More Than 635,000 Honda Pilots and Acuras Are Being Recalled — And the Culprit Was Hiding in One Impossible Math Problem
The power steering can switch off while you’re driving dead straight. Honda first heard about it in 2021, and the clue that would have cracked it kept getting erased.
11 November 2026 · 4 min read
It starts on the most boring stretch of road there is. No curve, no merge, no hard turn — just a Honda Pilot or an Acura heading dead straight.
Then a warning lights up on the instrument cluster, and the steering wheel suddenly takes real muscle to move.
That, in Honda’s own words, is what can happen inside 635,808 vehicles now under a federal recall. The automaker told the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that the electric power steering in certain 2023–2025 Honda Pilots, 2022–2024 Acura MDXs and 2021–2025 Acura TLXs can drop into a “failsafe mode” — and when it does, the power assist simply switches off.
What took longer to explain was why. Honda’s first report of the problem arrived in November 2021. The recall came almost five years later.
A Problem No One Could Catch
The Pilot is the biggest slice of the recall by far: 383,110 of the family SUVs, according to Honda’s filing, as reported by Fox Business. Add 177,100 Acura MDX SUVs and 75,598 Acura TLX sedans, and Honda estimates that every one of them — 100 percent — carries the faulty software.
“If the EPS system enters failsafe mode, power steering assist is disabled, and the EPS warning indicators illuminate in the instrument cluster,” Honda wrote in its safety recall report. “Without power assist, steering effort increases, which may reduce vehicle controllability, increasing the risk of a crash or injury.”
The car can still be steered. It just fights back — the kind of surprise no one wants with the family on board.
Between May 2022 and October 22, 2026, Honda logged 146 warranty claims and one report of an injury, according to USA Today and Fox Business. No deaths have been reported.
The Clue That Kept Getting Erased
So why did a fault first flagged in 2021 take until now to recall?
According to Car and Driver and FOX Local, which reviewed the NHTSA documents, the answer is almost painfully ordinary: when affected cars came in for service, dealers and the supplier deleted the error codes as part of their diagnostic routine. The one piece of evidence that could have pointed to the culprit kept getting wiped clean.
More reports trickled in between August 2023 and August 2025, FOX Local reported. The supplier finally identified the failure in August 2025, and Honda managed to reproduce it in December of that year, according to Fox Business. In February 2026, Honda confirmed the fault happens only under certain conditions — while the vehicle is traveling straight.
On October 22, Honda decided it was a safety defect.
One Impossible Math Problem
Here is the twist buried in Honda’s paperwork.
The steering software was built by the supplier Robert Bosch Automotive Steering LLC, Fox Business reported, and the error sits in a calculation tied to the car’s Driver Attention Monitor — the system designed to keep an eye on whether the driver is alert.
Honda’s published filing spells out what goes wrong: under specific conditions, the software “may perform a floating-point division with a zero denominator, triggering an internal error.” In plain English, the program tries to divide by zero — the one sum every schoolchild is told can’t be done.
That alone wasn’t the whole failure. Honda says the software was also “incorrectly configured to respond to this error by disabling power steering assist.” So a math glitch in a feature meant to make driving safer was set up to react by shutting off the help that makes the wheel easy to turn.
What Owners Should Do Now
Vehicles recalled (NHTSA campaign 26V721; Honda recall codes KQB and TQA):
- 2023–2025 Honda Pilot — 383,110 vehicles, built Sept. 13, 2022 to Dec. 23, 2025
- 2022–2024 Acura MDX — 177,100 vehicles, built Dec. 10, 2020 to July 10, 2024
- 2021–2025 Acura TLX — 75,598 sedans, built Aug. 11, 2020 to Aug. 18, 2025
The problem: The electric power steering (EPS) software can enter failsafe mode, switching off power steering assist and lighting up the EPS warning on the dashboard. Steering becomes much heavier.
The fix: An authorized Honda or Acura dealer will reprogram the EPS control unit with corrected software, free of charge.
When: Owner letters are scheduled to go out on or about December 14, 2026. But a Honda representative told Fox Business the software update is already available at dealerships — and owners don’t have to wait for the letter.
Check your car: Enter your VIN at recalls.honda.com, recalls.acura.com or NHTSA.gov/recalls (VINs became searchable on NHTSA’s site on November 11), or call 888-234-2138. Honda customer service is also at 866-784-1870, and NHTSA’s Vehicle Safety Hotline is 888-327-4236.
If the EPS warning comes on and the steering turns heavy: contact an authorized Honda or Acura dealer rather than waiting for the letter.
“Our Top Priority”
“At Honda and Acura, the safety of our customers is our top priority,” the company said in a statement to Fox Business.
For the owners of more than 635,000 cars, the cure is a free trip to the dealer and a software update.
Nearly five years of searching, all to find a number that should never have been zero.
Marta Visser
Consumer editor
Marta has covered retail pricing and consumer rights for nine years and runs our basket-tracking tests.
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