Complaints about Honda's auto start-stop now come mostly from its newest models

This edition covers the 14,044 owner complaints in NHTSA's file dated Sep 29, 2026 (filed through Sep 27, 2026) about the four Honda models on this site that NHTSA's investigation names: the Odyssey, Pilot, Passport and Ridgeline. 1,357 of them describe the auto start-stop system, which Honda calls Auto Idle Stop. The system shuts the engine off at a stop and restarts it when the driver releases the brake. The failure NHTSA is investigating is that the engine does not restart. Find a model year in the table or download the table (CSV).

The tables and CSV files on this page are free to reuse with credit to Model Years and a link to this page (CC BY 4.0).

Complaints by the year filed

Auto start-stop complaints about the Odyssey, Pilot, Passport and Ridgeline, by the year NHTSA received them. The two bars for a year add up to its total: 368 so far in 2026, 409 in 2022.

• All other model years (left bar)
• 2024 and 2025 models (right bar)

2026: All other model years 105 complaints · 2024 and 2025 models 263 complaints

2026 covers January 1 to September 27.

Show as a table

Auto start-stop complaints about four Honda models, by the year filed

Year filed	All other model years	2024 and 2025 models
2018	6	0
2019	34	0
2020	46	0
2021	61	0
2022	409	0
2023	138	0
2024	80	1
2025	159	55
2026	105	263

Key findings

1. 2026 already has more start-stop complaints than any year except 2022. Owners filed 368 from January 1 to September 27, against 214 in all of 2025 and 81 in 2024. 2022 had 409. NHTSA opened its first investigation of the problem on Jun 3, 2022, and 104 complaints about the Pilot were filed that month.
2. The complaints have moved to the newest models. 263 of this year's 368 (71%) are about 2024 and 2025 models: 213 on the Odyssey, 27 on the Ridgeline, 18 on the Passport, and 5 on the Pilot. The 2025 Odyssey alone has 169, the most of any model year. In 2022, 350 of the 409 were about 2016 to 2019 Pilots. This year those Pilots account for 16.
3. On the 2025 Odyssey and the 2025 Passport, half of all complaints are about start-stop. 196 of the 2025 Odyssey's 382 complaints (51%), 57 of the 2024 Odyssey's 107 (53%) and 20 of the 2025 Passport's 39 (51%). On the 2025 Ridgeline it is 25 of 90 (28%), up from 8 of 60 (13%) on the 2024. The Pilot, redesigned for 2023, stands apart: 14 of the 459 complaints about its 2023 to 2025 model years (3%).
4. On the 2024 and 2025 Odyssey, the count went from about 5 a month at the start of 2026 to about 40 in the summer. Owners filed 6 complaints in January 2026 and 4 in February, 18 to 20 a month from March to May, and 35, 39 and 41 in June, July and August. September had 32 through the 27th. All of 2025 had 40, 34 of them from September to December.
5. The fix Honda has on file with NHTSA covers the 2018 to 2023 Odyssey. Honda's service bulletin 23-027 (July 2023) gives 2018 to 2023 Odysseys a software update under warranty. Version 3 of bulletin 23-008 (November 2023) made it a free product update, and Honda wrote to those owners in January 2024 and February 2025. For those vans, bulletin 23-027 gives the possible cause in these words: "The engine may exhibit higher resistance at a certain TDC position than the applied starter torque due to a battery reaching the end of it's useful life." Neither bulletin lists the 2024 or 2025 Odyssey, or says whether later vans were built with the updated software. NHTSA's file of manufacturer communications, dated Oct 1, 2026, has no repair bulletin for the 2024 or 2025 Odyssey.
6. In 2025, Honda asked its dealers three times to report 2023 to 2025 models with the problem before any repair. In July 2025, Honda twice told its dealers it was "searching for certain 2023-2025 Odysseys, Passports, and Ridgelines with a customer complaint of a no auto re-start condition after going into an auto idle stop". The messages, each open for two weeks, ask dealers to report such vehicles before any repair so that Honda can inspect them. They give the purpose as "To better understand the cause of this condition". A first message, in May 2025, also named the Pilot and asked for parts.
7. Owners say dealers could not find the problem, or replaced batteries and starters. We read all 253 complaints about the 2024 and 2025 Odyssey. At least 43 say a dealer could not reproduce the problem or found nothing wrong. At least 29 say the battery was replaced, usually by the dealer, and 24 of those say the problem came back. At least 26 say the starter was replaced or diagnosed as failing, and eight of those say the problem came back after a new starter. Five complaints say a part was on order, on back order or not available; four of them name the starter.
8. As of Sep 29, 2026, NHTSA's investigation had been open for 18 months. Engineering analysis EA25004, "No Restart After Auto Start/Stop Engages", opened on Mar 26, 2025 and was still open in NHTSA's file dated Sep 29, 2026. It covers an estimated 2,209,466 vehicles: the 2016 to 2025 Pilot, 2018 to 2025 Odyssey, 2019 to 2025 Passport and 2020 to 2025 Ridgeline, and two Acuras that are not on this site, the 2015 to 2025 TLX and 2016 to 2025 MDX. When it opened, NHTSA counted 1,348 reports, 4 crashes or fires and 2 injury incidents, and wrote: "ODI continues to receive complaints of the AIS failure to restart, with many complainants alleging the campaign countermeasures had been completed." NHTSA's recall file of the same date has no recall for the problem. An open investigation is not a finding of a defect.

