CVT failure on the 2017 Subaru Outback
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.
When cvt failure gets reported
There are 7 reports of CVT failure on the 2017 Subaru Outback, 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 90,000 miles. It is the 21st most-reported problem on this model year.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | — | 7,556 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 $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 10 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2017, at a median of 10,000 miles, and latest on the 2012 at 117,500 miles.
By volume the 2011 carries the most reports, with 46; the 2017 has 7. 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.
As exit my level garage the driveway is on at 9% down slope when I put my car in reverse and back up out of the garage and then place the car to drive to move back up the driveway to load my wife and grandchild the car slips backwards between one and 3 feet or three seconds of his full slippage. My granddaughter at two years of age does not know that the car will slip back without control. This is a safety concern and can cause critical harm to her and/or my wife. Other car manufactures CVT transmissions has almost zero slippage from reverse to drive. This characteristic on the 2017 subaru outback creates a very unsafe condition and if safety is your biggest concern I find this a big safety characteristic and if I knew this before I would not have leased this vehicle.
As exit my level garage the driveway is on at 9% down slope when I put my car in reverse and back up out of the garage and then place the car to drive to move back up the driveway to load my wife and grandchild the car slips backwards between one and 3 feet or three seconds of his full slippage. My granddaughter at two years of age does not know that the car will slip back without control. This is a safety concern and can cause critical harm to her and/or my wife. Other car manufactures CVT transmissions has almost zero slippage from reverse to drive. This characteristic on the 2017 subaru outback creates a very unsafe condition and if safety is your biggest concern I find this a big safety characteristic and if I knew this before I would not have leased this vehicle.
We live in la. We bought our car new on 5/31/17 from subaru of santa monica. At around 6,000 miles we had its oil changed privately in durango, co, where we spend summers. Back in la on 12/17/17 we went to subaru of sm for any required additional service. They decided to perform the 12,000 service with 10,107 miles on the car. When service was completed, I drove the car off. It stalled for maybe 5-10 seconds (but didn't shut down) about 100 yards from the service area. Initially, it just wouldn't go when I depressed the accelerator. I then repeatedly depressed it and finally the transmission seemed to 'catch' and the car moved forward normally. Later, at my request, my wife met with the service writer (a lady) telling her about the stalling. Her response: this happens on all subarus'they occasionally stall for about 5 seconds. Subsequently our car has stalled on several occasions with my wife driving. And it also happened to me again, this time after its 24,000 service by the durango subaru dealer on 10/10/18 (see service write-up). As I was driving away, I stopped on a driveway before turning onto a city street. That's when the…
Also reported on the 2017 Subaru Outback
Other electrical problem
Other visibility problem
Windshield cracking
No-start or intermittent start failure
Other powertrain problem
Parasitic battery drain
How far this goes
This page is kept out of search results because 7 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 7 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 2017 Subaru Outback?
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 cvt failure on the 2017 Subaru Outback?
7 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