Control module (ECM/PCM/BCM) failure on the 2005 Toyota Avalon
Only 7 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 control module (ecm/pcm/bcm) failure gets reported
There are 10 reports of control module (ECM/PCM/BCM) failure on the 2005 Toyota Avalon, 7 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 8th most-reported problem on this model year.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | — | 8,000 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
Putting it right typically runs $700–$3,000 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 6 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2005, at a median of 10,000 miles, and latest on the 2004 at 120,000 miles.
By volume the 2004 carries the most reports, with 10; the 2005 has 10. 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 have had repeated problems with the automatic electronic transmission in my toyota avalon 2005 limited over the past month. I have had the car to the dealership to have diagnostics done. The dealership told me there is nothing wrong with my car and I would have to "train" my car computer to drive. I have over 1500 miles on the car and I continue to have the same problems. I drive the car and make starts and stops several times without issue, then at the next stop I start out and the car seems to shift immediately to a higher gear and I have to hit the brakes to avoid hitting other cars. Other times, I will press the gas pedal and have no response for several seconds before the car takes off. It makes it very difficult to merge into traffic as I never know when the car will go or not go. There are yet other times that it will start off normally and then seem to get stuck in what seems like second gear and rev for several seconds before shifting. Previously, I have pressed the gas pedal and ended up lurching forward when the shift finally occurred. Now I let it rev until it shifts itself with no additional gas pedal depression…
2005 toyota avalon - automatic transmission - control module I just purchased 2005 toyota avalon limited. I experience terrible transmission hesitation/slippage. It is getting dangerous when I have to enter highway ramp because of transmission hesitation. When I coast at low speed, for example, I notice a red traffic light ahead and take my foot off the gas, the car then continues forward as if in gear and after a period of time it feels as if the transmission shifts to neutral, the rpms drop to below 1,000. Then the traffic light changes when my speed is about 5 - 10 MPH and I slowly depress the accelerator. The engine rpms increase about 300 - 500 rpms but there is no acceleration. Then the transmission gets the message and we start to accelerate. *jb
Since purchasing the avalon in early june, I have been frustrated with how the car operates between 20 and 40 miles per hour. The car does not always know what gear it needs to shift into. It will frequently race 1000 RPM ahead without any change in speed. Then suddenly it will accelerate and the RPM's will drop back to normal RPM. It seems to happen most often in rush traffic when trying to change lanes. The hesitation in acceleration will cause me to lose most of my margin of safety in the process of changing lanes. In this regard, the car is not safe. There is no way to predict when the problem will occur, and therein, lies the safety hazard. It would seem that the last effort by the service department to update my computer programming failed to achieve any level of improvement to my satisfaction with one exception. Since the first computer upgrade, I have not experienced the complete loss of gear at high speeds. Is this a problem in all 2005 avalons? Is toyota aware of the problem and do they have plans to resolve it? Serviced on friday, october 21. Toyota reset the computer learning back to factory default. Technical support…
Also reported on the 2005 Toyota Avalon
Other speed control problem
Other steering problem
Other body or interior problem
Other powertrain problem
Steering column or shaft failure
Other engine problem
How far this goes
This page is kept out of search results because 10 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 10 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 control module (ecm/pcm/bcm) failure happen on the 2005 Toyota Avalon?
Across 7 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 control module (ecm/pcm/bcm) failure on the 2005 Toyota Avalon?
10 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.1 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