2016 MAZDA MAZDA6 — Complaint #2141689
Open-data reference.
NHTSA Complaint about SEATS:FRONT ASSEMBLY:SEAT HEATER/COOLER filed October 21, 2025
NHTSA complaint #2141689 (ODI reference 11694675) concerns a 2016 MAZDA MAZDA6 and was filed on October 21, 2025. The owner reports the failure occurred on October 12, 2025. The vehicle had 113,500 miles on the odometer at the time of the incident. 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 MAZDA MAZDA6 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 2016 MAZDA MAZDA6 shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.
Complaint Description
The contact owns a 2016 Mazda Mazda6. The contact stated that after her husband had driven for approximately 2 hours with the seat heater activated, the passengerâs side seat overheated, and the seat started smoking. The driver stated that the seat heating element overheated and burned a hole in the seat, damaging the air bag located near the seat heater sensor. The dealer was contacted, and an appointment was scheduled. The vehicle was not diagnosed or repaired. The manufacturer was not informed of the failure. The failure mileage was approximately 113,500.
Complaint Details
| NHTSA Complaint ID | 2141689 |
| ODI Number | 11694675 |
| Date Filed | October 21, 2025 |
| Failure Date | October 12, 2025 |
| VIN | JM1GJ1W56G1 |
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.