2018 FORD FOCUS — Complaint #1873722
Open-data reference.
NHTSA Complaint about POWER TRAIN:AUTOMATIC TRANSMISSION:CONTROL MODULE (TCM/PCM/TECM) filed February 15, 2023
NHTSA complaint #1873722 (ODI reference 11507497) concerns a 2018 FORD FOCUS and was filed on February 15, 2023. The owner reports the failure occurred on February 1, 2019. The vehicle had 8,000 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 power train:automatic transmission:control module (tcm/pcm/tecm), 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 FOCUS cohort independently describe similar power train:automatic transmission:control module (tcm/pcm/tecm) 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 2018 FORD FOCUS shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.
Complaint Description
The contact owns a 2018 Ford Focus. The contact stated while driving 35 MPH, the vehicle started to shudder and then decelerated without warning. The contact stated that after several minutes the vehicle started operating normally. The vehicle was taken to the dealer and the clutch was replaced, but the failure reoccurred. The vehicle was taken back to the dealer and the transmission module was updated, but the failure persisted. The vehicle was taken to the dealer again and the mechanic stated that the transmission module needed to be updated. The manufacturer was not contacted. The failure mileage was 8,000.
Complaint Details
| NHTSA Complaint ID | 1873722 |
| ODI Number | 11507497 |
| Date Filed | February 15, 2023 |
| Failure Date | February 1, 2019 |
| VIN | 1FADP3F27JL |
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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.