Which Used Cars Rack Up the Most Electrical-System Complaints? We Counted the NHTSA Data

Key facts

• Electrical is #1 by complaint volume: 241,848 distinct ELECTRICAL SYSTEM complaints (248,855 rows) top NHTSA's component list, ahead of power train (218,558 rows), engine (169,100), and airbags (156,619).
• Narrative-confirmed floor: 162,094 of those 241,848 (67.0%) use electrical vocabulary in the owner's own free text. A top-level component bucket is an upper bound, not a measurement; the floor is the conservative number and both are published.
• Fire subset: 17,924 of those electrical complaints (7.4%) also carry NHTSA's fire flag. Fire is a separate boolean field, not a component, so it is counted inside the electrical bucket, never added on top.
• Raw leader: Jeep Grand Cherokee — 7,543 electrical complaints (26.0% of its 28,973 total), rising to 7,755 once its 4XE and L labels are merged, which widens its lead rather than closing it.
• Share leader (min 500 total complaints): Kia EV6 — 75.4% of its complaints are electrical.
• Ford recall 26V547000: 148,663 model-year 2024-2026 Mustangs built Sep 7, 2022–Jun 9, 2026; fractured engine-compartment wiring-harness ground connections; loss of drive power or loss of headlights, washer, A/C, cooling fan; dealers replace ground terminals free; interim owner letters ~Aug 31, 2026, remedy letters anticipated March 2027.
• BMW recall (Sept 3, 2026): 189,130 vehicles worldwide — 3 Series (F30/G20), 5 Series (F10/G30), 7 Series (F01/F02/G11/G12) built Jul 29, 2014–Nov 12, 2020; water-intruded starter relay can arc and cause an under-hood fire; remedy replaces the starter motor. US NHTSA campaign number not yet published.
• Dataset: NHTSA FLAT_CMPL.zip, 1,617,347 deduped complaints, retrieved 2026-09-06.

Which used cars have the most electrical-system complaints?

By raw count, the Jeep Grand Cherokee draws the most electrical-system complaints in NHTSA's file — 7,543 — followed by the Chrysler Town & Country (5,207), Chevrolet Malibu (4,710), Dodge Grand Caravan (4,340), and Ford Focus (4,335). These are all high-volume, long-selling models, so the ranking as much reflects how many were sold as how troublesome each one is.

The same volume effect shows up in other components — the models atop which used cars have the most engine failure complaints and used cars with the most transmission problems are largely the same big sellers. A raw-count leaderboard is a "most complaints filed" list, not a "worst car" list.

Labels above are counted exactly as NHTSA spells them. Merging each nameplate's sub-variants (see Method) leaves the top two unchanged and widens the lead — Grand Cherokee 7,755, Town & Country 5,207 — but does move the middle of the table: Malibu family 4,985, Ford F-150 family 4,315, Chevrolet Silverado family 4,210, which lifts the Silverado from 11th to about 7th.

Do the big counts just mean the car sold in big numbers?

Mostly, yes — and normalizing proves it. When we re-rank by electrical complaints as a share of each model's total complaints (with a 500-complaint floor to suppress small-sample noise), the leaderboard reshuffles to put EVs and plug-ins on top. That is structural: an electric car's drivetrain, charging, and controls are electrical, so a large fraction of any EV's gripes will be tagged electrical by definition. Read the share cut as "what portion of this model's problems are electrical," not "this EV is the least reliable."

The Saab 9-5 is shown merged across the three spellings NHTSA files it under (9-5, 95, 952) — 264 electrical of 569 total, 46.4%. Its 9-5 label alone reads 243/504 = 48.2%, which is what the frozen CSV lists, because the CSV keeps every label exactly as NHTSA spells it. Merging moves it from 5th to 8th. No other entry in this table is split across labels; the Mustang Mach-E occupies a single label covering MY2021-2026.

Not every high-share entry is an EV. Older minivans and sedans with genuine electrical reputations also surface — the VW Routan (58.2%), Saab 9-5 (46.4% merged), Dodge Journey (39.6%), Chrysler Town & Country (38.6%), and Chevrolet Impala (33.0%) all rank high on share, and the last three also carry big raw counts. Those are the models where an electrical fault is both common and a large part of what owners complain about.

One honest limit: NHTSA's complaint file has no sales or registration denominator, so "normalization" here means share of complaints, not a per-100,000-vehicles rate. A true per-vehicle rate would need licensed registration data we did not use — so we do not claim one. For context on how raw counts distort across the whole database, see our look at at what mileage do cars start having problems.

What about a used-buyer cohort — cars 5 to 10 years old?

Filtering to model years 2016-2021 (roughly 5-10 years old in 2026) narrows the field to cars people are actually shopping now. Raw electrical counts in that window are led by the Subaru Outback (1,661), Honda Pilot (1,522), Jeep Cherokee (1,222), Ram 1500 (1,188), and Jeep Wrangler (992). The Jeep Compass has the highest electrical share of the cohort leaders at 38.0%.

