Ford Motor struggling with quality problems leading to vehicle recalls

Top executives at the Ford Motor Company are vowing to fix the quality issues that the company is dealing with, which are leading to vehicle recalls and increasing warranty costs. The head of Ford Blue, the company’s traditional business in internal combustion engine vehicles, Kumar Galhotra, said that the US automaker is looking to fix these issues as soon as possible and looking to make quality its top priority.

Ford's CEO Jim Farley has been promising to cut down billions from warranty repair costs since he took the lead in October 2020 and the company made progress last year. But this year, Ford had to recall of 100,000 hybrid models due to a fire risk and stop delivering the popular Mach-E due to a defect that could cut power to the vehicle while in motion. Federal investigators are looking into the catastrophic engine failures on Ford's hot-selling Bronco SUV.

On a call with analysts, Farley said that the company continues to be hampered by recalls and customer satisfaction actions. “This affects our cost, but more importantly, it falls short on our most fundamental commitment to our customers," Farley said.

Ford is also closely monitoring social media to see what customers are complaining about. To analyze customer complaints, Ford has also hired a quality expert from researcher JD Power. Further, the company is beefing up engineering, manufacturing and supplier involvement. “We have more work to do in this space," Farley said.

In a separate development, Ford has launched the purpose-built F-150 Lightning pickup truck for police fleet in the US, called Ford F-150 Lightning Pro SSV. The vehicle is modern, always-on work-ready truck and will help police departments save costs, drive efficiency and accelerate customers' sustainability goals. Ford vehicles have been in use in police departments for more than 70 years.