Ford Just Broke The Annual Safety Recall Record And It's Only July

Good morning! It's Friday, July 11, 2025, and this is The Morning Shift, your daily roundup of the top automotive headlines from around the world, in one place. This is where you'll find the most important stories that are shaping the way Americans drive and get around.

In this morning's edition, Ford's struggles with recalls are only getting worse,  California officials say Tesla hasn't actually applied for permits to bring robotaxis to the state, Nissan might start building Honda trucks at its plant, and Polestar's rearview camera fix for thousands of vehicles may not have worked.

If it feels like there has been an inordinate number of Ford recalls lately, you're not imagining things. The Dearborn, Michigan-based automaker has recorded more safety recalls in the first six months of 2025 than any other car company has in an entire calendar year. Truly, Ford is in a class of its own when it comes to needing to fix its old mistakes.

Through the end of June, Ford issued 88 freaking safety recalls. It's pretty much lapped the field four or five times over when you consider the next closest manufacturer — a recreational-vehicle company called Forest River — has only issued 21 recalls. This is just the latest in a worrying pattern for the Blue Oval, which has been either first or second in yearly recalls since 2020. In fact, just yesterday we told you about a recall that impacted over 850,000 vehicles. From The Wall Street Journal:

Ford said nine of its recalls this year are expansions of earlier recalls. In March, the automaker said it was conducting an audit of past recalls that included software fixes as part of the remedy. So far, 33 recalls—about 37% of the total so far this year—have been issued as a result of the continuing audit, Ford said.

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Ford said it has significantly improved product quality in recent years, with four new models winning accolades from a recent J.D. Power study on quality. The company has more than doubled its team of safety and technical experts and expanded testing on critical systems, such as vehicle powertrains, steering and braking.

"The increase in recalls reflects our intensive strategy to quickly find and fix any hardware and software issues and go the extra mile to protect customers," said Kumar Galhotra, Ford's chief operating officer.

As you might expect, the company really wants this waking nightmare of initial quality issues to be over.

Ford's expectation is that, over time, recall campaigns and the total number of recalled vehicles will drop as a result of these internal changes, company officials said.

"We believe this approach will lead to systemic and lasting positive change and help us reach world-class levels for quality, safety and customer satisfaction," Galhotra said.

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Ford and its chief executive, Jim Farley, have staked out improving quality as a priority for the Dearborn, Mich., automaker. Improving quality will also help to reduce the billions of dollars Ford spends every year on warranty claims and safety recalls. The company hired a quality czar in 2022, and it has tied 70% of executive annual bonuses directly and indirectly to quality.

To be fair to Ford, recalls across the industry have been rising, with more than 1,000 recorded in 2024, up from the roughly 800 recalls a decade earlier, according to the WSJ. Many of these recalls are related to small issues like faulty interior lights and wonky sun visors, but, of course, many have much more serious consequences.

Yesterday, we told you about Tesla CEO Elon Musk's plans to expand his fleet of robotaxis to San Francisco, and his claim it would happen in a "month or two" depending on regulatory approval. However, now we're learning there is one big issue with this plan: Tesla hasn't applied for permits to operate robotaxis in the state. Shocking, I know.

Regulators made the announcement following Musk's comments, saying, "To date, Tesla has not applied for either a driverless testing or deployment permit." The company did send a first round of permit requests to the California Public Utilities Commission back in March, but it said Tesla has not yet applied for any new permits. You cannot make this stuff up, man. From Reuters:

 All it has so far is a transportation charter-party carrier permit (TCP) typically associated with chauffeur-operated services, which allows Tesla to own and control a fleet of vehicles and transport employees on pre-arranged trips.

The successful expansion of robotaxis will be crucial to Tesla's future as sales of its aging lineup of electric vehicles have slumped with rising competition and a backlash against Musk's embrace of far-right political views.

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Tesla reached out to Arizona late last month to start a certification process for an autonomous vehicle ride-sharing service, and a decision is expected by the end of this month, the state's transportation department said on Thursday.

"They have expressed interest in operating within the Phoenix Metro area," Arizona's Department of Transportation said in an email to Reuters. Tesla has applied to test and operate both with and without a driver, it said.

Right now, Tesla has just a small number of robotaxis terrorizing the streets of Austin, Texas. Obviously, Musk has his sights set much higher than this, but he's going to need the proper permits if he wants to turn his pipe dream into a reality.

Earlier this year, merger talks between Nissan and Honda collapsed in spectacular fashion, but that doesn't mean the short-time lovers can't still help each other out. Nissan is apparently in talks to supply cars to Honda in the U.S. through one of its severely underutilized American plants.

Nissan is reportedly considering building the Honda Ridgeline pickup truck at its facility in Canton, Mississippi. Currently, that plant only builds the Frontier midsize pickup truck. From Reuters:

After Nissan's talks to merge with Honda to form the world's third-largest automaker fell apart this year, the two said they would keep up an agreement to work together in areas such as electric vehicles.

In a statement on Friday, Nissan said it had no additional updates, although it continued to work on projects with Honda. It said it would not comment on speculation.

Right now, Nissan can use all the help it can get as it struggles mightily in just about every aspect of the business.

Nissan reported a net loss of $4.5 billion in the financial year that ended in March, and has been badly hit by dwindling sales as it grapples with an ageing vehicle lineup.

It faces debt of about 700 billion yen ($4.8 billion) coming due this year and its debt ratings have been cut to junk by all three major credit ratings firms.

New CEO Ivan Espinosa has unveiled a sweeping cost-cutting plan that includes closing seven factories worldwide and a cut of 15% in the global workforce.

I think this is a really good move for both automakers as long as Honda's quality standards are kept up at the plant.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says it has opened a recall inquiry into 27,816 Polestar 2 liftback EVs because the rearview camera may not operate correctly. I'll tell you from firsthand experience that the rear design of the Polestar necessitates the rear camera.

In June of last year, Polestar recalled certain 2021-2024 2s because of rear-view camera issues that ranged from limited visualization to incorrect functioning when in reverse and becoming inoperable altogether. That recall didn't seem to do the job. From Reuters:

Polestar had proposed to remedy this condition via a software update, minimizing a graphical rendering limitation by shortening the retry times of the camera streams, as well as removing the rendering of the map in the driver display during reversing.

However, the NHTSA has received 109 complaints for earlier rear-view camera failures persisting even after the recall remedy was completed.

Earlier this month, the Office of Defects Investigations discussed the complaints with Polestar. The Swedish-Chinese automaker – that is launching a new model with no rear window at all — confirmed that its software update didn't actually fix the original issue. Now, ODI has opened a recall query into the issue to evaluate if Polestar's remedy was adequate. I'm going to go out on a limb and say it wasn't.

OK, technically this isn't a historical event, but you can just Google that stuff on your own time today. It's 7/11, which means it's Free Slurpee Day at 7-Eleven. You deserve to treat yourself to this sugary, icy goodness.

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