The 2016-2021 window is our editorial choice for a used-buyer cohort; a different window will reshuffle these ranks. What "electrical" covers is broad — infotainment, cameras, gauges, body-control modules, wiring — and overlaps with the components behind which used cars have the most backup camera failure complaints.

What are the two big fresh electrical recalls — Ford and BMW?

Two of the largest recalls of the moment are both electrical, which is what makes this durable question timely. Ford's is a wiring fault; BMW's is a water-intrusion fire risk. Neither is the basis for the ranking above — they are the news hook, not the data.

Ford — NHTSA 26V547000 (Ford 26C40). Report received Aug 25, 2026; component "ELECTRICAL SYSTEM:WIRING"; 148,663 units; certain 2024-2026 Mustangs built Sep 7, 2022–Jun 9, 2026. Engine-compartment wiring-harness ground connections may fracture, causing loss of drive power or loss of headlights, windshield washer, A/C, and engine-cooling fan (failing FMVSS 108 and 104), with an estimated ~1% defect rate. Dealers replace the ground terminals free; interim owner letters went out around Aug 31, 2026, remedy letters are anticipated March 2027, and VINs became searchable on NHTSA.gov Aug 28, 2026. In our own data the Mustang carries 1,131 electrical complaints out of 9,178 total (12.3%). Note this is distinct from Ford's same-day 26V548000 — a separate mechanical recall of 10,001 vehicles for engine piston domes, not electrical.

BMW — starter-relay fire recall (announced Sept 3, 2026). 189,130 vehicles worldwide — 3 Series (F30/G20), 5 Series (F10/G30), and 7 Series (F01/F02/G11/G12) built Jul 29, 2014–Nov 12, 2020. The starter relay is inadequately sealed against water; moisture corrodes internal contacts and can arc near the starter motor, creating an under-hood fire risk with no warning. The remedy replaces the entire starter motor. The figure is reported as worldwide (German KBA reference 16791R); a US NHTSA campaign number and US-specific count are not yet published, so treat the count as trade-press context and re-check NHTSA before relying on a US figure. This is related to but separate from earlier BMW starter-relay campaigns such as 25V636 — do not merge the counts. Electrical faults are also the largest driver behind which cars have the most fire complaints.

By the numbers

• 241,848 distinct ELECTRICAL SYSTEM complaints — the most-complained-about top-level component.
• 17,924 (7.4%) of those also fire-flagged.
• 7,543 electrical complaints on the raw leader, the Jeep Grand Cherokee.
• 75.4% electrical share on the normalized leader, the Kia EV6.
• 148,663 Mustangs in Ford recall 26V547000; 189,130 BMWs (worldwide) in the starter-relay recall.

Based on 1,617,347 deduped NHTSA ODI complaint records (FLAT_CMPL.zip), retrieved 2026-09-06; complaints grouped on the top-level component label and counted as electrical when that top level equals "ELECTRICAL SYSTEM." Frozen CSVs below are the reproducible record.

What a VIN check can and can't tell you here

A VIN check helps in two honest ways for an electrically suspect used car: it screens for recalls on file, and it surfaces the car's history. It cannot confirm a repair. Start with NHTSA's free VIN lookup for recall status; a paid history report adds the crash, salvage, and listing record NHTSA does not carry.

The differentiator is history: for a car you suspect has electrical damage (a past flood, a prior fire, a rebuild), the accident, salvage-auction, odometer, and sales-listing records are what expose it. Recall remedy confirmation belongs to the dealer or NHTSA.

A Zilocar VIN check screens a specific car for recalls on file — including the Ford Mustang wiring campaign once it maps to a VIN — and surfaces its accident, airbag-deployment, salvage-auction, odometer, theft, ownership, and sales-listing history, plus specs, NHTSA/IIHS ratings, and market value. It does not confirm a recall was performed, track investigations, or show firmware status — confirm the repair with a dealer or NHTSA.

Related checks

• used cars with the most dashboard display problems
• which used cars have the most backup camera failure complaints
• which cars have the most fire complaints

Method

Source file. NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation Complaints flat file FLAT_CMPL.txt, extracted from FLAT_CMPL.zip. The archive carries a file timestamp of 2026-09-05; we downloaded and processed it on 2026-09-06. NHTSA republishes this file continuously, so a later download will not reproduce these counts exactly — the frozen CSVs linked in Sources will.

Universe. · 2,243,124 complaint-component rows. The file stores one row per cited component, so a single owner report naming two systems appears twice. We deduplicate on ODINO, the owner-report id, to N = 1,617,347 distinct complaints. Every figure in this article is a count of distinct complaints, not of component rows, vehicles or owners.

Filter. We read field 12 (COMPDESC), take the top-level label — the text before the first colon — and flag a complaint as electrical when any of its component rows carries the top level ELECTRICAL SYSTEM. That yields 241,848 distinct electrical complaints, 15.0% of the file, drawn from 248,855 component rows. FIRE (field 9) is a separate boolean, reported as a subset inside the electrical bucket and never added on top.

