Even with $5 a gallon gas, Americans aren’t rushing out to buy electric vehicles. Ford is telling dealers to temporarily pause deliveries of its hit Mustang Mach-E electric SUB amid safety concerns. But Ford Motor Company believes that the solution to the problem causing the recall of 49,000 vehicles should be available in a month or so.
So, if you’re OK paying $44,000 for a car that doesn’t work today but might work later, buy it.
First, the problem, reported by CNBC:
Ford Motor instructing dealers to temporarily stop selling electric Mustang Mach-E crossovers due to a potential safety defect that could cause the vehicles to become immobile.
Ford, in a notice Monday to its dealers, said potentially affected vehicles include 2021 and 2022 Mach-Es that were built from May 27, 2020, through May 24, 2022, at the automaker’s Cuautitlan plant in Mexico.
Nearly 49,000 of the roughly 100,000 Mach-Es produced during that time frame will be part of a recall, Ford spokesman Said Deep told CNBC.
The problem involves a potential overheating of the vehicle’s high voltage battery main contactors, which is an electrically controlled switch for a power circuit. The issue can lead to a malfunction that could cause the vehicle not to start or immediately lose propulsion power while in motion, the notice states.
Then the response, reported by Detroit Free Press, that Mustang MACH-E owners slap Ford with a federal lawsuit of the safety defect.
Three owners of the 2021-22 Mustang Mach-E have filed a federal lawsuit against Ford Motor Co., claiming the Dearborn automaker has known of a design flaw in its popular electric vehicles that causes them to lose power while driving down the road — and has not figured out how to fix the problem.
“Companies go through recalls all the time,” lawyer Aashish Desai of the Desai Law Firm in Costa Mesa, California, told the Free Press.
“But when you have damages that affect a safety issue and the company doesn’t appear to have a solution, then you get into a problem that nobody wants to drive around a car that may stop working while they’re driving,” he said. “I’m shocked they still have these cars out on the road.”
Ford spokeswoman Cathie Hargett told the Free Press on Monday the company does not comment on active litigation.