“Recalls” and “warranty claims” are dirty words for automakers, who would rather focus on their corporate accomplishments than on their failings. Aren’t we all like that? Ford has been particularly hard hit with more than 180 recalls since January 2025, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. That… is a lot.
Top management in Dearborn may have thought the worst had passed when 2025 ended, when NHTSA reported 150 Ford recalls impacting 12.9 million vehicles. But that was just the beginning. So far in 2026, 33 separate recalls have already tagged 9.6 million Ford vehicles for defects. If this pace continues, Ford will shoot well beyond the 2025 tally. In the 12 months that ended in March, Ford’s recall of 19.6 million vehicles outpaced all other automakers combined.
Warranty and Recall Expenses by AutomakerAutoline
Ford’s 33 recalls this year account for 28% of the industry total. Tied for second place in total recalls this year are General Motors, Toyota, and Fiat-Chrysler (now Stellantis), each dealing with 11, with each automaker accounting for 9% of the industry total, according to NHTSA.
What is going on with Ford quality? Remember when Ford proudly proclaimed that “Quality is Job One” in the 1980s? The last substantive Ford statement about recalls came last July when Chief Operating Officer Kumar Galhotra opened with, “Ford has significantly improved product quality.”
A Metric Working In Ford’s Favor
Ford F-150 Lightning Launch With Jim FarleyFord
We reached out to Ford with several questions about recalls, and the answers are not far from Galhotra’s messaging of nine months ago, focusing on JD Power identifying Ford as the most awarded brand in the 2025 US Initial Quality Study.
“And during Q4 earnings, we reported a $500 million reduction in warranty costs in 2025 compared to 2024, which is a reflection of our team’s collective focus on getting the fundamentals right,” company spokesperson Mike Levine told CarBuzz via email.
Warranty and Recall Expenses by AutomakerAutoline
Publicly traded automakers in the US must disclose recall and warranty costs in financial reports, and auto expert John McElroy dug into them to find out if Ford ranks at the top (see chart above). And actually, they don’t. Ford is No.5, reporting $5.2 billion in warranty and recall costs in 2025, behind Stellantis, Mercedes-Benz, General Motors, and No.1 Volkswagen, which paid $15.9 billion for warranty and recall claims.
Clearly, the number of individual recalls does not correspond with the cost associated with each one. For instance, GM’s 27 recalls seem minor compared with Ford’s 150 in 2025. Yet, it cost GM considerably more cash.
2015 Ford ExpeditionFord
“But so many of Ford’s recalls were software related that could be fixed with an over-the-air update or updates at the dealership.”
-Autoline.TV Host John McElroy
Software fixes are cheaper than repairing or replacing V8 engines, which accounted for a lot of GM’s fixes last year. “So, while Ford had more recalls, GM spent as much money to fix its vehicles as Ford did,” McElroy said, noting that Ford was the only automaker last year to reduce its warranty costs, by $500 million, from 2024.
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Lots Of OTA Update Fixes
To boost quality, Levine said Ford has doubled the number of hours for engine testing “to determine potential failures well past the warranty period,” while OTA software updates are addressing issues proactively. “Approximately 80% of our 2026 recalls to date are software-only remedies and many of those were handled via OTA or mobile service.”
McElroy also calculated how much automakers spend on warranty claims and recalls as a percentage of total revenue (see chart below) and found Stellantis at No.1 (4.4%), while Toyota is among the lowest (1.4%).
Warranty and Recall Expenses by AutomakerAutoline
Increased automaker spending on recalls and warranties corresponds with data from the National Automobile Dealers Association, which tracks how much warranty work dealers do for automakers, including labor and parts. “Last year, dealers in the US did $30 billion in warranty work, up 78% since 2020,” McElroy said, attributing the skyrocketing number to the increasing complexity of new vehicles, with “more things to go wrong.”
Warranty and Recall Expenses by AutomakerAutoline
Levine said Ford has more than doubled its team of safety and technical experts in recent years and is “investing heavily in human capital and technical expertise to support a much more rigorous testing environment, including “testing to failure” on critical systems like powertrains, steering, and braking.” (See breakdown of Ford’s 2026 recalls, above.) Despite the number of recalls, Levine said these efforts help Ford identify and resolve potential issues before they reach the customer
“May Not Happen Next Year Either”
Most of Ford’s current recall volume is tied to older vehicle architectures designed between 2013 and 2020. “Specifically, about 90% of our recall volume over the past 15 months comes from 2015–2022 model year designs,” Levine said.
“We also recognized that the 2020–2021 window included several challenging launches involving new technologies and architectures.”
–Ford Spokesperson Mike Levine
Levine said Ford hasn’t identified a weak link in the supply chain responsible for the flood of recalls – with more stringent controls for everyone from engineering development and testing to manufacturing and suppliers. “We are already seeing the proof of that success through the lower warranty repair rates of our newest 2023–2026 model year vehicles,” Levine said.
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Is the sun setting soon on the old problem vehicles, so Ford can deal with a more manageable number of recalls? “That’s where we want to go,” Levine told CarBuzz. “It’s probably not going to happen this year. Is it going to happen next year? May not happen next year either, but yeah, definitely over the next couple of years, we expect that to trend down.”
