The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Survey on nearly 1.3 million Ford F-150 vans in the United States for information of an unexpected demotion of equipment accompanied by temporary locking.
The NHTSA said on Monday that it will open a preliminary assessment on certain Ford F-150 vans of years of model 2015 to 2017 after receiving complaints from 138 consumers.
Complaints allegedly allegedly allegedly transmitted with lower gears while traveling at road speeds without warning or driver entrance, followed by the vehicle, which quickly decelerated.
A spokesperson for Ford said on Monday that the automaker “is working with the NHTSA to support his investigation” and said he was linked to vehicles with six-speed transmissions.
Ford made no comments on the demand for CBC News on the impact to consumers in Canada, and Transport Canada was not immediately available for response.
The NHTSA opens a preliminary assessment on the problem and must then decide to update the probe of an engineering analysis before being able to seek to require a reminder.
A complaint in 2023 of an Ohio owner of an F-150 2016 said that by driving on the highway at 70 miles per hour “, the truck automatically passed from 6th speed to the first speed which almost threw me through the windshield.”
Many owners have reported long expectations to obtain replacement parts.
Some complaints have said that the vehicle’s rear wheels would temporarily locate, seize or slip during demotion, resulting in loss of control. This could lead to an increased risk of an accident, NHTSA said. The agency said no accident or fire had been reported.
Last in a series of surveys
This is the last in a series of NHTSA surveys on the unexpected demotion of the F-150.
In June, Ford recalled 668,000 F-150 Model Year 2014 trucks on unexpected downshift reports in the first report causing a loss of control of the driver or rear locking.
It was the latest Ford reminder on the problem since 2016 and came after the NHTSA in March 2023 opened an investigation on the question of whether the 2014 model trucks were to be recalled for the problem.
Ford in 2016 recalled 153,000 Ford F-150 vehicles 2011-2012 equipped with six-speed automatic transmissions to solve the demotion problem.
The NHTSA opened an investigation into the issue in December 2017 and in 2019, Ford widened its recall to cover 1.48 million F-150 trucks in North America, including the 2013 models. Ford later recalled 107,000 F-150 vehicles 2013 due to a problem with the fix.
In November, Ford accepted an American civilian penalty of $ 165 million after the NHTSA discovered that the car manufacturer had not recalled vehicles with defective reversing cameras in a timely manner.
