Recalls, investigations and your rights

These didn't lead the news but they cover well over a million vehicles between them. Every one is a free repair.

BMW and Toyota — starter fire risk

Ford Explorer — roof rail covers detaching

This is the used-car campaign of the group. A 2016–2019 Explorer has changed hands two or three times by now, and recall letters follow the registered owner — which is exactly how open recalls go unrepaired for years. If you bought one used, do not assume the previous owner handled it.

Ford Expedition and Lincoln Navigator — seat belt pretensioners

Honda and Acura — seat weight sensor / inadvertent airbag deployment

California has the most-litigated lemon law in the country, and over the past two years it has been rebuilt in three separate moves. Taken together they change who is covered, how long you have, and what you must do before you can file. Here is the actual state of it.

1. AB 1755 (2024) restructured the process

Assembly Bill 1755 (Kalra) was signed September 29, 2024 as Chapter 938, Statutes of 2024. It added a new Chapter 12 — Code of Civil Procedure sections 871.20 through 871.28. The notable parts:

• A hard deadline where there wasn't a clear one. An action must be commenced within one year after the applicable express warranty expires, and may not be brought later than six years after the vehicle's original delivery date. The clock tolls during third-party dispute resolution, while the vehicle is out of service for repair, and for 60 days after pre-suit notice.
• Mandatory pre-suit notice. You must demand repurchase or replacement in writing at least 30 days before filing, including the VIN and the repair history.
• A safe harbor for manufacturers. If the manufacturer offers restitution within 30 days and completes it within 60, you cannot pursue civil penalties.
• Structured litigation. Mandatory disclosures, initial depositions capped at two hours, mediation within 150 days, and sanctions of $1,500 to $2,500 for attorneys who don't comply.
• Bilingual notice. Manufacturers must publish lemon law contact information in English and Spanish on their website, in the owner's manual and in the warranty booklet.

The coalitions are worth noting because they are not what you would guess: the bill was co-sponsored by Consumer Attorneys of California and General Motors, supported by Ford and Stellantis, and opposed by Toyota, Honda, Tesla — and by consumer groups including Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety and CALPIRG.

2. SB 26 (2025) made the whole thing opt-in

Senate Bill 26 was signed April 2, 2025 as Chapter 1, Statutes of 2025, effective immediately under an urgency clause. Its headline effect: the AB 1755 regime became elective for manufacturers. A manufacturer opts in, and the election is irrevocable for five calendar years. The Department of Consumer Affairs' Arbitration Certification Program publishes the list of electing manufacturers, updated within two business days of an election, with an annual list published by December 15.

3. Rodriguez v. FCA — the part nobody covered

On October 31, 2024 the California Supreme Court decided Rodriguez v. FCA US LLC (No. S274625). It held that a used vehicle sold with the balance of an unexpired manufacturer's warranty is not a "new motor vehicle" under the Song-Beverly Act's refund-or-replace remedy. The phrase means a vehicle for which a manufacturer's new car warranty is issued with the sale.

That single holding removed lemon law buyback rights from most used-car buyers in California, including many who bought certified pre-owned. Stack the new statute of limitations on top and the arithmetic gets worse: buy a three-year-old car with two years of factory warranty left and you have, at most, one year after that warranty expires — inside a hard cap measured from the original owner's delivery date, not yours.

What still applies

None of the above touches the federal Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, which applies nationwide, governs written warranties, restricts implied-warranty disclaimers, and allows recovery of attorney's fees. It is the fallback where a state lemon law does not reach — which, in California, now includes most used vehicles.

This is the largest single recall of the summer, and one of the largest of 2026 so far. Chrysler reported the defect to NHTSA on July 30, 2026, and VINs became searchable on the federal recall lookup on August 6. Owner notification letters are scheduled to begin mailing August 18, 2026.

What owners should do

• Look your VIN up now rather than waiting for the letter. The mailing runs on the manufacturer's schedule; the database is already live.
• If you carry passengers in the second row — car seats, kids, anyone — get the inspection scheduled rather than deferring it. An anchorage defect only reveals itself in the one moment it matters.
• Chrysler customer service: 1-800-853-1403. Reference recall 67D.

Strip away the state-by-state detail and every lemon law asks one question: did the manufacturer get a reasonable number of repair attempts at a defect that substantially impairs the vehicle's use, value or safety? Most states then define "reasonable" with a numeric presumption. Hit the number and the burden shifts to the manufacturer.

