AtWhatMileage
Electrical · 89 owner reports

Other electrical problem on the 2019 Subaru Forester

7 crashes 5 fires 2 injuries 14 of the 89 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.

Reports of this failure 89
With an odometer reading 30
Reports per 1,000 built 0.7 per 1,000
Filed below 36,000 miles 97%
Mention a crash, fire or injury 14
Typical repair $250–$2,000
What it means when it happens Moderate
Rank among this year's problems 3rd

When other electrical problem gets reported

Owners of the 2019 Subaru Forester report other electrical problem at a median of 5,000 miles. A quarter of the reports come in before 1,100 miles and a quarter after 17,500 miles, from 30 reports that carried an odometer reading.

A part like this is normally expected to survive 85,000 miles. It is the 3rd most-reported problem on this model year.

The mileage distribution

The reported range runs from 500 miles at the tenth percentile to 30,000 miles at the ninetieth, a spread of 29,510 miles across the middle 80% of reports.

Reports bunched into a band this tight usually mean the component has a life of its own: it goes at roughly the same mileage regardless of who owns it.

97% of the dated reports were filed under 36,000 miles.

The whole distribution

Percentiles of the 30 odometer readings owners gave.
10th25thMedian 75th90th
490 miles 1,086 miles 6,121 miles 17,650 miles 30,000 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, 7 a crash, 5 a fire and 2 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–$2,000 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 17 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2020, at a median of 2,000 miles, and latest on the 2012 at 100,000 miles.

By volume the 2019 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.

Median
  1. 1998 Subaru Forester other electrical problem
    no odometer readings given
    —
  2. 1999 Subaru Forester other electrical problem 175k
  3. 2000 Subaru Forester other electrical problem
    no odometer readings given
    —
  4. 2003 Subaru Forester other electrical problem 220k
  5. 2004 Subaru Forester other electrical problem 25k
  6. 2005 Subaru Forester other electrical problem 24k
  7. 2006 Subaru Forester other electrical problem 54k
  8. 2007 Subaru Forester other electrical problem 86k
  9. 2008 Subaru Forester other electrical problem 73k
  10. 2009 Subaru Forester other electrical problem 68k
  11. 2010 Subaru Forester other electrical problem 66k
  12. 2011 Subaru Forester other electrical problem 45k
  13. 2012 Subaru Forester other electrical problem 101k
  14. 2013 Subaru Forester other electrical problem 10k
  15. 2014 Subaru Forester other electrical problem 64k
  16. 2015 Subaru Forester other electrical problem 36k
  17. 2016 Subaru Forester other electrical problem 30k
  18. 2017 Subaru Forester other electrical problem 42k
  19. 2018 Subaru Forester other electrical problem 9k
  20. 2019 (this one) 6k
  21. 2020 Subaru Forester other electrical problem 2k
  22. 2021 Subaru Forester other electrical problem 7k
  23. 2022 Subaru Forester other electrical problem 9k
  24. 2023 Subaru Forester other electrical problem
    no odometer readings given
    —
  25. 2024 Subaru Forester other electrical problem
    no odometer readings given
    —
  26. 2025 Subaru Forester other electrical problem 14k
  27. 2026 Subaru Forester other electrical 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

Also reported on the 2019 Subaru Forester

Other visibility problem

290 reports median 9k

Windshield cracking

144 reports median 7k

Other engine problem

74 reports median 38k

Lane keep or steering assist fault

42 reports median 14k

Other driver assistance problem

37 reports median 12k

Other speed control problem

22 reports median 12k

How far this goes

Complaints are voluntary, so 89 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 electrical problem happen on the 2019 Subaru Forester?

Across 30 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 5,000 miles. A quarter were filed before 1,100 miles and a quarter after 17,500 miles. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.

How common is other electrical problem on the 2019 Subaru Forester?

89 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.7 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