Other electrical problem on the 2018 Toyota Rav4
3 crashes 17 fires 2 injuries 22 of the 90 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 other electrical problem gets reported
Owners of the 2018 Toyota Rav4 report other electrical problem at a median of 20,000 miles. A quarter of the reports come in before 5,000 miles and a quarter after 50,000 miles, from 21 reports that carried an odometer reading.
A part like this is normally expected to survive 85,000 miles. It is the 1st most-reported problem on this model year.
The mileage distribution
The reported range runs from 500 miles at the tenth percentile to 80,000 miles at the ninetieth, a spread of 79,500 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.
67% of the dated reports were filed under 36,000 miles.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 500 miles | 4,874 miles | 21,000 miles | 49,000 miles | 80,000 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, 3 a crash, 17 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 25 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2023, at a median of 2,000 miles, and latest on the 2001 at 115,000 miles.
By volume the 2018 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.
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.
The vehicle was stationary in a driveway for approximately 2 hours. After pulling away from the house, dash panel indicators were showing malfunctions on brake systems, aws, etc. It showed that all computer systems were malfunctioning. I drove immediately to the dealer. Inspection showed that the wire harness on the vehicle had been chewed apart, off, and insulation had been removed. I investigated the internet on this problem and it seems that several vehicle makes and models were affected. It seems that the manufactures were using a food based ingredient in the insulation of the wires, (soy). This is attracting rodents, (squirrels) to this for food. It could happen anywhere, parked at the post office, grocery store, your friends house, etc. My vehicle only has 980 miles. I have never had this before. What would happen if the wires catch on fire or your car stops on the freeway because of this issue. Can this be investigated? At this point, what's going to keep this from happening again. We've had several toyota vehicles in the past and did not have any wire harness problems.
I am very disappointed. I bought a rav4 2018 in february of this year, it has only 1,900 miles and is already at the dealer after taking my kids to school I went back home and I usually do I activate the vehicle alarm but it did not work. The keys does not activate or dis-activate the vehicle alarm and when the car is on the tire pressure sign started to blink. The dealer staff said that one of the computer is not working right. At this moment they don't know what is going on and ironically is not time for the first payment yet.
My rav4 caught fire in the middle of the night while parked on the street in front of my house. It had been parked for 12+ hours. After burning for about 10 minutes, it exploded with a force so great that it lifted the car onto the curb, knocked over a firefighter, and damaged our boat parked 10 feet across the street. The inspector from the fire department determined the initial fire was from faulty electrical wiring but said he had never seen a car explode in his 25 years on the force. Toyota conducted their own investigation and agreed it was electrical but could not determine fault due to the severity of the damage
Also reported on the 2018 Toyota Rav4
Other engine problem
Other brake problem
Alternator or charging system failure
Cruise control failure
Headlight failure or clouding
Sunroof failure or glass breakage
How far this goes
Complaints are voluntary, so 90 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 2018 Toyota Rav4?
Across 21 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 20,000 miles. A quarter were filed before 5,000 miles and a quarter after 50,000 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 2018 Toyota Rav4?
90 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.3 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