The three triggers to track

• Repair attempts for the same defect. Most commonly three or four.
• A shorter count for serious safety defects. Georgia allows just one attempt for a defect that is life-threatening or likely to cause bodily injury. Texas requires two.
• Days out of service. The classic threshold is 30 cumulative days in the shop. Maine uses 15 business days. Arkansas is an outlier requiring five or more separate repair attempts.

Three states, side by side

Where states diverge most

• How long you're covered. Kentucky, Illinois and Pennsylvania are the shortest at 12 months or 12,000 miles — a real loophole, since the average driver covers about 15,000 miles a year and can blow past the coverage window inside twelve months. New Hampshire and Vermont run through the full express warranty, typically three years or 36,000 miles. Thirteen states sit at 24 months / 24,000 miles.
• Used cars. Most state lemon laws cover new vehicles only. Massachusetts and New York have explicit used-car lemon laws and are genuine outliers.
• Arbitration first. Many states require or strongly favor a manufacturer-sponsored or state-run arbitration program before you can sue — Florida's New Motor Vehicle Arbitration Board, Georgia's state program, New York's program administered through community dispute resolution centers.
• Overall quality. The Center for Auto Safety rates New Jersey, Ohio, West Virginia and Hawaii among the best, and South Dakota, Colorado and Illinois among the weakest.

The federal backstop

The Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act (15 U.S.C. § 2301 et seq.) applies in every state. It governs written warranty disclosure, bans tie-in sales provisions — the "you must use our dealer for service or the warranty is void" claim is generally unlawful — restricts implied-warranty disclaimers, and allows recovery of attorney's fees. Where a state lemon law does not reach, this often does.

What to do from day one

• Get a written repair order every single visit, even when the dealer says they found nothing. "Could not duplicate" is still a documented attempt in most states.
• Make sure the repair order describes your complaint in your words, not just the technician's diagnosis. The presumption counts attempts at the same defect, and the paperwork is what proves sameness.
• Log every day the vehicle is out of service, with dates in and out.
• Keep every piece of correspondence. Follow up phone calls with an email summarizing what was said.
• Check your state's specific numbers before you assume you have time — the deadlines are short and they are not forgiving.

NHTSA's Office of Defects Investigation notes that most of the reported failures happen with no advance warning, and that affected vehicles become undriveable and require towing.

What a Preliminary Evaluation actually is

The federal defect process runs in stages, and knowing where a story sits in that pipeline tells you what it means for you:

• Preliminary Evaluation (PE) — where this is. NHTSA has decided the complaint pattern warrants a formal look and has asked the manufacturer for data. No finding has been made.
• Engineering Analysis (EA) — escalation. A deeper technical review that can take a year or more.
• Recall — either the manufacturer acts voluntarily or NHTSA makes a formal defect determination. Only at this point is anyone obligated to fix your car for free.

Plenty of investigations close without a recall. But a PE is also the single most useful moment for owners to act, because the volume and quality of the complaint record is what drives escalation.

What owners should do

If you have experienced this on a Model 3 or Model Y in these years, file a report at nhtsa.gov/report-a-safety-problem. Include the mileage, the exact part, whether the vehicle was towed, and what you were charged. Complaints are the raw material of this process.

Ford reported the defect on July 20, 2026; VINs became searchable July 23 and letters mailed August 5. Unlike the Jeep and Kia campaigns running at the same time, Ford has not issued a park-outside instruction here, which suggests the risk is understood to require the vehicle to be operating.

The remedy is quick and cheap for the dealer to perform, which usually means parts availability is not a constraint. If a service department tells you they are waiting on parts for 26S55, ask specifically what part — sheathing is not typically backordered.

Ford customer service: 1-866-436-7332.

The 8-year / 100,000-mile figure

The Department of Energy's Alternative Fuels Data Center states that many manufacturers offer 8-year / 100,000-mile warranties on EV batteries. That is the prevailing industry standard. We were not able to confirm from a primary government source that it is a federal legal minimum, so we're describing it as the norm rather than a floor. If a salesperson tells you it's federally required, ask them to point at the statute.

