NHTSA Complaint #11624130 — 2015 NISSAN ROGUE

The heat in my 2015 Nissan Rogue stopped working last winter. This prevented me from being able to defrost the windshield while driving in the middle of winter! The problem is a faulty blend door on the HVAC box. The actuator motor is made of hard plastic, but the blend door is made from soft plastic. This causes the spline in the blend door to strip out and crack and no longer actuate to allow hot air to enter the cabin. I have pictures of the stripped out spline. The problem has not been reproduced by a dealer or independent service center, but my research online has shown that there are many other Nissan rogue owners who have experienced similar issue, at very low mileages. There were no warning lamps or messages of the problem before it began. There was one symptom, the car had problems heating before it stopped operating completely. The soft plastic spline is probably a $5 part, but it is part of the HVAC box, which is a $2700 part (and probably a 10+ hour labor job as the whole dash has to come out.) This is very poor design. I am unsure what they thought would happen when hard plastic is applying torsional force to soft plastic.