2020 TOYOTA HIGHLANDER — Complaint #2038417
Open-data reference.
NHTSA Complaint about POWER TRAIN:DRIVELINE:CONSTANT VELOCITY JOINT filed November 7, 2024
NHTSA complaint #2038417 (ODI reference 11623929) concerns a 2020 TOYOTA HIGHLANDER and was filed on November 7, 2024. The owner reports the failure occurred on September 3, 2024. The vehicle had 130,000 miles on the odometer at the time of the incident. The report was geocoded to Louisiana based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as power train:driveline:constant velocity joint, 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 TOYOTA HIGHLANDER cohort independently describe similar power train:driveline:constant velocity joint 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 2020 TOYOTA HIGHLANDER shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.
Complaint Description
The contact owns a 2020 Toyota Highlander. The contact stated that there was an abnormal winding noise detected while accelerating. The failure increased over time. While the contactâs husband was driving approximately 60 MPH and attempting to accelerate, the vehicle lost motive power. While shifting to park, there was an abnormally loud, high-pitched winding sound detected. The vehicle was slow to shift from first to second gear. There were no warning lights illuminated. The vehicle was taken to an independent mechanic, who determined that the CV joint needed to be replaced. The vehicle was repaired, but the failure recurred. The vehicle was taken to a transmission center, where the transmission was rebuilt. The contact called the local dealer, but the vehicle was not diagnosed or repaired. The manufacturer was not contacted. The approximate failure mileage was 130,000.
Complaint Details
| NHTSA Complaint ID | 2038417 |
| ODI Number | 11623929 |
| Date Filed | November 7, 2024 |
| Failure Date | September 3, 2024 |
| VIN | 5TDFZRAH5LS |
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.