2009 CHEVROLET MALIBU — Complaint #1866231
Open-data reference.
NHTSA Complaint about ELECTRICAL SYSTEM:SEAT HEATER:WIRING HARNESS filed January 17, 2023
NHTSA complaint #1866231 (ODI reference 11502238) concerns a 2009 CHEVROLET MALIBU and was filed on January 17, 2023. The owner reports the failure occurred on January 13, 2023. The vehicle had 193,000 miles on the odometer at the time of the incident. The report was geocoded to Michigan based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as electrical system:seat heater:wiring harness, 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: 1, 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 CHEVROLET MALIBU cohort independently describe similar electrical system:seat heater:wiring harness 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 2009 CHEVROLET MALIBU shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.
Complaint Description
The contact owns a 2009 Chevrolet Malibu. The contact stated while exiting a parking lot, the contact smelled a burning odor and felt her leg burning. When the contact exited the vehicle, she became aware that her sweater was burned, and the driverâs seat was burned. The contact was not severely injured. The contact had not sought medical attention. The vehicle was taken to the dealer and the fuse for the seat warmer was removed, but the seat was not replaced. The manufacturer was not contacted. The failure mileage was 193,000.
Complaint Details
| NHTSA Complaint ID | 1866231 |
| ODI Number | 11502238 |
| Date Filed | January 17, 2023 |
| Failure Date | January 13, 2023 |
| VIN | 1G1ZJ57B29F |
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.