution

Percentiles of the 4 odometer readings owners gave.
10th25thMedian 75th90th
— — 7,823 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 $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 6 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2015, at a median of 10,000 miles, and latest on the 2012 at 90,000 miles.

By volume the 2016 carries the most reports, with 16; the 2015 has 13. 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. 2008 Mercedes Benz C300 other powertrain problem 59k
  2. 2009 Mercedes Benz C300 other powertrain problem
    no odometer readings given
    —
  3. 2010 Mercedes Benz C300 other powertrain problem 45k
  4. 2011 Mercedes Benz C300 other powertrain problem 70k
  5. 2012 Mercedes Benz C300 other powertrain problem 88k
  6. 2014 Mercedes Benz C300 other powertrain problem 24
  7. 2015 (this one) 8k
  8. 2016 Mercedes Benz C300 other powertrain problem 74k

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.

I was driving on a rural back road at 30 miles, the power steering stopped working. A warning appeared saying "malfunction of power steering". I was able to drive home, about one mile, but with great difficulty. I called mercedes benz. They sent a tow truck and towed auto to westwood mercedes in westwood, ma. I was informed it was a software problem and it had been reprogrammed.

3,351 miles NHTSA complaint 1205687 filed 2015-08-04

Tl* the contact owns a 2015 mercedes-benz c300. While driving at various speeds, the vehicle would independently decelerate with the RPM gauge reading between 4,000-5,000. The failure occurred intermittently. When the vehicle was shut off and restarted, the vehicle returned to normal. The vehicle was taken to the dealer for diagnostic testing; however, the failure could not be duplicated. The vehicle was not repaired. The manufacturer was made aware of the failure. The failure mileage was 1,000.

1,000 miles NHTSA complaint 1264700 filed 2016-03-01

Was driving on city street, and the collision prevention assist disabled warning sign came on and I lost power to the car. I'm told this is called "limp mode." I tried to pick up speed by pressing throttle to the floor, but got no reaction at all. Then some power came back, but not much. Each time I braked to stop for light or turn this would happen. After I got home I restarted the engine and it seemed normal again. However I was afraid to drive it, especially since in the last six months my power steering also failed, and had it towed to dealer. They ran tests and no code for failure was found. They said they found some software updates which they did. Unfortunately, after I picked up the car from service I saw that my main complaint wasn't even mentioned. Only that I sometimes had problem with collision control warning going off for no apparent reason.

12,295 miles NHTSA complaint 1282574 filed 2016-05-13

Also reported on the 2015 Mercedes Benz C300

Other engine problem

112 reports median 57k

Sunroof failure or glass breakage

59 reports median 55k

Other fuel system problem

43 reports median 47k

Other electrical problem

34 reports median 18k

Other body or interior problem

20 reports median 59k

How far this goes

This page is kept out of search results because 13 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 13 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 2015 Mercedes Benz C300?

Across 4 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 10,000 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 2015 Mercedes Benz C300?

13 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 1.5 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