2024 FORD ESCAPE — Complaint #2163161
Open-data reference.
NHTSA Complaint about ELECTRICAL SYSTEM:SEAT HEATER:WIRING HARNESS filed January 5, 2026
NHTSA complaint #2163161 (ODI reference 11708870) concerns a 2024 FORD ESCAPE and was filed on January 5, 2026. The owner reports the failure occurred on August 1, 2024. The report was geocoded to Connecticut based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as electrical system:seat heater:wiring harness, 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 electrical system:seat heater:wiring harness 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 2024 FORD ESCAPE shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.
Complaint Description
The contact owns a 2024 Ford Escape. The contact stated that the front driverâs and front passengerâs side seat heaters failed to adjust the temperature once the heater maintained a high level. The contact had owned prior Ford vehicles that automatically lowered the seat temperature once a certain temperature was maintained for a while. The contact had to manually adjust the seat temperature to avoid a potential burn due to the prolonged seat temperature. The dealer nor the manufacturer had been notified of the failure. The vehicle was not diagnosed or repaired. The failure mileage was unknown.
Complaint Details
| NHTSA Complaint ID | 2163161 |
| ODI Number | 11708870 |
| Date Filed | January 5, 2026 |
| Failure Date | August 1, 2024 |
| VIN | 1FMCU9PA3RU |
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.