2015 FORD EXPLORER — Complaint #1769204
Open-data reference.
NHTSA Complaint about SERVICE BRAKES, HYDRAULIC:POWER ASSIST:ELECTRIC filed September 20, 2021
NHTSA complaint #1769204 (ODI reference 11433594) concerns a 2015 FORD EXPLORER and was filed on September 20, 2021. The owner reports the failure occurred on September 4, 2021. The vehicle had 125,000 miles on the odometer at the time of the incident. The report was geocoded to Pennsylvania based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as service brakes, hydraulic:power assist:electric, one of NHTSA's standardized taxonomy codes used to group defect patterns across make, model, and year.
The filer flagged the following severity indicators: crash: no, fire: no, injuries: 0, fatalities: 0. No crash, fire, or fatality was associated with this report, which places it in the early-warning stream rather than the priority-review stream. Because a VIN was supplied, this complaint is tied to a specific vehicle and not just a model-year cohort.
Individual complaints are consumer-submitted and unverified by NHTSA engineers — the agency's role at this stage is to collect, index, and make them searchable. What matters for federal action is the pattern: when many owners of the same FORD EXPLORER cohort independently describe similar service brakes, hydraulic:power assist:electric failures, defect investigators have grounds to open a PE and request manufacturer data. Related filings for the same vehicle and component appear below, and the detail page for the full 2015 FORD EXPLORER shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.
Complaint Description
The contact owns a 2015 Ford Explorer. The contact stated while driving 5 MPH and turning into a parking lot, the steering wheel inadvertently seized. The warning message "Steering Malfunction, Serviced Needed" appeared on the instrument panel. The contact stated that she turned off and restarted the vehicle however, the failure persisted. The contact was able to pull into a parking space with assistance. The vehicle was towed to the dealer who diagnosed that the steering column needed to be replaced, and that the failure was a manufacturerâs defect. The contact stated that the vehicle was not repaired and was towed back to her residence. The manufacturer was notified of the failure and advised the contact that they could not assist because there was no open recall related to the failure. The vehicle was not repaired. The approximate failure mileage was 125,000.
Complaint Details
| NHTSA Complaint ID | 1769204 |
| ODI Number | 11433594 |
| Date Filed | September 20, 2021 |
| Failure Date | September 4, 2021 |
| VIN | 1FM5K8F86FG |
Source: NHTSA Vehicle Complaints Database. Component taxonomy and severity codes are standardized by NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation.
Read our methodology — how this data is sourced, computed, and verified.