This data is from the NHTSA — the US gov't agency tasked with vehicle safety. Complaints are spread across multiple & redundant categories, & are not organized by problem.
So how do you find out what problems are occurring? For this NHTSA complaint data, the only way is to read through the comments below. Any duplicates or errors? It's not us.
Since the car was new I experienced occasional situations where the car would not accelerate. I thought it might be the transmission slipping as it seemed to "bottom out" when hitting the gas. The car would not respond and I would coast onto the side of road for fear of getting hit. After a minute or so, the gas pedal would work and I could keep moving. I reported it to the dealer and at that time it was winter and the roads were icy so they were not able to test it. Nothing showed up on diagnostics. It has been happening more frequently (twice since June 2022). Upon further research it seemed to be the throttle body so this week I took it to the Ford dealer where I purchased the car and told them what was happening. They confirmed that it is a bad throttle body. They are now replacing it at a cost of $781. I have found numerous sites on the internet that this is a well-known problem and in some cases it seems that Ford issued an extended warranty on defective throttle body assemblies and sensors for 10 years or 150,000 miles from the original purchase date. So why does this not apply to me? This is very dangerous and I was lucky to not get hit. When the car stops accelerating in the middle of traffic, it would be easy to get rear ended or worse.
When driving the car I corrected to move further to the left on the road. In doing so it felt like I ran over something and all of a sudden the car accelerated (initially I was driving around 20-25 mph) and I struck a tree. I sustained a T Spine fracture and was hospitalized for 5 days. I just have a case number with Ford but they seem disinterested. When the car accelerated I felt it was going a 2x the speed.
While traveling with adaptive cruise engaged we were in left lane following a semi approximately 1000' ahead of us and when he moved over to make an exit our vehicle passed by and auto braked hard causing vehicles behind us to take evasive action from hitting us along with vehicles in the right lane of traffic. This also happened again the following week except passing by a dump truck. I was aware that time an mashed accelerator in time as instructed as per operating manual. I don't feel safe using my cruise with or without adaptive on and now several weeks later I'm getting an 'adaptive cruise not available' message displayed on instrument panel.
I have been experiencing acceleration/transmission concerns, where the vehicle essential stalls and will not accelerate. After approximately 5 seconds, the computer and transmission appear to 'sync' and the vehicle will accelerate, but the issue will continue to happen until the vehicle is turned off and back on again. The first time this happen, I was in a costco parking lot, so I did not think much of it. The second time this happen, July 12th, 2020, I was crossing a busy road of traffic near my home and was almost involved in a serious accident as a result of this failure. As I was crossing the 2 lanes of traffic to make a left hand turn, my vehicle stalled and I was almost side swiped by an oncoming vehicle. After this incident, I had my vehicle towed to a Ford dealership for inspection. Upon extensive analysis of the vehicle, the technicians could not find anything wrong with the vehicle including no failed sensors in the computer and the technicians were not able to replicate the concern. On August 19th, 2020, my check engine light came on and I immediately returned the vehicle to Ford dealership hoping this was a result of the issues I had been having. Upon another diagnosis, the error was cleared for an engine knock sensor, but this was not related to my concerns with the acceleration or transmission.
My wife and I leased a 2018 Ford Explorer platinum last Saturday. We wanted to upgrade to the latest technology. I failed to ask specifically if the adaptive cruise went to zero mph for stop and go traffic. The window sticker said it had "adaptive cruise control". I have had two cars with adaptive cruise and they have both worked down to zero mph. During our first drive using the so-called "adaptive cruise", we were following a car on the freeway going 70mph. Rather suddenly, that car slowed. Our Ford was slowing down beautifully; you could feel and see the effects of the automatic braking. Then, suddenly and without noticable warning to us, the braking quit and our car was coasting towards the car in front. We narrowly missed a low speed rear-end collision. I would call this cruise control a "partial" adaptive cruise control. I really feel this aspect of the adaptive cruise should be more prominent in all of the literature as well as on the window sticker.. I cannot imagine what would have happened had the deceleration been extremely fast from 70mph and our cruise control disengaged and the braking suddenly quit! this is very dangerous when you are used to a car that will continue braking all the way to a stop. I do considerable rush hour driving and am in stop and go traffic constantly. Other car manufacturers are able to build cars with a cruise that goes down to zero. Why not Ford? I would even hope that a software/firmware update could make my car cruise go down to zero. That would be such a great safety update to offer customers. I believe standards should require zero mph capability from adaptive cruise controls and would hope Ford could be made to fix this rather dangerous device. Any manufacturer using such a partial adaptive cruise system should be made to note that prominently on the window sticker and in the literature.
A D V E R T I S E M E N T S
- Phoenixville, PA, USA