2025 TOYOTA GRAND HIGHLANDER — Complaint #2164510
Open-data reference.
NHTSA Complaint about VISIBILITY:DEFROSTER/DEFOGGER/HVAC SYSTEM filed January 8, 2026
NHTSA complaint #2164510 (ODI reference 11709767) concerns a 2025 TOYOTA GRAND HIGHLANDER and was filed on January 8, 2026. The owner reports the failure occurred on November 20, 2025. The report was geocoded to Michigan based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as visibility:defroster/defogger/hvac system, 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 GRAND HIGHLANDER cohort independently describe similar visibility:defroster/defogger/hvac system 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 2025 TOYOTA GRAND HIGHLANDER shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.
Complaint Description
The vehicle takes an excessively long time to make heat, I know NHTSA only has requirements related to defrosting the windshield and it's clear Toyota is aware of the heating issue because they added an electronic defrost to be able to pass the defrost test. The vehicle when it is less than 20f outside takes 40+minutes to warm the cabin to a reasonable temperature. The dealership let the vehicle warm up in their 80deg F shop and said it took 20minutes to get heat out of the vents and claimed that this was normal behavior. I have owned several new cars and also work as an engineer in testing so I've driven countless new vehicles to do various tests and have never had it even take 20 minutes to have heat in a vehicle.
Complaint Details
| NHTSA Complaint ID | 2164510 |
| ODI Number | 11709767 |
| Date Filed | January 8, 2026 |
| Failure Date | November 20, 2025 |
| VIN | 5TDACAB53SS |
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.