Ford Battered by Another Recall

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Ford Battered by Another Recall

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One of Ford management’s promises to investors last year is that it would drive up the quality of its vehicles. One byproduct of poor quality is recalls. These can cost a car manufacturer hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Ford has let investors down again.
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Ford recalled 870,701 of its F-150 pickups, more than it sells in a year. The F-150 is the largest-selling vehicle in America, making up over a third of Ford’s sales. Those recalled were models from 2021 to 2023. (These are America’s 17 favorite pickups.)
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The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration document about the recall says, “Damaged electric parking brake wiring may lead to inadvertent parking brake application while driving, potentially resulting in loss of control of the vehicle and increasing the risk of a crash.” If that seems dangerous, that’s because it is.

In this case, Ford’s recall is extremely visible. The F-150 is not only Ford’s flagship, but its electric vehicle (EV) flagship is the F-150 Lightning. The recall affects the image of the entire model.
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Ford is trying to reach the top EV sales list in America. However, it recently cut back production of its EVs due to a lack of demand. Slow demand and poor product quality will make attaining those aspirations more difficult.
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The gasoline-powered F-150 probably will be Ford’s best-selling vehicle for years, perhaps until the end of this decade. EVs must replace those pickup sales to grow and for the company to remain profitable.

Ford’s promise to become the car company of the future continues to be compromised by its problems in the present.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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