2020 VOLKSWAGEN ATLAS — Complaint #2069079
Open-data reference.
NHTSA Complaint about AIR BAGS:SENSOR:OCCUPANT CLASSIFICATION:FRONT PASSENGER filed February 26, 2025
NHTSA complaint #2069079 (ODI reference 11644988) concerns a 2020 VOLKSWAGEN ATLAS and was filed on February 26, 2025. The owner reports the failure occurred on February 26, 2025. The vehicle had 116,000 miles on the odometer at the time of the incident. The report was geocoded to Florida based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as air bags:sensor:occupant classification:front passenger, 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 ATLAS cohort independently describe similar air bags:sensor:occupant classification:front passenger 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 VOLKSWAGEN ATLAS shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.
Complaint Description
The contact owns a 2020 Volkswagen Atlas. The contact stated while driving at an undisclosed speed, the transmission unexpectedly downshifted with the Passenger Occupant Detection System (PODS) and Electronic Power Control (EPC) warning lights illuminated. The vehicle was restarted; however, the failure recurred. The dealer was not contacted. The vehicle was not diagnosed or repaired. The manufacturer was not made aware of the failure. The approximate failure mileage was 116,000.
Complaint Details
| NHTSA Complaint ID | 2069079 |
| ODI Number | 11644988 |
| Date Filed | February 26, 2025 |
| Failure Date | February 26, 2025 |
| VIN | 1V2AP2CA4LC |
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.