Other electrical problem on the 2009 Volkswagen Passat
2 fires 2 of the 6 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.
Only 5 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 other electrical problem gets reported
There are 6 reports of other electrical problem on the 2009 Volkswagen Passat, 5 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 85,000 miles. It is the 12th most-reported problem on this model year.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | — | 69,000 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, 2 a fire is 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 21 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2022, at a median of 100 miles, and latest on the 1997 at 140,000 miles.
By volume the 2002 carries the most reports, with 109; the 2009 has 6. 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.
On sunday morning about 11:20 am as I turned my car on it immediately started to rattle followed by black smoke coming from under my hood. I immediately turned my car off, unlocked my hood and unbuckled my 3 boys out of their car seats and ran out of the car. As I made sure they were at a safe distance away from the car I walked back to my car popped the hood up and noticed fire coming from what appeared to be the engine. I immediately called 911 and ran to my neighbors apartment to ask for water so my car wouldn't burn to the ground. By the time the fire department made it out my neighbor and I were able to put the fire out thank god. The following day I had it to towed by hanna's towing through my car insurance agency to the nearest volkswagen service center. The tow truck driver walter had to unplug the battery because when he turned it on to put the vehicle on neutral to hook it up to the tow truck it started to smoke up again. *js
For the last 4 years, I've been dealing with major mechanical and non-mechanical issues with my volkswagen (vw) passat 2009, which I bought brand new in 2008. Vw's mechanics found that my car had defective parts in it, which were there from the time I bought it. I have had so many problems with the car that I don't trust it, even though vw's mechanics said they've either fixed or replaced the bad parts, but each time I've taken it in for repairs in the past, I've had the same parts repaired or replaced over and over. A summary of these issues: - rear side window sunscreen hook - replaced due to falling out ? Year 2009 - rear windshield sunscreen - replaced because it had broken ? Year 2011 - engine fault - car died and running roughly ever since ? Year 2011 - engine light coming on 4 times ? Years 2011, 2012, 2013 & 2014 - driver?s door lock - had stopped locking ? Year 2012 - engine cover - screws fell out of the rear of engine cover ? Year 2012 - 2 water pumps - replaced due to coolant draining completely out of the reservoir ? Years 2012 & 2013 - knob to adjust side mirrors came off and now unable to adjust side mirrors ? Year…
The car suddenly has 50% or less power and begins stumbling very badly. Acceleration is so poor that it's quite dangerous in heavy traffic and the ability to pull off the road is severely hampered. The only way I'm able to keep the car moving and running is to use the manual feature of the automatic transmission and keep the RPM's very high. The four coil packs in the car were replaced this spring. Suddenly, the same exact problem is back again 4 months later. Codes were random misifre and multiple misfires at various cylinders. Strange that all four packs go out at the same time....? That's not logical unless is something other than normal wear causing the issue. This problem has occurred twice and both time it begins in the middle of heavy traffic where the situation is very dangerous as the power loss is nearly complete. Both times were under acceleration when the heavy stumbling occurred. I turned the car off and disconnected the battery for 5 min. To hopefully reset the cars epc as the problem is so sudden it almost certainly is electrical. There is no logical explanation for four coil packs all needing to be replaced at the…
Also reported on the 2009 Volkswagen Passat
Fuel pump failure
Other engine problem
Other fuel system problem
Timing chain, belt or tensioner failure
No-start or intermittent start failure
Misfire or rough idle
How far this goes
This page is kept out of search results because 6 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 6 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 2009 Volkswagen Passat?
Across 5 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 70,000 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 other electrical problem on the 2009 Volkswagen Passat?
6 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.6 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