Complaint volume
940 consumer-submitted complaints are matched to this model year. Treat the count as a research signal, then read the actual summaries for repeated symptoms.
Complaint records
2018 Honda Odyssey Complaints
940 consumer-submitted complaints on record for the 2018 Honda Odyssey, grouped by component category.
940 Total complaints
13 Crash reports
3 Fire reports
18 Injury reports
Complaint data reflects consumer-submitted reports. A complaint is not proof
of a defect, recall, or manufacturer fault. Enriched severity fields come
from official bulk records when the complaint can be matched by ODI number.
Buyer interpretation
How to use these complaints before buying
Complaint records are most useful when they turn into inspection points, seller questions, and comparison checks against nearby model years.
Pattern to inspect
The most common categories are engine, electrical system, power train. Use those categories as a test-drive checklist instead of judging the vehicle from the total count alone.
Severity flags
Enriched records include 13 crash reports, 3 fire reports, 18 injury reports, and 1 fatality report. These fields come from complaint records and should be read in context.
Mileage clue
Mileage is available on 260 complaints, with an average reported failure mileage of 40,559 miles. Compare that with the mileage on the listing.
Questions to ask the seller
- Have you had any problems related to engine, electrical system, power train?
- Can I see recent maintenance and repair records?
- Has the vehicle ever been towed, involved in a crash, or repaired for the same issue twice?
- Can we also check the recall record for this 2018 Honda Odyssey?
Used-car checklist
Use these complaints before the test drive.
Build a buyer checklist to turn these issues into questions and inspection points.
2018 Honda Odyssey
Build buyer checklist Compare with other years Sends year, make, and model to pre-fill your checklist.
How severe are the 2018 Honda Odyssey complaints?
13 Crash
3 Fire
18 Injury
1 Fatality
24 Towed
7 Medical attention
What are the most common 2018 Honda Odyssey complaint categories?
ENGINE 88
ELECTRICAL SYSTEM 87
POWER TRAIN 81
FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE,LANE DEPARTURE 65
UNKNOWN OR OTHER 62
STRUCTURE 57
FUEL/PROPULSION SYSTEM 33
FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE 31
ELECTRICAL SYSTEM,STRUCTURE 22
FUEL SYSTEM, GASOLINE 22
940 total complaints on record
Latest complaints
| Date | Component | Summary | Severity | Mileage |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 2023 | POWER TRAIN | I scheduled a transmission flush service. After driving i noticed a jerking motion at about 25mph. Took back to honda and they charged me again to do another flush. Issue still persists.Service advisor said may be the transmission. Researching on line seems many have had problems with this transmission model. I knew another flush was not going to fix the issue but dealership was able to make an additional $283. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Aug 2023 | SERVICE BRAKES,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | The automatic emergency braking system (AEB) the Collision Mitigation Braking System or “CMBS.” Ingaged and Stopped the van four (4) times when there where no obsticals in front of the van. Twice this happend while making left turns in four-way intersection. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Aug 2023 | POWER TRAIN | The transmission in my 2018 Honda Odyssey clunks and shutters and jerks forward when accelerating and jerks slow down when decelerating. Stop and go traffic I either can barely accelerate or rapidly accelerate after upshidting and almost hit the car in front of me. The transmission shudders and clunks and jerks | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Aug 2023 | POWER TRAIN | When accelerating from a stopped position, the car occasionally hesitates and then suddenly surges, especially when turning into traffic with vehicles fast approaching. After hesitating, the car accelerates rapidly with the tires screeching. Similarly, when travelling at slow speed, perhaps 40 MPH, and accelerating into a neighboring lane, the car quits accelerating for a brief moment before rapidly accelerating again. I can hear the transmission clunk occasionally as it selects another gear. It's as if the electronic communication between the engine and the transmission is lagging. The Honda dealer indicated the transmission and engine are fine. The brief second or two acceleration delay before overreacting has been embarrassing and I fear dangerous. The car has always behaved this way but it has gotten worse the last couple years. Currently have 54k miles. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Aug 2023 | POWER TRAIN | My 2018 Honda EX-L RES has ZF 9 speed transmission and noticed following safety issues. 1. When I stop at the stop sign or red lights, then I push a gas pedal to take off right away the transmission is not engaged, rather booming sound and 3 second after it squeals the tire. It is very dangerous when I make right turn after I stop as cars in the main lanes may have hit me as my transmission does start right away. 2. When I drive local in 20-30 mph, the gear is 2,3 and 4 and the gear is shifting down hardly when I am off the gas pedal and it make my card terriblely slow down as I feel like I push the stop pedal and cars behind me honks as they think I doing a sudden stop. