2020 FORD ESCAPE — Complaint #2087220
Open-data reference.
NHTSA Complaint about POWER TRAIN:AUTOMATIC TRANSMISSION:GEAR POSITION INDICATION (PRNDL) filed April 29, 2025
NHTSA complaint #2087220 (ODI reference 11657626) concerns a 2020 FORD ESCAPE and was filed on April 29, 2025. The owner reports the failure occurred on April 9, 2024. The report was geocoded to Pennsylvania based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as power train:automatic transmission:gear position indication (prndl), 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 ESCAPE cohort independently describe similar power train:automatic transmission:gear position indication (prndl) 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 ESCAPE shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.
Complaint Description
The contact owns a 2020 Ford Escape. The contact stated that the gear shifter was stuck in park(P). The contact stated that the failure occurred while the temperature was hot. The contact stated after parking the vehicle, the gear shifter remained stuck in park(P). The contact waited for 30 minutes before the gear shifter was able to be shifted to the desired gear. The vehicle was taken to several independent mechanics and to the local dealer; however, no cause for the failure was found. The vehicle was not repaired. The contact stated that the failure persisted. The manufacturer was made aware of the failure and referred the contact to the NHSTA Hotline for assistance. The failure mileage was unknown.
Complaint Details
| NHTSA Complaint ID | 2087220 |
| ODI Number | 11657626 |
| Date Filed | April 29, 2025 |
| Failure Date | April 9, 2024 |
| VIN | 1FMCU9H92LU |
Similar POWER TRAIN:AUTOMATIC TRANSMISSION:GEAR POSITION INDICATION (PRNDL) Complaints for 2020 FORD ESCAPE
The contact owns a 2020 Ford Escape. The contact stated that the gear shift knob was seized on several occasions. After waiting for hours, the gear shifter was able to operate as needed. There were no
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The contact owns a 2020 Ford Escape. The contact stated that while the vehicle was parked, the contact started the vehicle, and the power train malfunction indicator lamp warning light illuminated. Th
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.