2022 Subaru Outback

The windshield cracked without any impact to it after five months of taking delivery on my 2022 Subaru Outback. The crack appears to have originated from the base of the windshield, under the plastic cover. The car was parked outside with the temperature close to 44 Fahrenheit, and was not moving. Based on the amount of the reports for a broken windshields for this model, this is not an anomaly. Subaru should address this issue before they have another lawsuit that covered previous generations. This is my first introduction to the car maker, and it is not going well as one would hope.

Went out our Outback this morning and noticed a crack in the windshield. The crack originates from the drivers side edge of the windshield, at approx. the midpoint of the vertical edge of the windshield. I drove the car yesterday without incident. There was no crack in the windshield when I parked in the driveway yesterday, late afternoon/early evening. There does not appear to be a rock chip or impact crater at any point of the crack. The crack appears to have formed spontaneously without an impact to the glass.

Minor pebble chip hit the lower area center of the windshield (with the sound effect of maybe small paper clip equivalent). Initial impact created a 3" crack, which spidered to about 36" in total within a few hours. Impact 12/7/2022. A minor impact should not compromise a windshield so significantly and so extensively and put passenger safety at risk with poor glass quality. Independent windshield replacement company has observed unusually high volumes of windshield replacements for late year Subaru Outback models. Windshield replaced asap 12/12/2022.

Vehicle windshield shattered without noticeable impact from object, producing a 12 inch crack on center of glass. Dealership refused to warranty the glass, claiming that they did not see the damage occur and cannot verify it was spontaneous. Repair costs were egregiously high given that a camera recalibration is mandatory to ensure safety, quoted at $675 - more than the price of the replacement glass itself.

On January 28, 2023 at approximately 1930 hours, vehicle battery was dead after being in a parking garage for a week. Vehicle was jump started and being driven on a highway for about 10 miles at highway speeds. At a location on the NYC Harlem River Drive, traffic came to a stop for a minute or so. The 'Auto Start Stop System' stopped the motor as designed. When traffic started to move again, the motor would not restart and the battery was dead. We were disabled in the left lane of an unlit high speed, high volume highway in the dark with our emergency flashers rapidly going dim. After about 45 minutes and numerous near serious collision misses, a tow truck arrived to tow us off of the highway. The system that failed was the 'Auto Start Stop System' and the vehicle is available for inspection. I have 40 years of investigating and reconstructing fatal and serious motor vehicle collisions and this defect put the safety of the motoring public at a serious risk. It is unknown if the problem has been reproduced and the component has not been inspected by the manufacturer. There was not any warning indicators or other symptoms of the problem. To the contrary, the vehicle operator had the false assumption that all systems were operating properly. This defect presents a high risk of serious injury to highway users.

The windshield cracked during a severe weather incident where outside temperature was -24 degrees. There were no stone chips or any other issues with the windshield. I drove the car for approximately 20 minutes with the defroster on, when I got home I pulled the car into the garage, when I got back into the vehicle the windshield was cracked from the bottom left of the driver’s side across the windshield toward the middle. I took the vehicle to safelite first, they said the sandwich piece of glass between the exterior section and interior section of the windshield had suffered a failure to to extreme temperature differential. They had seen a number of similar failures since from the prior weekend. They said it is a manufacture issue and said to take it to the dealer for a warranty issue. I took it the the Subaru dealer where I purchased the vehicle, they inspected the windshield and took a number of photographs to submit to Subaru. I was told their windshield experts would examine the photos and get back to them with an answer, that will be four weeks ago tomorrow, Friday the 27th. Meanwhile I’m driving a vehicle with a broken windshield which is not safe. I called Subaru customer care and they are trying to contact the dealership about the claim submission but haven’t been successful. I can certainly pay to replace the windshield, however, if it is a manufactured error I believe Subaru should honor the claim and replace it. I searched the Subaru Outback owners portal and found numerous similar incidents where owners claimed the windshield failed under similar circumstances. According to safelite, Subaru windshields are softer than most manufacturers in an effort to save weight and expense.