Three Mustang Mach-E owners have filed a federal lawsuit against Ford Motor Co., claiming that the company was aware of a design flaw that could cause the 2021–2022 model Mustangs to suddenly lose power while in motion, cutting off electronic systems like power steering and ABS. Perhaps even more concerning, the lawsuit claims that the company hasn’t yet been able to fix the issue.
It’s important to note that Ford did recall about 50,000 Mach-E vehicles after issuing a stop sale directive in June. The lawsuit claims that the Mach-E has a uniformly designed defective high voltage battery main contactor that could overheat, immobilize the vehicle, or cause it to lose power while in operation. It was filed earlier this month in US District Court in the Eastern District of California in response to a similar, if not identical, issue. These vehicles’ contactors are prone to failing under routine and predictable driving circumstances.
According to the lawsuit, Ford should have informed its customers about these flaws at the time of purchase because they might have made them think twice about buying or leasing a Mach-E. Ford is accused of purposefully misleading consumers with a false statement in order to lead them to assume that the cars were secure, according to the lawsuit.
Ford reported to Federal regulators that between July 13, 2021, and May 31, 2022, it had received 286 customer warranty claims relating to an open or welded contactor, but that it was not aware of any accidents or injuries associated with this problem.
MULTIPLE RECALLS
Ford has recently seemed to be cursed by the gods of recall. According to NHTSA website , Mach-E recalls have included anything from loose subframe bolts and insufficient bonding for a few thousand of the cars’ glass panel roofs to problems with unintended acceleration that only affected less than 500 vehicles (which, as Ive complained before , dont do an awesome job insulating against noise and cant be closed).
Additionally, it appears that the issues are not limited to the business’ Model E electric car division! Earlier this month, Ford issued recalls for faults that could start fires even when the vehicle is off and recommended more than 200,000 owners of Ford SUVs powered by internal combustion engines to park their vehicles away from homes and buildings.
Ford plans to release an OTA patch as early as this month, according to Said Deep, a representative for the firm. However, Deep insists that the software update is intended to protect the physical contactors and reiterated that any customers experiencing this issue will have their warranty cover any necessary hardware replacements. It is unclear how precisely a software update is expected to fix what many believe to be mechanical failure.
Freep is the source.
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