A couple says a malfunctioning heated seat caused their 2013 Nissan Armada to burst into flames at random. This truly strange tale was posted on TikTok by user Lindsay (@linruss0). It happened as her husband drove home from Indiana.
According to Lindsay, her husband had been driving normally when there was a strange smell coming from the car. He wasn’t sure what it was, but he pulled over to check the radiator, thinking the Nissan was starting to overheat.
However, upon pulling over and inspecting the radiator, it wasn’t coming from that part of the car. The burning smell was still there, so her husband had to keep checking the car to find out what was going on. Following the trail of the smell, her husband was able to trace the problem to inside the car.
This is when the defective heated seat was found. It wasn’t long after this that, having escaped the car with their dog, her husband called 911 and then, just a few minutes after, the Nissan was engulfed in flames. Lindsay was able to get to her husband and film the car burning right in front of her.
How Did the Heated Seat Cause the Nissan To Catch Fire?
When her husband checked the passenger seat, there was a pillow on it. Both the pillow and the seat were on fire, so her husband reacted quickly to the situation, got the dog out of the car, and called 911. The heated seat wasn’t in use, as no one was in the car at the time, so it does raise the question of what the heck happened to the Nissan.
“Have you ever worried about your heated seats in your car? You should,” said Lindsay in the video. “When he moved the pillow, out of nowhere, like, flames. They were small little flames at first, and then it engulfed this within minutes, minutes of him calling me. So just be careful with your heated seats because this is wild,” she added. For whatever reason, the heated seat was on with just the pillow on it, but it shouldn’t be enough to start a fire.
It does raise a worrying issue for cars with heated seats. Is it possible that, over time, a seat will malfunction and potentially catch fire? Even if nobody is using that seat? It seems incredible that it could get so hot as to set itself and a pillow on fire, and then engulf the entire car in flames. Lindsay was adamant that the seat got too hot and would not cool down, hence the beginning of the fire.
Can Heated Seats Catch Fire?
Heated seats can certainly fail. According to a report from Edmunds, Mercedes-Benz said that years of people getting in and out of cars can stress the seats. The pressure of someone sitting down can break electrical wires in the seat. But you would probably expect the seat to simply fail at that point, and not become so hot that it sets an entire car on fire. Edmunds, however, did report 138 instances of heated seats failing between Jan. 1, 2005, and March 31, 2011. Of those, 69 mentioned fire.
Much of the evidence may well have been destroyed in this instance. There was very little of the Nissan Armada left. People who viewed the TikTok had mixed opinions. “Fun fact, heating pads are one of the leading causes of wintertime house fires. Heat and fabric don’t mix,” a top comment said. However, another said, “I fear this is user error”. Whatever you think, it is still quite scary that a heated seat looks to have destroyed a Nissan that was just 13 years old.