WionDrive News Desk 
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) raised “significant safety concerns” on the recall of over 40,000 Ford SUVs over risk of fuel leakage that may ignite engine fires. The investigation was initiated last month by NHTSA in an attempt to check how effective and safe is the remedy for these affected vehicles – the 2022-2023 Bronco Sport and 2022 Ford Escape WITH 1.5L engines.
Ford identified a particulate of fuel injector cracking that could lead to fuel leakage under the hood, resulting in an underhood fire. But, the remedy proposed by the manufacturer is about an engine software update and filling the engine with liquid to prevent fuel injectors joint cracking.
Ford received a letter from NHTSA recently, where it is stated that its plan has multiple loopholes that affect the safety of drivers. Firstly, the plan does not address the real problem and, secondly, instead of changing the defective fuel injectors on time, NHTSA suggests to investigate the issue after it already came to light.
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The NHTSA requests many answers from Ford by June 21 including the procedures used in the proposed remedy or the process used to figure it out. Ford renews its cooperation with NHTSA in order to continue its investigation and stated that it is devoted to the redress of the safety problems.
The car manufacturer admitted to five underhood fires in the models covered by the announced recall, but did not report any accidents or injuries caused by this problem. The purpose of the software update is to recognise a dip in the fuel rail pressure, thus the driver will be alerted with a “seek service” message and the high pressure fuel pump function will be halted to avoid the ignition risks.
This isn’t the first time where Ford has seen such issues. In 2022, the company recalled 485,644 vehicles from 2020-2023 Ford Escape and 2021-2023 Ford Bronco Sport cars for the similar problem. Ford has reported 54 cases to NHTSA last year in North American vehicles having underhood fire. Its 1.5L engine was involved in accidents that resulted in four injuries across both incidents.