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jul 2023 | ELECTRICAL SYSTEM,STRUCTURE | After rainfall water is leaking into the rear fuse box compartment located behind the 3rd row seats and causing the tailgate control module and other parts to fail. The tailgate does not have any power and cannot be opened or closed with the fob or the push buttons located in the tailgate or in the dashboard area. The tailgate cannot be locked as the latch does not engage and it can be very risky to drive the vehicle as the tailgate might come open while driving. There might be some opening on the roof of the vehicle from where water is leaking into the fuse compartment and causing this hazardous situation. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jul 2023 | ENGINE | In two separate incidents, my vehicle stalled when it tried to restart after being in Auto Idle Stop mode. In both incidents, I was stopped at an intersection where I was making an unprotected left turn. As I was stopped, the Auto Idle Stop mode activated on my Honda Odyssey which turned off the engine. When it was clear to make a left turn, I lifted my foot off the gas which disabled Auto Idle Stop mode. As my engine tried to restart, it stalled. I was able to get it to restart but only after being stalled in traffic for several seconds causing other drivers to honk at me. When my engine restarted, several warning lights lit up on my dashboard for about a second and a warning alarm sounded. Since they were illuminated for such a short period and I was actively trying to clear the intersection, I was not able to see which lights they were but I do remember that one of the lights that lit up in the first incident was the sliding door warning light. The first incident happened in May 2023 when I had about 99,000 miles on my van. The second incident happened in July 2023 with approximately 101,000 miles on my van. The problem happens at seemingly random times and has not been able to be reproduced. There were no other warnings prior to the problem happening. Since my van randomly stalled in the middle of an intersection, I believe this problem posed a safety risk to myself and my occupants as well as other drivers near me. Had I not been able to get my van restarted, I would have been at risk of being hit by oncoming cars. Even the few-second delay in restarting could have been catastrophic had an oncoming car been approaching quickly. I have had no issues with the starter on my van or with issues stalling other than these incidents. The stalls have only occured when coming out of Auto Idle Stop mode. Unfortunately, there is no way to permanently deactivate this mode. It automatically turns on each time I start up my car. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jul 2023 | ELECTRICAL SYSTEM | My car has stalled on multiple occasions when the auto-idle feature is engaged. A message on the dashboard flashes stating ‘collision mitigation system’ and then the car just stalls and the battery light comes on. Typically this requires turning the car off and turning back on to begin driving. Very scary and dangerous when in the middle of a busy road/traffic light/stop. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jul 2023 | LATCHES/LOCKS/LINKAGES | The contact owns a 2018 Honda Odyssey. The contact stated while pressing the button to automatically close the driver’s and passenger’s side sliding doors, the doors stopped halfway and failed to close properly. The contact was able to manually push the doors close. The vehicle was taken to the dealer and repaired under NHTSA Campaign Number: 20V437000 (Latches/Locks/Linkages) but the failure persisted. The dealer was contacted that stated there was nothing that could be done because the recall repair was performed. The vehicle was not repaired. The manufacturer was contacted and stated that the vehicle needed to be taken to the dealer for assistance. The failure mileage was 33,000. | Crash: No Fire: No | 33,000 |
| Jul 2023 | POWER TRAIN | The transmission has intermittent harsh or jerky upshifts with steady acceleration, or the MIL comes on with DTC P0756. The vehicle would be unable to shift into reverse thus causing potential traffic issues by stalling on the road. The shift would not engage in reverse, appears to be stuck in neutral and slowly slides. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jul 2023 | POWER TRAIN,UNKNOWN OR OTHER,FUEL/PROPULSION SYSTEM | Our van regularly hesitates when to accelerate from a stop. Example, when turning right on red pushing the gas pedal will provide some speed to get into the roadway, then it becomes unresponsive. Letting up and pushing the accelerator will cause the van to move again after about.5 to 1 seconds. Often the accelerator has to be pushed all the way to the floor, which causes the van to move aggressively once it does start to respond causing the tires to spin out. While the performance issue is annoying, this becomes a safety issue when stranded out in traffic. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jul 2023 | FUEL/PROPULSION SYSTEM | This vehicle (2018 Honda Odyssey) hesitates when acceleration is attempted after braking. This makes left turns in front of oncoming traffic particularly dangerous. The problem has been widely discussed on Honda/Odyssey online forums. Honda apparently has not acknowledged the problem or warned owners about it. I just missed getting hit with a car full of kids due to acceleration hesitation. