NHTSA Complaint #11504349 — 2022 TOYOTA HIGHLANDER

December 2022 I was driving to my Toyota dealer which is about an hour away from my home for a routine 10k oil. change. Air temperature here in Minnesota was 20-25 degrees. After 10 minute of highway driving with front defroster activated, all windows including the front windshield had some fogging. The fogging continued to spread on all windows. I made several adjustments to the climate control settings but nothing improved the fogging. By 30 minutes into the drive frost was forming at the top of the windshield and side windows where hot air was not blowing directly on the windows. My wife and I pulled off the road several times to wipe moisture off of the glass and sometimes scrape frost. I reported the issue to my dealer in St Cloud Minnesota and inquired if there was something I was doing wrong with the climate settings. They made a couple of suggestions which I thought I had originally tried, but it didn’t seem to be something they were aware of as being a wide spread problem. I made the return trip home with no improvement of the fogging/frost conditions. The problem continued each time we drove the car. We did not use that car again until January 15, 2023 when we traveled to Arkansas for a week. On the 650 mile trip down we had the same issues as before with defrost on high until the temperature rose to the 40s. Before our return trip home, I began researching my problem and found T-SB-0020-19 and T-SB-0024-22 which described my issues. The 650 mile trip was in temperatures from 28-32 and we needed to use the defrost during the entire trip. I scheduled an appointment with Toyota for February 1, 2023. Temperatures were now below zero and did not feel I could safely drive 1 hr to the dealer for the repair. Having extensive experience with auto repairs, I followed the instructions in the TSB and found the exact defect described. I completed the repair which fixed the problem. The 2022 Highlander is not listed in the TSB used for the repair nor any I could find.