2023 TOYOTA HIGHLANDER — Complaint #2146493
Open-data reference.
NHTSA Complaint about LATCHES/LOCKS/LINKAGES:TAILGATE:LATCH filed November 6, 2025
NHTSA complaint #2146493 (ODI reference 11697980) concerns a 2023 TOYOTA HIGHLANDER and was filed on November 6, 2025. The owner reports the failure occurred on June 24, 2025. The vehicle had 28,000 miles on the odometer at the time of the incident. The report was geocoded to California based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as latches/locks/linkages:tailgate:latch, 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 latches/locks/linkages:tailgate:latch 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 2023 TOYOTA HIGHLANDER shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.
Complaint Description
The contact owns a 2023 Toyota Highlander. The contact stated that the liftgate had failed to open or to close intermittently. The contact stated that the liftgate made an abnormal grinding sound while opening and would open 3-inch at a time while the contact continuously pressed the power liftgate button manually. The contact stated that the dealer had reset the liftgate; however, the failure persisted. The vehicle was taken back to the dealer, where the cause of the failure could not be determined. The vehicle was not repaired. The manufacturer was not notified of the failure. The failure mileage was approximately 28,000.
Complaint Details
| NHTSA Complaint ID | 2146493 |
| ODI Number | 11697980 |
| Date Filed | November 6, 2025 |
| Failure Date | June 24, 2025 |
| VIN | 5TDKDRAH7PS |
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.