NHTSA Complaint #11549945 — 2016 HONDA HR-V

I pulled on to the road and heard an awful gravely grating noise coming from the vehicle. No dash warning lights/indicators were illuminated at this time, which led me to think it was potentially a tire/suspension type issue. I let off of the accelerator and the noise stopped. There were still no dash warning indicators on, and I was in the lane of travel with vehicles approaching from behind, so I gently pressed the accelerator to attempt to get off the road to investigate and the noise returned. The vehicle seemed to not be accelerating as expected and it appeared that the speedometer needle kind of floated, at which point everything locked up immediately. All dash light warning indicators came on, and the gear indicator was unreadable (almost like it was displaying P and N at the same time) despite the vehicle gear shift still being in drive. I attempted again to gently accelerate to get out of the lane of travel but the vehicle did not move, however the speedometer needle did. I shut off the car and turned it back on, all dash indicator warnings returned and remained illuminated, and I was able to get the vehicle to move a very short distance so that I was mostly out of the lane of travel. I attempted to put the vehicle in reverse so that I could get completely out of the lane of travel which was unsuccessful. Vehicle was towed to a Honda dealership where it was diagnosed with a "complete CVT belt failure with catastrophic loss of the transmission". In June of 2021 I received a recall letter stating that there was a programming issue that was leading to premature deterioration of the CVT belt ultimately causing transmission failure. My vehicle was seen shortly thereafter at a Honda dealership, where the computer programming update was completed. The letter stated that the warranty coverage on the CVT had been extended to 7 years from the date of purchase due to this issue and the known result. Honda did keep their word and replaced the CVT at no cost to me.