2016 VOLKSWAGEN PASSAT — Complaint #1764497
Open-data reference.
NHTSA Complaint about SERVICE BRAKES, AIR:ANTILOCK:WHEEL SPEED SENSOR filed August 23, 2021
NHTSA complaint #1764497 (ODI reference 11430116) concerns a 2016 VOLKSWAGEN PASSAT and was filed on August 23, 2021. The owner reports the failure occurred on August 20, 2021. The report was geocoded to Texas based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as service brakes, air:antilock:wheel speed sensor, one of NHTSA's standardized taxonomy codes used to group defect patterns across make, model, and year.
The filer flagged the following severity indicators: crash: no, fire: no, injuries: 0, fatalities: 0. No crash, fire, or fatality was associated with this report, which places it in the early-warning stream rather than the priority-review stream. Because a VIN was supplied, this complaint is tied to a specific vehicle and not just a model-year cohort.
Individual complaints are consumer-submitted and unverified by NHTSA engineers — the agency's role at this stage is to collect, index, and make them searchable. What matters for federal action is the pattern: when many owners of the same VOLKSWAGEN PASSAT cohort independently describe similar service brakes, air:antilock:wheel speed sensor failures, defect investigators have grounds to open a PE and request manufacturer data. Related filings for the same vehicle and component appear below, and the detail page for the full 2016 VOLKSWAGEN PASSAT shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.
Complaint Description
In less than 51,000 miles 3 wheel speed sensors have required replacement. An unacceptable average failure rate of once every 1.7 years or 17,000 miles. Failure of one of these components disables all safety systems including air bags. How could such an obviously unreliable part not be subject to a safety recall.
Complaint Details
| NHTSA Complaint ID | 1764497 |
| ODI Number | 11430116 |
| Date Filed | August 23, 2021 |
| Failure Date | August 20, 2021 |
| VIN | 1VWCS7A35GC |
Source: NHTSA Vehicle Complaints Database. Component taxonomy and severity codes are standardized by NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation.
Read our methodology — how this data is sourced, computed, and verified.