2019 TOYOTA HIGHLANDER — Complaint #2178163
Open-data reference.
NHTSA Complaint about POWER TRAIN:AUTOMATIC TRANSMISSION:TORQUE CONVERTER filed February 18, 2026
NHTSA complaint #2178163 (ODI reference 11718876) concerns a 2019 TOYOTA HIGHLANDER and was filed on February 18, 2026. The owner reports the failure occurred on June 18, 2025. The vehicle had 128,000 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 power train:automatic transmission:torque converter, 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 power train:automatic transmission:torque converter 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 2019 TOYOTA HIGHLANDER shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.
Complaint Description
The contact owns a 2019 Toyota Highlander. The contact stated that while driving at various speeds, there was an abnormal whining sound coming from the transmission. Later, while the contactâs wife was driving approximately 50 MPH, the vehicle went into LIMP Mode and decelerated unexpectedly. The contact diagnosed the vehicle and determined that there was a failure with the torque converter. The local dealer was notified of the failure, but no assistance was provided. The vehicle was not repaired. The manufacturer was not yet notified of the failure. The failure mileage was 128,000.
Complaint Details
| NHTSA Complaint ID | 2178163 |
| ODI Number | 11718876 |
| Date Filed | February 18, 2026 |
| Failure Date | June 18, 2025 |
| VIN | 5TDKZRFH6KS |
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.