2020 Toyota Camry
This year drew an ordinary 268 complaints for a Toyota Camry — the model's median is 435. What they were about is the unusual part: 27.6% of them mention battery, against 10.7% across the other years of this generation.
Generation 4 of the Toyota Camry, which began in 2018 and ran to 2024. Everything below compares this year against the others in that generation, not against a different car wearing the same name.
NHTSA opened a defect investigation into this model year.
| Complaints filed | 268 |
|---|---|
| Median for this model | 435 |
| Involving a crash | 14 |
| Involving a fire | 2 |
| Recalls | 3 |
| NHTSA crash rating | 5/5 |
| EPA combined | 29 mpg |
What the complaints were about
- battery — 27.6% of this year's complaints, against 10.7% across the other years of this generation (2.6×). Owners wrote it as: battery, parked, reset, jump.
- coolant — 12.7% of this year's complaints, against 3% across the other years of this generation (4.3×). Owners wrote it as: coolant, valve, bypass, bypass valve.
- bags however — 7.1% of this year's complaints, against 1.5% across the other years of this generation (4.6×). Owners wrote it as: bags however, failure vin, confirms, confirmed parts.
Words owners used for the same problem are counted together, so a fault written four different ways is measured once. Grouped by which complaints they appear in, not by a list anyone wrote in advance.
What owners wrote
Engine: Fault Code P268115 - Engine Coolant Bypass Valve Control Circuit/Open: Circuit Short To Battery or Open. This is a huge ongoing problem with Toyota vehicles. You can do a simple search and find 100s of people with the same issue. This must be addressed…
Constant "ENGINE MAINTENANCE REQUIRED" warning. Dealer identified the engine coolant bypass valve as the source of the problem. Replacing the part resolved the issue.
Verbatim from NHTSA complaint filings, with identifying details removed.
Recalls for this year
- 20V682000 FUEL SYSTEM, GASOLINE Fixed free of charge.
- 20V064000 ENGINE AND ENGINE COOLING Fixed free of charge.
- 23V865000 AIR BAGS Fixed free of charge.
How this was worked out
Every year of the Toyota Camry was compared against its own history rather than against other cars, which removes popularity and age from the answer — a common car draws more complaints at equal reliability, and an older one has had longer to accumulate them. A year is flagged when it drew at least 2.5× this model's median and at least 50 complaints.
This is a fault record, not a review. Nobody files a federal complaint to say the car was fine, so it shows what tends to go wrong — not whether owners liked it, and not whether it is a good car.
Source: NHTSA complaints, recalls and investigations, retrieved . Look this vehicle up directly on NHTSA's site to check anything here.
Own a 2020 Toyota Camry? What happened to yours?
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