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jul 2023 | ELECTRICAL SYSTEM | Water leaking in from roof or driver side windows into rear electronics at the fuse box and the tailgate control module. When control module was removed there was gross evidence of water saturation in the control module and multiple areas of corrosion, rust and fouling of electrical components causing battery to drain dead. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jun 2023 | SUSPENSION | The contact owns a 2018 Honda Odyssey. The contact stated while driving at approximately 70 MPH, there was a loud bang followed by a rattling sound coming from the passenger’s side rear tire. The vehicle was steered to the side of the road and parked. The vehicle was towed to an independent mechanic where it was diagnosed that the suspension spring needed to be replaced. The vehicle was not repaired. The manufacturer was notified of the failure. The failure mileage was 101,000. | Crash: No Fire: No Towed | 101,000 |
| Jun 2023 | ELECTRICAL SYSTEM | Vehicle was taken into Honda dealer due to trunk not opening and closing properly & receiving “Power Tailgate Failure” warning and rear entertainment system not working. After many hours, I was told the power tailgate control unit and floor wire harness would need replaced due to corosion from water damage ??? This was at 42,653 miles!! They couldn’t explain how the damage could have happened and Honda refused to do anything about fixing it. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jun 2023 | UNKNOWN OR OTHER,ENGINE | Five years old vehicle jerked and almost came to a complete stop. Engine transmission services warning popped up as soon as the jerk happened the first time. Another warning came up as well. Jerking happens at least every mile. Car full of young kids jerked and almost came to a complete stop on the road and highway. Multiple moving vehicles were near when this occurred, which could have resulted in a terrible accident. Honda dealer said this is due to front camshaft and sensor. No engine warning regarding this problem showed up prior to this jerking. This first appeared on June 23, 2033. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jun 2023 | POWER TRAIN,VEHICLE SPEED CONTROL,ENGINE | I am having an identical issues as described in NHTSA ID Number 11526094. Vehicle hesitates when accelerating from a stop. Have been almost hit a couple times as it is unpredictable when this happens. This is a dangerous behavior and I cannot in clear conscience sell this minivan to another family. I have returned it to the dealer multiple times and they were eventually able to reproduce the problem and captured the behavior on diagnostic equipment. Their finding is that when the accelerator is slightly pressed, and then release (like one might do when entering an intersection to make a left hand turn) the transmission jumps to 5th gear. When the accelerator is pressed to complete the left turn, the transmission spends several seconds shifting from 4th to 3rd to 2nd before finally accelerating. This delay opens up the opportunity to get hit. The dealer concurred that this was a problem but then contacted Honda and they said this is normal characteristic with 2018 and 2019 model Odyssey's with the 9 speed transmission. This may be a normal characteristic with this model year according to Honda but it is not acceptable behavior for any type of vehicle. It is just a matter of time before an accident will happen. It happens often and seems to be getting worse over time including irregular/rough shifts while driving. See attached documentation. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jun 2023 | ELECTRICAL SYSTEM | Our 2018 Honda Odyssey has randomly failed to start three times. No warning no advance warning messages or alerts. These appeared once after being parked overnight and twice immediately after being driven a short distance. First time was in June of 2021, second time in May of 2023 and third time in June of 2023. When trying to start the vehicle either the dash would flash with unknown information before going blank or was blank and wouldn’t crank the starter motor. We replaced the battery after the third failure. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jun 2023 | ELECTRICAL SYSTEM,STRUCTURE | Rear hatch on our Odyssey EX-L started giving a "Power Tailgate Problem", and it would not open at all except by mechanically releasing the hatch from the emergency access panel. I replaced the rear hatch control module and the hatch could now again be opened from the outside as normal, but the power tailgate still did not function up and down, and requires manual lifting open and pushing closed. Upon inspection, the removed/malfunctioning control module appears to have failed due to water infiltration, meaning water has entered the inside of the vehicle and then shorted electrical components, potentially creating a fire hazard. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jun 2023 | POWER TRAIN | There are no warning lights illuminating. The 2018 Odyssey inconsistently will not accelerate when needed and it puts the driver and passengers in dangerous situations if there is other traffic. When the driver pushes down on the foot pedal for acceleration, the car acts as if it can't engage for a moment (like it is thinking about what it needs to do), it briefly freezes, but then will suddenly jerk into gear and jump. It is dangerous because it can happen when trying to accelerate onto the freeway or when trying to turn onto a busy road and there is no rhyme or reason as to when it is going to happen. There have been 2 close calls in which the other drivers acted defensively preventing crashes and on 1 instance, there were children in the car. We should not have to wait for an injury to have a problem considered and corrected. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jun 2023 | POWER TRAIN,VEHICLE SPEED CONTROL,ENGINE | The problem is with the 9 speed automatic transmission system. Yes, it is available for inspection. There is a delay in acceleration which has caused the vehicle to "stall" in dangerous situations such as pulling out onto a road with traffic, making a left turn with oncoming traffic, or needing to accelerate at a green light. There have been multiple incidents when an oncoming car has had to brake to avoid a collision because I have stalled temporarily in their lane. I have also nearly been rear ended as I stall after moving forward at a green light. The vehicle accelerates too slowly from a stop, then stalls for several seconds before over correcting and too much power causes the tires to spin and the car can get a little squirrelly if I am not extra careful. It happens often but not always and is getting worse and more frequent. There are also problems with rough shifting and delayed shifting that have been an issue since I bought it in 2018. I have taken it to the dealer many times and while the issue has been reproduced, they have never been able to identify a cause. One Honda mechanic said that his 2018 Pilot acts the same way and it is "normal" for that engine. The issue was reproduced during a recent inspection from an independent mechanic who sent me to a specialty transmission shop who said the transmission was fine and suggested that it was due to a tech issue and sent me back to Honda. The mechanics at Honda have not gotten stuck in front of an oncoming car on a road test so they treat the issue as a mild annoyance. No warning lights have gone on. The severity and frequency of this problem is increasing and I no longer believe the car is safe to drive. Honda does not have a fix and I am ready to sell it but I don't think it is safe for others to drive either and I don't know what to do. It is only a matter of time until this causes an accident. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jun 2023 | STRUCTURE | The sliding doors do not work properly when the windows are down. When the windows are up and you open the door you hear a clicking noise locking the door in place. If the windows are down when opening the doors they do not “click” and the door can slide closed. This is a bigger issue when parked on a hill or slight decline as the door can slam shut on small kids. If the windows are down when opening the door you need to use one arm or your body to keep the door open while you buckle kids up. Or just make sure windows are up. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jun 2023 | STEERING,POWER TRAIN,FORWARD COLLISION AVOIDANCE | On Monday, March 27th While driving at various speeds, the collision mitigation system message flashed on the instrument panel without anything provoking it/no real cause. I observed while driving the vehicle, the warning message repeatedly flashed on the screen before the entire instrument panel went blank. This includes the infotainment system restarting as well, alternatively, I was driving going between 40-60mph and the all-dashboard notification lights started flickering (lane departure warning, odometer, blind spot warning, Collision Mitigation System etc.) it continues to happen randomly while driving at unpredictable times the wheel does lock up for a short time and the vehicle is temporarily not under driver control. It was able to restore, and I was able to regain control of the vehicle other times its last for several seconds. I have captured this incident on video. Additionally, there is also an issue with the vehicle hesitating while accelerating from a stop even with Auto Stop disengaged. On Thursday, June 1st same issue as described above occurred at 8:10AM when issue occurred again the vehicle steering for a 5-8 Second Period was locked and not able to move. Shortly after, I began to record the vehicle. Within a 7-8 Minute Period I was able to capture on video it happening an additional 3 Times. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| Jun 2023 | POWER TRAIN,VEHICLE SPEED CONTROL,UNKNOWN OR OTHER | When the accelerator is depressed and the vehicle is in drive, it does not accelerate. This has happened multiple times, the date provided is a representative date where others witnessed the issue and is not the first or last time it occurred. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |
| May 2023 | POWER TRAIN,ELECTRICAL SYSTEM | When driving the dash and instrument cluster will restart suddenly and the van will shift out of drive suddenly. | Crash: No Fire: No | Unknown |