Honda's response

We asked Honda for comment on Oct 2, 2026. American Honda Motor Co. replied by email on Oct 5, 2026 with this statement:

Honda is committed to safety. We are aware of NHTSA’s ongoing Engineering Analysis (EA25004), which addresses complaints that the engine may fail to restart on its own from a complete stop with the Auto Idle Stop function engaged in certain 2016-2025 Honda Pilot, 2018-2025 Honda Odyssey, 2019-2025 Honda Passport, 2020-2025 Honda Ridgeline, 2015-2025 Acura TLX, and 2016-2025 Acura MDX vehicles.

Honda has already been in communication with the agency on this topic and will continue to cooperate with NHTSA as the investigation continues.

The statement does not address the four questions we sent on Oct 2, 2026:

• Has Honda identified the cause of the no-restart condition on 2024 and 2025 Odysseys, and is a repair or software update available or planned for them?
• Were 2024 and 2025 Odysseys built with the software in bulletin 23-027?
• What did Honda learn from the vehicles and parts it asked dealers for in 2025?
• What should owners do if the engine fails to restart after an idle stop?

The 2024 and 2025 Odyssey, month by month

Auto start-stop complaints about the 2024 and 2025 Odyssey, by the month NHTSA received them.

Sep 2026: 32 complaints

September 2026 covers the 1st to the 27th.

Show as a table

Auto start-stop complaints about the 2024 and 2025 Honda Odyssey, by the month filed

Month filed	Complaints
Jan 2025	0
Feb 2025	0
Mar 2025	1
Apr 2025	0
May 2025	1
Jun 2025	0
Jul 2025	2
Aug 2025	2
Sep 2025	7
Oct 2025	9
Nov 2025	11
Dec 2025	7
Jan 2026	6
Feb 2026	4
Mar 2026	18
Apr 2026	18
May 2026	20
Jun 2026	35
Jul 2026	39
Aug 2026	41
Sep 2026	32

Timeline: NHTSA, Honda and the courts

A settlement in an earlier class action, In re Honda Idle Stop Litigation, covers the 2016 to 2021 Pilot, 2019 to 2021 Passport, 2020 to 2021 Ridgeline and the Acura TLX and MDX. It does not cover the Odyssey. Honda's documents are the ones it has filed with NHTSA as manufacturer communications.

