2015 Honda Accord9th gen (2013–2017), third year

Updated 2026-09-01NHTSA counts read on this date — 592 complaints. They rise over time.

Three of the Five Recalls on the 2015 Accord Depend on Which Engine It Has

Five recall campaigns reach a gasoline 2015 Accord. Three of them cover only one engine.

Two are four-cylinder only. One replaces the engine short block on cars built inside a 170-day window. The other replaces a driveshaft, and only on four-cylinder cars with the CVT that were sold or registered somewhere they salt the roads. The third is the opposite: V6 only, and it is the fuel pump.

So the first question on this car isn’t which trim. It’s which engine.

One note on scope: the hybrids are out. NHTSA files this car under four model names and the names don’t split cleanly — gasoline cars turn up under the hybrid names and the other way around. Every filing here was matched to a gasoline car by its VIN. That took out 49.

Owners have filed 592 complaints with NHTSA about the gasoline 2015 model year. Honda sold 388,435 Accords in calendar year 2014 and 355,557 in 2015 — that figure covers the whole Accord line including the hybrid — and 2015 cars were sold across both of those years. 592 complaints against a few hundred thousand cars is not a failure rate, and 592 filings are not 592 owners.

The basics

Third year of the ninth generation and the last one before the 2016 facelift. The 2.4-liter four with a CVT or a six-speed manual, the 3.5-liter V6 with a six-speed automatic, and a six-speed manual V6 in the coupe.

Specs

Displacement and cylinder count are from NHTSA’s vPIC catalog, which holds what the manufacturer submitted. Fuel economy is EPA, city / highway / combined, in mpg. EPA lists two automatic ratings for each engine and doesn’t say which version gets which, so both are here.

What owners filed

Sections below are sorted by count. Each complaint is counted once, under a two-step rule. Step one: if a filing names a specific failure — the power steering, a head gasket, a fuel pump, the collision mitigation system, the daytime running lights — it goes to that section. Step two: everything left over gets sorted by NHTSA’s own component labels, in a fixed order — driver assistance, steering, brakes, fuel, engine, transmission, electrical, lighting, air bags, body.

The same rule applies to every year in this series. The cross-year table on the model page uses NHTSA’s labels alone, so a section here can come out bigger or smaller than the matching row on that page.

The sections below add up to 480. The remaining 112 are spread across the smaller categories, and the last section below breaks them out.

The starter is still here, and it still doesn’t have a section. 112 filings name it, which is 18.9 percent of the record. Owners describe it as a no-start, a click, a stall or a dead battery, so NHTSA files it under whatever label fits the sentence: 51 in electrical, 27 in engine, 18 in the thin categories, and single digits across five more. The 112 is counted across the whole record, not inside one section. The 2014 car runs 20.7 percent. On the 2016 car it drops to 2.8, so this is the last year of it.

Engine type comes from decoding the VIN attached to each filing. 557 of the 592 decode to one of the two engines — 440 are the 2.4 and 117 are the V6, so the V6 is 21.0 percent of the filings that decode. That is the share the fuel pump campaign below applies to, and nothing else on this page uses it.

This is not a failure rate by engine. Nothing here divides failures by how many of each engine Honda built, because the complaint record doesn’t contain that. The engine split in the recalls isn’t inferred from complaints either. The campaign documents name the engine outright.

Electrical — 161

Counted as filings NHTSA tagged electrical system.

The largest section. 70 name the battery, 51 name the starter, 26 say the car would not start, 19 name the alternator or the charging system.

22 of them name the battery sensor — 33 do record-wide — which is 17V418000. That campaign is below, and the curve section at the end has what its filings do.

Steering — 83

Counted as filings that name the power steering or the EPS, plus those NHTSA tagged steering.

40 name the power steering or the EPS, half the section. On the 2013 car the same section is 514 and on the 2014 it is 161. The line falls all the way down.

Six name the ABS modulator. On the 2014 car that part is 114 filings record-wide and 40 of them land in steering; here it is 25 record-wide. Whatever was happening there is much smaller on this car.

Engine — 79

Counted as filings that name a head gasket or overheating, plus those NHTSA tagged engine or engine and cooling.

27 name the starter, which is what happens when a car will not turn over and the owner writes about the engine. 16 describe the engine stalling.

Four of these name a connecting rod, the short block or 15V121000 — the four-cylinder campaign below.

ODI 11427146:

“Driving at Interstate speeds, I had the engine suddenly THUNK and lose power. I limped it to the side of the road to get out of traffic. I went to investigate and the vehicle would not even idle. It just shut off After having it towed back to local service company, looked at, and the dealership I bought it at to look at, I am told the main bearing failed on the connecting rod. The thunks I hear is the rod spinning in there, shearing off metal shavings that are now all over inside the engine bay. Honda has a TSB out for the car, for this exact issue, but my VIN number somehow doesn’t fit in their window.”

He’s not wrong about the window. It is 170 days wide on this model year and three days wide on the 2014, under the same campaign number. The dates are below.

Fuel system — 39

Counted as filings that name a fuel pump or fuel in the oil, plus those NHTSA tagged fuel system or fuel and propulsion.

15 name the fuel pump and 11 describe a stall. Two campaigns touch this section, and they are not the same repair: 19V060000 is the V6-only one from 2019, and 23V858000 is the line-wide one from 2023.

ODI 11271059:

“TL* THE CONTACT OWNS A 2015 HONDA ACCORD. THE CONTACT RECEIVED A RECALL NOTICE FOR NHTSA CAMPAIGN NUMBER: 19V060000 (FUEL SYSTEM, OTHER). WHILE THE ACCELERATOR PEDAL WAS DEPRESSED, THE VEHICLE STALLED. ADDITIONALLY, WHEN THE PUSH START BUTTON WAS ENGAGED, THERE WAS AN ABNORMAL GRINDING NOISE DETECTED AND THE BUTTON HAD TO BE PUSHED MULTIPLE TIMES TO START THE VEHICLE. FURTHERMORE, THE CHECK ENGINE WARNING INDICATOR WAS ILLUMINATED.”

Transmission — 39

Counted as filings that name the CVT, the transmission or a driveshaft, plus those NHTSA tagged power train.

Seven name the CVT and five describe a harsh or slipping shift. Only two name a driveshaft. That is almost nothing for a campaign that covers this car.

Brakes — 23

Counted as filings NHTSA tagged service brakes or parking brake.

Five name the ABS modulator and four are about the pedal.

Air bags and belts — 21

Counted as filings NHTSA tagged air bags or seat belts.

Four mention Takata or an inflator, and three say a bag did not deploy.

Driver assistance — 16

Counted as filings that name the collision mitigation system, lane keeping or adaptive cruise, plus those NHTSA tagged forward collision avoidance or lane departure.

Eight name the ABS modulator and eight are about stability control, ABS or traction control; seven are in both. Half this section is that one part. Honda Sensing doesn’t arrive until the 2016 car, so NHTSA is filing older equipment under its forward-collision and lane-departure labels.

Body and structure — 14

Counted as filings NHTSA tagged structure.

Six are about a door or the trunk and six are paint or rust.

Exterior lighting — 5

Counted as filings that name the daytime running lights, plus those NHTSA tagged exterior lighting.

Four of the five name a headlight. On the 2016 car this section is 116.

The rest is thin

112 filings. NHTSA tagged 51 of them unknown or other, 15 seats, 11 wheels, 9 visibility/wiper and 7 vehicle speed control. Nothing else reaches five.

The head restraint is 4 filings here, against 11 on the 2014 car and 28 on the 2013.

Recalls

NHTSA lists six campaigns for this model year. One of them — 15V602000, the hybrid propulsion software — applies only to the Accord Hybrid, which this page doesn’t cover. Five campaigns reach a gasoline 2015 Accord, and three of the five name an engine.

Four-cylinder only: the connecting rod bolts

15V121000 — March 2015. Connecting rod bolts that may not have been torqued properly, which Honda says can cause the engine to lose power or leak oil.

“Loss of engine power may result in a vehicle stall, increasing the risk of a crash. If the engine leaks oil in the proximity of hot engine or exhaust components, there is an increased risk of a fire.”

The remedy is not a bolt. Dealers replace the engine short block.

On the 2015 Accord this covers four-cylinder cars built between August 14, 2014 and January 30, 2015. That is 170 days. On the 2014 car the same campaign is three days wide. Same campaign number, and on this model year the window is 57 times as wide.

Four-cylinder only: the driveshaft, and where the car has lived

20V769000 — December 2020, covering 2013–2015 Accords with the four-cylinder engine and the CVT, but only cars originally sold, or ever registered, in one of twenty-three places that salt their roads: Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

Honda says the driveshafts were assembled with a lubricant that degraded their protective coating, which left them open to road salt.

Whether this campaign is yours depends on where the car has lived, not just on the VIN.

V6 only: the fuel pump

19V060000 — January 2019, covering 2015–2017 Accords with the 3.5-liter V6, plus the Acura TLX and MDX. Honda says particulates in the fuel can stick to the inside of the fuel pump and reduce how well it works.

“Reduced fuel pump performance can result in an engine stall, increasing the risk of crash.”

Dealers reprogram the fuel injection control unit and replace the pump if they need to. The recall began March 25, 2019.

The two that reach both engines

17V418000 — June 2017. Water can get into the case around the battery sensor. Honda says that can short it out and start a fire. It covers 2013 through 2016 Accords.

23V858000 — December 2023, the fuel pump again, this time covering 2013–2023 Accords and most of the Honda and Acura line. The pump can fail and stall the engine while driving. Owner letters went out September 6, 2024.

Two fuel pump campaigns on the same car, four years apart, are not the same repair. The 2019 one is V6 only and starts with software. The 2023 one replaces the pump module on everything.

What doesn’t show up in the complaints

NHTSA gives the 2015 Accord sedan five stars overall, four in the frontal test, five on side impact and five on rollover. The coupe scores five across all four.

Nothing in the complaint record argues with that. Owners do not file about crash ratings.

The 2.4 with the CVT returns 30 mpg combined, five better than the V6 automatic.

What the complaint curve says

2014    2     2019  104     2024   26
2015   47     2020   79     2025   31
2016   39     2021   67     2026   21
2017   57     2022   31
2018   48     2023   40

The tallest year is 2019, four years after the car was built.

Two different things are in that peak and they behave differently. 34 of the 112 starter filings were filed in 2019, which is the same shape the 2014 car shows and no campaign explains it. The battery sensor filings are the other kind: 27 of the 33 arrived in 2017, 2018 or 2019, right after that recall began in November 2017.

A complaint count going up can mean owners got a recall notice, not that the cars got worse. On this car both things are happening at once, in the same three years, and the record separates them only because the two clusters name different parts.

Complaint databases collect complaints. Nobody files to say the car started. You can’t compare these numbers across models unless both sets were counted the same way.

If you’re looking at one

Ordered by how much it hurts if it goes wrong, not by how many people filed.

Find out which engine it has before anything else. A V6 is badged on the trunk lid and the listing will say 3.5L; if neither is clear, a dealer can read the engine off the VIN. Three of the five campaigns depend on the answer. The 2.4 needs 15V121000 and 20V769000 checked; the V6 needs 19V060000.

Then run the VIN at nhtsa.gov/recalls. It only lists recalls that are still open, so a clean result means either the work was done or the car was never covered. Any Honda dealer’s service department can pull the completion record by VIN, and it’s free.

If it’s a four-cylinder, the build date matters. It’s on the sticker in the driver’s door jamb. 15V121000 covers cars built between August 14, 2014 and January 30, 2015, and the remedy was a new engine short block — worth knowing whether that was done.

Ask the seller not to warm it up before you get there. Start it cold, then let it sit an hour and start it again. 112 filings name the starter, 28 describe a clicking sound and 23 say the owner was stranded. The failure is intermittent by nature — several filings describe a car that started fine for the seller and failed the next morning.

Ask where the car has lived. 20V769000 covers only four-cylinder cars sold or ever registered in the salt states. A car with a northern history carries it even if it’s being sold in the South.

Ask whether 17V418000 and 23V858000 were done. The battery sensor case and the fuel pump. 33 filings name the battery sensor; Honda’s stated consequence for that one is a fire, and for the fuel pump it is an engine stall while driving. Ask too whether the car has been back for the same thing since.

Numbers worth writing down

The two starter rows overlap. A filing can be in both.

Sources

• NHTSA complaint database — 641 complaints across the four model names NHTSA files this car under, of which 49 are hybrids and are excluded; quoted above by ODI number
• NHTSA recall API — six campaigns, one of them hybrid-only; quoted from the campaign summaries and consequence text
• NHTSA vPIC — engine and electrification, decoded from the VIN attached to each filing
• NHTSA safety ratings — 2015 Honda Accord
• EPA fuel economy — city / highway / combined
• GoodCarBadCar Honda Accord sales figures

Complaint counts and quotes come from NHTSA’s public database, retrieved September 1, 2026; each quote lists its ODI number so you can look it up. Engine type comes from decoding the VIN attached to each filing — 557 of the 592 decode to a 2.4 or a 3.5. 24 filings carry no VIN at all, and the remaining 11 either come back with an engine this car never had or don’t decode. Recall applicability depends on the VIN, on which engine the car has and, for the driveshaft campaign, on where the car has been registered — check yours at nhtsa.gov/recalls. This summarizes what owners reported. It isn’t buying or repair advice.