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2020 FORD EXPLORER — Complaint #1956092

Open-data reference.

NHTSA Complaint about STRUCTURE:BODY:TAILGATE filed January 7, 2024

NHTSA complaint #1956092 (ODI reference 11564067) concerns a 2020 FORD EXPLORER and was filed on January 7, 2024. The owner reports the failure occurred on January 7, 2024. The report was geocoded to California based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as structure:body:tailgate, 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 structure:body:tailgate 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 2020 FORD EXPLORER shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.

Vehicle
2020 FORD EXPLORER
Component
STRUCTURE:BODY:TAILGATE
State
California

Complaint Description

Tailgate latching warning is intermittent in indicating if a lift gate is actually left open. This has been a reported issue by multiple users on forums. It’s caused me to have to call airport security to make sure my tailgate was indeed latch and happened three other instances. Some users have reported that they have had their driver door entry keypad unplugged that’s shorting the car’s warning system. This now sets off my car alarm and also sends a notification via the ford app. See other users experiencing the same issue since 2022 and ford trying to charge customers for short, even some reporting not being able to open the lift gate at all. [XXX] INFORMATION REDACTED PURSUANT TO THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT (FOIA), 5 U.S.C. 552(B)(6)

Complaint Details

NHTSA Complaint ID 1956092
ODI Number 11564067
Date Filed January 7, 2024
Failure Date January 7, 2024
VIN 1FMSK7FH3LG

Source: NHTSA Vehicle Complaints Database. Component taxonomy and severity codes are standardized by NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation.