Federal complaint record · Volkswagen Passat · model year 2015

2015 Volkswagen Passat

Owners submitted 242 federal complaint reports about this model year, placing it at the 31th percentile for complaint intensity within its 2013 to 2017 midsize sedan cohort. The largest reported component group is airbags. Sample sizes and limitations are shown below.

Airbags · 23% · group n = 89Engine · 14% · group n = 55Electrical · 12% · group n = 48Other · 10% · group n = 40Brakes · 8% · group n = 29
242
Complaint records on file
47,387
Median mileage at the reported problem · 132 complaints reported mileage
23%
Of classified component reports name airbags · group n = 89
31th
Complaint-intensity percentile in a cohort of 50 model years

Airbags · 2 in ten classified complaints

Where this record concentrates

All failure files
Component group 01 · Airbags23%

Airbags reports

Volkswagen Passat · model year 2015

Reports in this group89
Share of classified reports23%
Component groups on file6
Open the failure files

Adjacent model years · same badge, different data

The complaint signal has a shape

Compare model years
2014
0.5complaints per 1,000 estimated vehicle-years
592 matched incidents
This car
2015
0.3complaints per 1,000 estimated vehicle-years
242 matched incidents
2016
0.2complaints per 1,000 estimated vehicle-years
106 matched incidents

The line compares submitted complaints per 1,000 estimated vehicle-years, not failures per 1,000 cars. Vehicle-years use compiled US sales, a 0.25 prior-calendar-year plus 0.75 current-calendar-year model-year allocation, and the shipped survival curve. Rates appear only where estimated vehicles in operation are at least 5,000.

From the record · recurring narrative clusters

What recurring complaint clusters describe

How clusters are built
Steering effort · 43 reports

Reports describe steering effort or control concerns

Cluster 1 of 32015 Volkswagen Passat
Airbag concerns · 39 reports

Reports describe airbag warning or deployment concerns

Cluster 2 of 32015 Volkswagen Passat
Brake performance · 31 reports

Reports describe braking performance concerns

Cluster 3 of 32015 Volkswagen Passat

Cluster summaries paraphrase recurring symptoms reported to NHTSA. They are aggregate descriptions, not individual verbatim reports.

Records through 2026-07-19Published 2026-08-02 · Updated 2026-07-19

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NHTSA consumer complaint records can reveal recurring patterns across published model years. MotorCensus summarizes those records as one complaint-signal index, with a 95% interval and sample size, updated with each data snapshot.

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