2017 FORD ESCAPE — Complaint #1969274
Open-data reference.
NHTSA Complaint about SEATS:FRONT ASSEMBLY:SEAT HEATER/COOLER filed February 21, 2024
NHTSA complaint #1969274 (ODI reference 11573208) concerns a 2017 FORD ESCAPE and was filed on February 21, 2024. The owner reports the failure occurred on February 16, 2024. The report was geocoded to Wisconsin based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as seats:front assembly:seat heater/cooler, 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 FORD ESCAPE cohort independently describe similar seats:front assembly:seat heater/cooler 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 2017 FORD ESCAPE shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.
Complaint Description
Turned the heated seat on (driver side seat). After a little while the seat felt too hot so I thought maybe my jacket was positioned strange on my back. I readjusted my jacket and turned the seat down to the medium setting. It still felt too hot so I turned it off. After exiting the vehicle I noticed a burn mark through the back of the seat. I checked my jacket and there were burn marks on it as well. Had I not been wearing a winter jacket i likely would have been burned. This also poses a safety concern of the seat starting on fire. The vehicle has not been evaluated yet. There were no warning messages or alarms prior to the malfunction. It can be inspected upon request.
Complaint Details
| NHTSA Complaint ID | 1969274 |
| ODI Number | 11573208 |
| Date Filed | February 21, 2024 |
| Failure Date | February 16, 2024 |
| VIN | 1FMCU0G9XHU |
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.