Nissan and Infiniti CVT whine — NHTSA complaint, recall and bulletin analysis PulsCar analysis of NHTSA public data, September 2026 License: CC BY 4.0 ------------------------------------------------------------------ SOURCE FILES ------------------------------------------------------------------ NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation public flat files, loaded into a local SQLite database: - COMPLAINTS: 777,040 owner complaints received 1 January 2015 through 8 September 2026. "received" is the date NHTSA logged the report, not the date of failure. - RECALLS (RCL flat file): one row per make/model/model-year per campaign. Campaign counts are DISTINCT campaign numbers. - MANUFACTURER COMMUNICATIONS (TSB flat file): one row per make/model/model-year per document. Document counts are DISTINCT NHTSA document IDs. All queries were run 18 September 2026. ------------------------------------------------------------------ THE SETS ------------------------------------------------------------------ Base: SELECT * FROM complaints WHERE make IN ('NISSAN','INFINITI'); -> 41,498 complaints. Set A — complaints naming a CVT (2,282): narrative matches (case-insensitive) \bcvt\b | continuously variable Set B — transmission word beside a whine word (228): narrative matches BOTH \bcvt\b | continuously variable | transmission | gear ?box AND whin\w+ | howl\w+ | high[- ]pitch\w* | whistl\w+ SAMPLE READING (required before publishing a keyword count): 30 of the 228 were read at random. - 1 clear false positive: a 2015 Altima whose complaint reads "power steering whines and transmission groans" — the whine belongs to the steering pump, and both words are present, so the filter matched. - 2 borderline: the owner attributed the noise to the engine ("the engine made a whining sound") while describing a transmission failure. Kept, but they are not unambiguous. - So between 1 and 3 misses in 30: roughly 3% at the strict reading, 10% at the loose one. The figures are approximate. - Set B is a TRANSMISSION-whine set, not a CVT-only set. It contains Nissans that never had a CVT, for example a 2006 Pathfinder with ATF in its radiator. Set A is the CVT-only view and is reported alongside it in every table. ------------------------------------------------------------------ OUTCOME FIELDS, AGAINST THE ALL-MAKE BASELINE ------------------------------------------------------------------ Baselines over the whole 777,040-row file: towed 5.11% crash 4.37% fire 1.82% Nissan + Infiniti, all complaints (41,498) Set A, names a CVT (2,282): towed 2.63%, crash 1.14%, fire 0.13%; 19 injuries, 0 deaths; median 83,000 miles (1,337 rows with mileage), quartiles 63,000 and 106,450. Set B, transmission + whine (228): towed 0.44%, crash 0.44%, fire 0.88%; 0 injuries, 0 deaths; median 90,000 miles (159 rows), quartiles 66,840 and 118,000. Mileage rule: rows with miles <= 0 or >= 400,000 are dropped before any median or quartile. MILEAGE AGAINST THE WARRANTY CAP Of the 159 Set B rows carrying a usable odometer reading: 85 (53.5%) are above 84,000 miles — the Nissan extension cap 126 (79.2%) are above 60,000 miles — the original CVT warranty This is a property of the complaint file, not of the vehicle fleet. Owners with an early failure are more likely to have it repaired under warranty and less likely to write to NHTSA about it, which pushes this distribution upward. The article says so where it uses the figure. ------------------------------------------------------------------ "WHAT TRAVELS WITH THE WHINE" CATEGORIES (over the 228) ------------------------------------------------------------------ Regular expressions, case-insensitive. They OVERLAP — one complaint can land in several — so the shares do not sum to 100%. They measure vocabulary, not events. warranty extension / settlement / recall named warranty extension|extended warranty|settlement|class action|recall power loss or failure to accelerate loss of power|lost power|won'?t accelerate|would not accelerate| no acceleration|not accelerat\w+|loses power|reduced power|limp shudder / judder / jerking / shaking shudder|judder|jerk\w*|shak\w+ transmission or CVT replaced or rebuilt (transmission|cvt) (was |has been |been )?(replac|rebuil)| replaced the (transmission|cvt)|new (transmission|cvt) coverage denied / out of pocket denied|refus\w+|not cover|would not cover|won'?t cover| out of pocket|out of warranty slipping or flaring revs slip\w*|rev\w* (up|climb|flare)|rpm\w* (climb|shoot|go up|rise)|flar\w+ stall stall\w* could not find could ?n.?t (find|duplicate|replicate)| no (problem|issue|fault) found|unable to duplicate| nothing wrong control valve body valve body wheel bearing wheel bearing fluid or software fluid (change|flush|service)|reprogram\w*| software update|tcm update LIMITATION on the denial category, measured: all 32 matches in the 228 set were read in full. Four are the filter misfiring rather than a refusal of coverage — a car that "refused to start", an airbag repair quoted as not covered, an independent shop that "refused to work on Nissan Rogue transmissions", and a car that "refused to go any faster". That is a 12.5% false-positive rate, leaving 28 genuine reports, or 12.3% of the 228. The article uses the corrected figure. ------------------------------------------------------------------ RECALLS ------------------------------------------------------------------ SELECT DISTINCT campaign FROM recalls WHERE make IN ('NISSAN','INFINITI') AND (component LIKE '%TRANSMISSION%' OR defect LIKE '%CVT%'); -> 12 campaigns, read one by one: 12V-032 Versa shift pattern indicator 13V-094 Titan column shift lever 13V-095 NV column shift lever 14V-142 2013 Pathfinder CVT cooler hose — 3,065 vehicles 14V-582 2014 Infiniti Q50 hybrid 14V-803 2015 Armada 15V-775 2015 Rogue gear position indication 22V-457 / 22V-671 Frontier, Titan, Z transmission parking 24V-304 / 26V-410 Sentra front left driveshaft 26V-419 2026 Rogue instrument panel transmission display Exactly one, 14V-142, concerns a CVT's own cooling. None concerns CVT durability. This is the check behind the article's opening sentence. ------------------------------------------------------------------ MANUFACTURER COMMUNICATIONS ------------------------------------------------------------------ Distinct Nissan/Infiniti documents whose summary names a CVT: 249. Classified by keyword over the summary text (overlapping): names a noise (nois|whin|howl|rattl|judder|shudder) 89 35.7% quotes a DTC (\bp[01]\d{3}\b|\bdtc\b) 72 28.9% names judder 71 28.5% names software/reprogramming/calibration/TCM update 65 26.1% names a warranty extension, campaign, class action 45 18.1% names fluid 43 17.3% names the control valve or valve body 32 12.9% Caveat: this classifies SUMMARIES, which are short and written by the manufacturer. A document can perform a software update without the summary saying so. Primary documents opened and read (18 September 2026, HTTP 200): Nissan NTB15-102b, 28 March 2019, NHTSA 10158428 — 2013-2017 Altima and 2014-2017 Rogue, QR25DE only, whine noise at highway speeds, reduction gear bearing shim selection procedure, 51 pages Nissan NTB16-113, NHTSA 10119280 — 2011-2012 Sentra fail-safe Read in the manufacturer-communication flat file (no hosted PDF found at the static.nhtsa.gov path this pass): NTB13079D (10192690), NTB13095C (10192604), NTB16-090 (10091606) ------------------------------------------------------------------ LIMITATIONS ------------------------------------------------------------------ 1. Complaints are self-reported, unverified, and not normalized by how many vehicles are on the road. They are NOT failure rates, and no model here is "more" or "less" reliable than another on this evidence. 2. Counts are shaped by publicity. Warranty extensions and settlements generate owner letters, news coverage and complaints. 3. The file begins 1 January 2015. Nothing here describes anything earlier, and model-year curves that thin out after 2016 reflect vehicle age and accumulated mileage as much as anything else. 4. Mileage is entered by the owner and is missing on roughly 30% of the whine set. 5. Keyword categories measure words, not events. FILES cvt-sets-vs-baseline.csv what-travels-with-the-whine.csv whine-by-model.csv whine-by-model-year.csv cvt-bulletins-by-theme.csv method.txt (this file)