2017 SUBARU OUTBACK — Complaint #1557925
Open-data reference.
NHTSA Complaint about FUEL/PROPULSION SYSTEM filed April 15, 2019
NHTSA complaint #1557925 (ODI reference 11196205) concerns a 2017 SUBARU OUTBACK and was filed on April 15, 2019. The owner reports the failure occurred on April 13, 2019. The vehicle had 46,900 miles on the odometer at the time of the incident. The report was geocoded to Ohio based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as fuel/propulsion system, one of NHTSA's standardized taxonomy codes used to group defect patterns across make, model, and year.
The filer flagged the following severity indicators: crash: no, fire: no, injuries: 0, fatalities: 0. No crash, fire, or fatality was associated with this report, which places it in the early-warning stream rather than the priority-review stream. Because a VIN was supplied, this complaint is tied to a specific vehicle and not just a model-year cohort.
Individual complaints are consumer-submitted and unverified by NHTSA engineers — the agency's role at this stage is to collect, index, and make them searchable. What matters for federal action is the pattern: when many owners of the same SUBARU OUTBACK cohort independently describe similar fuel/propulsion system failures, defect investigators have grounds to open a PE and request manufacturer data. Related filings for the same vehicle and component appear below, and the detail page for the full 2017 SUBARU OUTBACK shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.
Complaint Description
FUEL GAUGE IS INACCURATE AND DOES NOT SHOW NEAR EMPTY WHEN NO USABLE FUEL IS LEFT IN THE TANK. WE WERE DRIVING TO AN EVENT WITH SLIGHTLY LESS THAN 1/4 OF A TANK OF GAS REMAINING WHEN THE VEHICLE RAN OUT OF FUEL. COMPLETE ENGINE STALL (NO SPUTTERING/ETC. BEFORE) AT 70MPH ON THE HIGHWAY, REQUIRING AN EMERGENCY STOP ACROSS SEVERAL LANES OF TRAFFIC. THIS IS CLEARLY A DANGEROUS PROBLEM, AND IT SEEMS SEVERAL OTHER 2017 OUTBACK OWNERS HAVE REPORTED SIMILAR ISSUES. IT APPEARS TO BE SIMILAR TO THE 2018 FUEL GAUGE RECALL (WTW-82) BUT FOR 2017 VEHICLES. UNFORTUNATELY, I DIDN'T THINK TO TAKE A PICTURE OF THE FUEL GAUGE, BUT WAS ACTUALLY PAYING CLOSE ATTENTION AS I HAD RECEIVED THE NOTIFICATION FOR SUBARU'S WUD-89 "DISTANCE-TO-EMPTY SOFTWARE UPDATE," SO I KNEW THE DISTANCE-TO-EMPTY INDICATOR WAS WRONG, BUT GIVEN THE NOTICE SAID NOTHING ABOUT THE FUEL GAUGE ITSELF AND ONLY MENTIONED THE DTE SOFTWARE WAS INCORRECT, I MADE THE NATURAL ASSUMPTION THAT THE GAUGE ITSELF WAS STILL AT LEAST REMOTELY ACCUR
Complaint Details
| NHTSA Complaint ID | 1557925 |
| ODI Number | 11196205 |
| Date Filed | April 15, 2019 |
| Failure Date | April 13, 2019 |
| VIN | 4S4BSANC5H3 |
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Source: NHTSA Vehicle Complaints Database. Component taxonomy and severity codes are standardized by NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation.
Read our methodology — how this data is sourced, computed, and verified.