2021 FORD EXPLORER — Complaint #1812530
Open-data reference.
NHTSA Complaint about SEATS:MID/REAR ASSEMBLY filed May 13, 2022
NHTSA complaint #1812530 (ODI reference 11464541) concerns a 2021 FORD EXPLORER and was filed on May 13, 2022. The owner reports the failure occurred on January 22, 2022. The report was geocoded to South Carolina based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as seats:mid/rear assembly, 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 seats:mid/rear assembly 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 2021 FORD EXPLORER shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.
Complaint Description
I am having major issues with the 3rd row seating on my Ford explorer getting stuck and not able to be moved. This is happening causing children to not have places to sit and seatbelts to secure themselves in for a safe commute. Each time the seats are stuck, they are not even able to be moved manually. The entire seat including the head rest becomes immobile and leaves the seat in either a half open/closed position or an open position with no headrest capability. While traveling out of town on January 23 with 6 people in my vehicle my 3rd row seats became stuck in positions where I was unable to safely transport 2 of the occupants of the car. I also had to travel home in an extremely unsafe situation where luggage had to remain in laps for a 4 hour car ride and could have been catastrophic had there been an accident. I reached out to the service department of Palmetto Ford on January 24th about this issue and they told me it would be 3 to 4 weeks until they could get my vehicle i
Complaint Details
| NHTSA Complaint ID | 1812530 |
| ODI Number | 11464541 |
| Date Filed | May 13, 2022 |
| Failure Date | January 22, 2022 |
| VIN | 1FMSK7FH0MG |
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.