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A row of 2015 Ford F-150 pickup trucks parked in a sales lot in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Keith Srakocic / AP
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Keith Srakocic / AP
A row of 2015 Ford F-150 pickup trucks parked in a sales lot in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Keith Srakocic / AP
About two million Ford F-150 pickup trucks are recalled by the company after more than 20 cases of smoke or fire from seat belts.
The recall, which was announced Thursday, applies to certain regular cab and Crew Cab vehicles starting from the 2015-18 model years.
The problem, according to the company, concerns a portion of the seat belts of the driver and front passenger called a pretensioner. The pretensioner is a component attached to the base of a seatbelt clip. During a collision, it automatically forces the clip down, which is meant to protect the occupant by pulling it into the seat. Sometimes this piece involves explosives.
You can see a pretensioner deployed in this video of The Slow Mo Guys:
Youtube
"The Ford investigation revealed that some front seat belt pretensioners can generate excessive sparks when deployed," the company said. Ford added that these sparks could cause a fire in the insulation or carpet.
He said he saw 17 cases of smoke or fire in the United States and six others in Canada, and said he received no reports of an accident or injury. Most of the affected vehicles are in the United States, although Canada has nearly 340,000 and Mexico approximately 36,000.
Federal security authorities opened a preliminary inquiry into this issue last month after receiving five complaints.
The National Road Safety Administration said that "two fires were extinguished and that the other three vehicles had been totally destroyed by the fire".
In a recent suit filed with NHTSA, according to the Associated Press, a car owner claims that a deer ran into their car, which deployed the airbag. Shortly after, they noticed a fire near the seat belt. "The truck is gone in minutes and is completely lost," he added.
In a statement released on Thursday, NHTSA said that these car owners "should monitor recall notifications from Ford Motor Co. and take action when getting the free repair." This involves the removal of some insulating materials and the application of a heat resistant tape.
The recall will be expensive – as reported by the AP, "Ford said Thursday in a filing to US authorities that the recall would cost about $ 140 million and will be accounted for in the third quarter results."
Ford's stock market value fell more than 0.6% in mid-afternoon on Thursday.
According to Reuters, some of the defective parts were built by Takata, the manufacturer of airbags that have been the most important automobile recall in American history:
"Ford said the components of the older 2015-2017 models were manufactured by Takata, which was acquired by Ningbo Joyson Electronic Corp, while ZF Friedrichshafen AG built the parts from the 2018 model year.
Toyota also announced that it was recalling cars this week. As Cameron Jenkins of NPR said, the manufacturer has recalled some 192,000 Prius vehicles in the United States, concerned about potential fires. More than a million Toyota hybrids in the world are being recalled and the largest number is in Japan.
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