NHTSA Complaint #11530193 — 2019 TOYOTA AVALON

2019 Toyota Avalon XSE with 41,400 miles. Complete failure of the Climate Control Panel. No buttons or lights would work, resulting in lack of any fan, heat, air conditioning, window defroster, mirror defroster or seat heat. Found no fuses blown. On one occasion since then both seat heat lights came on indicating full heat but did not produce any heat. Two days later Panel began to work normally for a 1 hour drive. Later this day there was another complete failure of the same panel. Took car to dealership the next day and panel functioned normally enroute. When dealership diagnosed the problem the Climate Control Panel had failed again and the problem could not be duplicated. No trouble codes were stored in the system. They performed a master reset of the system thinking an update may have been corrupt. Panel worked when leaving the dealership later this day. The next morning the Panel initially did not work, but 20 minutes into a 1 hour drive it started working normally. That evening the Panel failed again on vehicle startup and has not worked since. Took it back to the dealership this morning and did not turn vehicle off, thinking the failure might show up in the car’s system until the service advisor could drive it to a maintenance bay. After 3 hours the problem could not be diagnosed. The lead mechanic contacted Toyota corporate to inquire if this problem has been encountered previously and for a possible solution. Overall this may not be a safety issue warranting any further action. However, if the windows or mirrors were to fog up, there would be no defroster capability for either of these. In this situation it could quickly become a dangerous situation while the vehicle is moving. This should be investigated further.