CVT failure on the 2009 Nissan Altima
12 crashes 3 injuries 15 of the 32 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.
When cvt failure gets reported
Owners of the 2009 Nissan Altima report CVT failure at a median of 90,000 miles. A quarter of the reports come in before 55,000 miles and a quarter after 200,000 miles, from 27 reports that carried an odometer reading.
A part like this is normally expected to survive 90,000 miles. It is the 11th most-reported problem on this model year.
The mileage distribution
The reported range runs from 25,000 miles at the tenth percentile to 210,000 miles at the ninetieth, a spread of 184,710 miles across the middle 80% of reports.
A spread this wide points at use rather than design. Towing, climate, service history and city mileage all move a failure like this, so the median is a weak guide to any individual car.
22% of the dated reports were filed under 36,000 miles.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 25,290 miles | 54,050 miles | 89,000 miles | 200,000 miles | 210,000 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, 12 a crash and 3 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 $3,000–$8,500 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.
This mode is classified as critical, which means a failure can leave the car unable to stop, steer, or stay out of the way of traffic. It is weighted accordingly in the risk score.
The same failure on other years
The same failure is reported on 11 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2015, at a median of 62,500 miles, and latest on the 2011 at 110,000 miles.
By volume the 2013 carries the most reports, with 180; the 2009 has 32. 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.
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 purchased a 2009 nissan altima 2 years ago and the vehicle has being nothing but problems since the beginning, on top of that the maintenance is very costly if you take it to the dealer. I take my car to ase certified mechanics at pep-boys and the labor is allot cheaper than dealer pricing, my car has always being maintained by the schedule maintenance according to the owners manual and recently I had my transmission service by the pep-boys and they sell by my standards better quality oil like valvoline CVT oil being that I saved some money through pep-boys they did the service and everything went well till recently my tranny, went out and hey blamed the oil wasn't the right color according to the nissan tech, now I want to know how can valvoline sell a certified nissan product to millions of consumers and they say it's not covered under the mfg, warranty. *tr
The transmission in my 2009 altima began to make a whining noise. It began to shutter and made the whole vehicle respond erratically. When stopped, the vehicle would move forward. Nissan apparently knows there is a problem and extended the transmission warranty to 120,000 miles. The problem is nissan is replacing the faulty CVT transmission with a "new" replacement faulty transmission. There is no recall on the vehicle. After searching the internet, there are many people having problems with the transmission. There are even videos on youtube documenting problems with the 2009 altima transmissions. Even after an initial replacement, many vehicles are needing multiple replacement transmissions. To my knowledge, no attempt has been made by nissan to solve the problem, they just replace transmissions. A recall needs to occur, and nissan needs to fix the problem instead of replacing it. Once again, there is no recall. *tr
We purchased this 2009 nissan altima 5 months ago with 56000 miles on it and only drove it locally until 8/31/13 when we went on a five hour trip, 3 of which was on the interstate at 65 to 70 MPH speeds. After about 2 hours of running these speeds non stop we were in the middle lane with heavy traffic coming up on a small incline the car lost power my speed instantly dropped to 40 MPH, the tractor trailer following close behind had to go on lockdown to avoid plowing us over. I was floor boarding the car trying to maintain 40 MPH until I could change lanes to pull over. It took about 10 miles before we could change lanes at this speed but in that time I realized after attempting to manually downshift for more power the CVT transmission was stuck in high and wouldn't let me downshift manually. After sitting on the road with no phone signal or help I decided to stumble to the nearest town but the transmission was again working by this time so we cautiously finished the last leg of our trip. With no local nissan dealership at our destination I called my dealership who said they weren't aware of any issues like this but bring it in…
Also reported on the 2009 Nissan Altima
No-start or intermittent start failure
Other steering problem
Other electrical problem
Steering column or shaft failure
Ignition switch, key fob or immobilizer failure
Other body or interior problem
How far this goes
Complaints are voluntary, so 32 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 cvt failure happen on the 2009 Nissan Altima?
Across 27 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 90,000 miles. A quarter were filed before 55,000 miles and a quarter after 200,000 miles. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.
How common is cvt failure on the 2009 Nissan Altima?
32 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 4.8 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