Cleanup and aggregation. Make and model strings are trimmed and upper-cased and grouped as a make + model pair. Two rankings are published: raw electrical-complaint count per nameplate, and electrical share, each nameplate's electrical complaints as a proportion of its entire complaint history, floored at 500 total complaints so that tiny-volume models cannot top the list on a handful of reports. Both full tables are in the frozen CSVs, which list labels exactly as NHTSA spells them, unmerged.

Check 1 — the component bucket is an upper bound, so here is the floor. · COMPDESC's top level is NHTSA's own label, and a top-level count bounds the component rather than measuring it. We re-screened all 241,848 electrical complaints against the free-text narrative (field 20, CDESCR) for electrical vocabulary — wiring, harness, short, fuse, relay, battery, alternator, ground, terminal, module, arcing, burning, circuit, voltage, cluster, starter, ignition switch, infotainment, charging and similar. 162,094 (67.0%) are corroborated by their own narrative. So 241,848 is the bucket universe and 162,094 the conservative floor, and both are published. The keyword screen is itself approximate — a narrative can describe an electrical fault in words the screen does not hold — so the floor understates rather than measures. Under the floor ranking the top two hold (Grand Cherokee 5,952, Town & Country 4,084) while ranks 3-7 reshuffle: the Grand Caravan rises to 3rd, the Accord to 4th, the Malibu falls to 5th and the Focus to 7th.

Check 2 — the check most likely to reverse the headline, and its result. NHTSA's MODELTXT is free text, so one vehicle can occupy several strings and a split label could flip the leaderboard. We ran a consolidation sweep across every ranked nameplate, grouping sub-variants into their base nameplate and testing model-year overlap. The headline survives and widens: the Jeep Grand Cherokee goes from 7,543 to 7,755 (adding Grand Cherokee 4XE 104 and Grand Cherokee L 108), while the runner-up Chrysler Town & Country has no variants at 5,207 — so the lead grows from 2,336 to 2,548. Ranks 3-10 are genuinely sensitive to the merge rule, and the deltas are published so anyone can re-rank either way: Malibu family 4,985, Ford F-150 family 4,315 (the punctuation-only alias F150/F-150 alone makes 4,053), Chevrolet Silverado family 4,210, which lifts it from 11th to about 7th. Hybrid and plug-in variants that overlap model years with their base nameplate — Accord/Accord Hybrid, F-150/F-150 Hybrid — are kept separate, because those are genuinely different powertrains rather than a renamed nameplate.

Check 3 — the share table's own label check. Two entries were re-tested by name. The Ford Mustang Mach-E occupies a single label spanning MY2021-2026 in this file, so it is not split. The Saab 9-5 · is split across three spellings (9-5, 95, 952); merged it reads 264/569 = 46.4% rather than the 48.2% its 9-5 label alone gives, which moves it from 5th to 8th. The table above shows the merged figure and the CSV shows the unmerged labels, as noted under the table. The top two share entries, Kia EV6 and Hyundai Ioniq 5, are clean single labels and hold their order under both the merge sweep and the narrative screen, which leaves them at 59.4% and 57.7%.

Known limits. (1) NHTSA complaints are self-reported and unverified — they are not confirmed defects. (2) The file carries no sales or registration denominator, so nothing here is a per-vehicle failure rate; the share cut is each model's share of its own complaints, not faults per car on the road. (3) The ELECTRICAL SYSTEM bucket is broad — infotainment, cameras, gauges, body-control modules, wiring, charging — so it aggregates systems a buyer would weigh very differently. (4) A high electrical share is structural for an EV and is not by itself evidence of worse reliability. (5) Complaint volume tracks how many cars were sold, how old they are, and how much press a defect received; a recall in the news inflates its model's counts. (6) The model-year 2016-2021 used-buyer cohort is our editorial choice of window, and a different window reshuffles those ranks. (7) Counts are distinct complaints, not vehicles or owners.

Sources

• NHTSA ODI consumer-complaint flat file (FLAT_CMPL.zip) — primary dataset, retrieved 2026-09-06
• Frozen ranking CSV — electrical complaints by model (our cut, 2026-09-06)
• Frozen ranking CSV — electrical share by model (our cut, 2026-09-06)
• NHTSA Part 573 report — Ford 26V547000 (148,663 Mustangs, wiring)
• NHTSA Recalls API — Ford 26V547
• NHTSA Recalls API — Ford 26V548 (separate piston recall, 10,001 units)
• CBS News — Ford recalls nearly 149,000 Mustangs over loss-of-drive-power risk
• Forbes — Ford recalls nearly 149,000 Mustangs over power-loss risk
• Motor1 — BMW recalls 189,130 3/5/7 Series over starter-relay fire risk
• BMWBlog — BMW recalls 189,130 3/5/7 Series (chassis codes, KBA ref 16791R)

Last verified: 2026-09-06