AtWhatMileage
Adas · 2 owner reports

Other driver assistance problem on the 2012 Volkswagen Passat

Only 2 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.

Reports of this failure 2
With an odometer reading 2
Reports per 1,000 built 0.1 per 1,000
Filed below 36,000 miles 50%
Mention a crash, fire or injury 0
Typical repair $250–$1,800
What it means when it happens High
Rank among this year's problems 37th

When other driver assistance problem gets reported

There are 2 reports of other driver assistance problem on the 2012 Volkswagen Passat, 2 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 45,000 miles. It is the 37th most-reported problem on this model year.

The whole distribution

Percentiles of the 2 odometer readings owners gave.
10th25thMedian 75th90th
— — 31,050 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 $250–$1,800 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 7 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2015, at a median of 5,000 miles, and latest on the 2006 at 120,000 miles.

By volume the 2017 carries the most reports, with 11; the 2012 has 0. 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.

What owners wrote

Verbatim from NHTSA complaint narratives, trimmed for length. The mileage is the one the owner gave.

The vehicle experiences excessive "wheel hop" upon starting from a stopped position, especially on a wet roadway and a hill. The tires just cannot get traction and spin. As well once the wheels start to spin the ecs (stability control system) cuts power and applies braking which has lead to dangerous situations especially when pulling into traffic. There is no ecs disable switch as with previous models, so I cannot temporarily disable the system for troubleshooting of the issue. Losing power while pulling out into the flow of traffic and experiencing a power loss is a safety hazard. The car came with hankook optima h426 tires and I switched to yokohama avid envigor (v rated) tires believing the issue was the tires. I am an experienced driver with 33 years of driving and have tried everything from light acceleration, feathering the accelerator, using the s mode of the tiptonic transmission and using the tiptronic control in d mode to hold the transmission in the lower gear and trying to start in a higher gear to reduce the torque to the wheels, but the tiptronic will not allow upshifting when stopped. I raised this concern with the…

2,000 miles NHTSA complaint 957385 filed 2013-01-10

Vw has no traction control (not stability control) button to defeat the system at low speeds. When there is snow and ice on an incline of any degree, this is downright dangerous. It retards the power the car delivers by applying brakes to wheels that are slipping. I was on a hill and the car was reduced to 3-6 miles per hour with cars behind me and oncoming. It is designed as a safety system but is doing the opposite on slick inclines. Probably a money saving measure, but puts drivers at risk. *tr

60,100 miles NHTSA complaint 1144496 filed 2015-01-05

Also reported on the 2012 Volkswagen Passat

Airbag inflator rupture

153 reports median 63k

Steering column or shaft failure

67 reports median 78k

Other electrical problem

32 reports median 61k

Other engine problem

30 reports median 59k

Other fuel system problem

24 reports median 49k

How far this goes

This page is kept out of search results because 2 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 2 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 driver assistance problem happen on the 2012 Volkswagen Passat?

Across 2 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 30,000 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 driver assistance problem on the 2012 Volkswagen Passat?

2 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