If it happens to your car

• File a complaint with NHTSA. Use "Report a Safety Problem" at nhtsa.gov, with your VIN, the dates and what happened. NHTSA's summary cites owner complaints among its reasons for this investigation.
• Report it to the dealer every time, and keep the repair order, even when the dealer can't reproduce it. Ask whether a software update or a bulletin applies to your VIN.
• The Auto Idle Stop OFF button turns the system off until the next start. Owners report it comes back on each time the car is started.
• Check for open recalls by VIN. How to check a car for recalls.

How we counted

• Source. NHTSA's owner complaint file, dated Sep 29, 2026: 14,044 complaints about the Honda Odyssey, Pilot, Passport and Ridgeline, model years 2010 to 2026. The Acura TLX and MDX, which the investigation also names, are not on this site and are not counted.
• What a start-stop complaint is. A complaint whose text names the auto start-stop system, in any of the words owners use for it: auto start-stop, stop-start, idle stop or auto stop. It is the same rule that counts "Auto start-stop problems" on each model year's page. It does not count when the owner says the problem did not happen. More on the method.
• Newest models. Model years 2024 and 2025, the last two that NHTSA's investigation names. Another 12 of this year's 368 are about 2026 models.
• What they describe. We read the 253 about the 2024 and 2025 Odyssey. Nearly all describe the same thing: the system shuts the engine off at a stop, and the engine then fails to restart, stalls or shuts down. We did not read the complaints about the other models and years one by one.
• The date. The date NHTSA received the complaint, not the date of the incident.
• What owners say dealers did. Text patterns found candidates, and we then read every complaint. The figures are floors, since owners word the same thing in many ways. The 253 complaints, with what we found in each (CSV); each has NHTSA's complaint number, so anyone can read it at nhtsa.gov.
• Crashes and injuries. NHTSA's file marks none of the 253 as a crash or a fire. One complaint about a 2024 Odyssey says the van was in a collision after it failed to restart, with damage to both bumpers and no serious injury. One complaint is marked as involving two injuries; its text describes none.
• Honda's documents. NHTSA's manufacturer communications files, dated Oct 1, 2026. We checked NHTSA's summary of every Honda communication tagged to the 2024 or 2025 Odyssey (53 documents) for anything on restarting, starting, the starter, the battery, charging or idle stop. Three match, the dealer messages of May and July 2025. We read each document linked in the timeline. Manufacturers file with a delay, so a bulletin issued in the last few weeks may not be in the file yet.
• Counts, not rates. We have no sales figures. The share of a model year's complaints is the better figure for comparing model years.

Caveats

• NHTSA does not verify complaints. They are owners' own reports, and some owners file more than once.
• Complaints follow attention as well as failures. 104 Pilot complaints arrived in June 2022, the month NHTSA opened its first investigation. A proposed class action over the Odyssey was filed on Jun 2, 2026, and the Odyssey's count rose from 20 in May to 35 in June. 30 of the 253 Odyssey complaints mention an investigation and one mentions a lawsuit. The count had already risen from about 5 a month to about 20 before June. The data cannot separate attention from failures.
• It is not a general rise in complaints about the feature. Start-stop complaints about the other makes on this site stayed between 20 and 42 a month from January 2025 to September 2026.
• Owners whose cars were fixed are less likely to file. The counts of problems that came back cannot show how often a new battery or starter works.
• The 2024 and 2025 models are new. More of them were on the road, and older, in 2026 than in 2025.
• A complaint that names the system can describe other problems too.
• This is a dated edition. NHTSA adds complaints every week, including some filed earlier, so each model year's own page, linked from the table, has the latest counts.
• Spotted an error? Tell us through the corrections page.

Start-stop complaints by model year

All complaints in NHTSA's file dated Sep 29, 2026, and those that describe the auto start-stop system. The last column counts the start-stop complaints filed from January 1 to September 27, 2026. Model years marked EA are named in NHTSA's investigation EA25004. The table starts at model year 2016; two of the 1,357 are about older Odysseys, a 2012 and a 2014. Each year links to its page with the latest counts. Download the table (CSV).

Honda Odyssey · Honda Pilot · Honda Passport · Honda Ridgeline

Honda Odyssey

Honda Pilot

Honda Passport

Honda Ridgeline