California's stricter rules are in legal limbo

California's Advanced Clean Cars II program included tighter battery durability and warranty requirements for model year 2026 and later. In June 2025 Congress used the Congressional Review Act to disapprove California's ACC II waiver, and the President signed the disapprovals. California and allied states sued; the litigation is ongoing. On June 12, 2026 EPA sent four more California waivers to Congress, and on June 22, 2026 California filed a separate federal suit in D.C. seeking declaratory and injunctive relief.

The safety story: battery fires while parked

NHTSA runs a Battery Safety Initiative covering crash and non-crash battery incident data, research into battery diagnostics and charging failure, and standards work under UN Global Technical Regulation No. 20. NHTSA states its Office of Defects Investigation has conducted several investigations and overseen multiple recalls associated with vehicle and house fires caused by EV battery issues.

The house-fire angle is the underreported consumer risk, because it involves a vehicle that is parked and charging in an attached garage. 2026 has produced several park-outside EV recalls, including a Nissan Leaf battery overheating campaign and a Volkswagen ID.4 campaign, plus high-voltage battery recalls from other manufacturers. Verify any specific campaign number for your vehicle at nhtsa.gov/recalls rather than relying on an aggregator.

The questions that actually matter on a used EV

• Is the remaining coverage a factory warranty or a third-party service contract? They are not the same thing, they don't carry the same rights, and in several states only the first one gets you into the lemon law system at all.
• Does the battery warranty transfer to you, and is there a capacity threshold — a degradation percentage below which it's a covered failure rather than normal wear?
• What does a pack replacement cost on this model relative to what you're paying for the car? On older EVs this figure can exceed the vehicle's value, which is also why insurers sometimes total EVs after structural damage near the pack.
• Who can service it near you? Independent-shop access to high-voltage systems and diagnostics is still limited, which affects both repair cost and how long the car sits — and days out of service is a lemon law trigger in most states.

One more thing we could not verify to a primary source and are therefore not asserting: the exact statutory cutoff for the federal clean vehicle tax credit. Confirm current federal incentive status directly before it factors into a purchase.

This is the story to pay attention to this summer, and not because of the vehicle count. It is a recall of a recall — nearly half a million SUVs where the first remedy either did not solve the problem or, performed incorrectly, became part of it.

The used-car trap

Consider what a private seller or a dealer can now say, entirely truthfully, about a 2021 Telluride: "the seat recall was already done." It was. It is also no longer sufficient. If you are shopping for a Telluride from these model years, the only answer that counts is whether campaign 26V430000 specifically has been completed — not "the recall," not "a recall." Look the VIN up yourself on NHTSA's site, which shows only unrepaired open recalls, and ask for the dealer repair order by campaign number.

Dates and contacts

• Announced July 10, 2026. VINs searchable since July 17, 2026.
• Owner letters began mailing August 13, 2026.
• Kia customer service: 1-800-333-4542. Reference SC374.

What happened to the CARS Rule

The Combating Auto Retail Scams Rule would have set bright-line requirements on advertised pricing, add-ons and disclosure at car dealerships. In January 2025 the Fifth Circuit vacated it — on procedural grounds. The court held the FTC failed to issue an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. It did not hold that the practices the rule targeted were lawful. The rule is not in effect and has not been re-proposed.

What replaced it: case-by-case enforcement

On March 13, 2026 the FTC announced it had warned 97 auto dealership groups nationwide about deceptive pricing. The practices named in the warning letters:

• Advertising prices that exclude mandatory fees
• Promoting rebates or discounts not actually available to all buyers
• Failing to disclose required down payments
• Conditioning an advertised price on financing through the dealer
• Requiring the purchase of unwanted add-ons
• Advertising vehicles that don't exist or aren't available

The authority is Section 5 of the FTC Act — general prohibition on unfair and deceptive practices — rather than a specific auto rule. Bureau of Consumer Protection Director Christopher Mufarridge said the Commission is "committed to preventing auto dealers from misleading consumers with low advertised prices and then adding on mandatory fees." Pending FTC cases named alongside the letters include Lindsay Chevrolet, Leader Automotive Group and Asbury Automotive Group.

States are carrying more of the load

Reported 2026 state-level actions include settlements in Maryland, New York, Illinois and Connecticut over mandatory fees, unlawful leasing fees, bait-and-switch marketing and title and registration failures. Those figures come from law-firm client alerts rather than primary agency releases, so we're describing the pattern rather than printing dollar amounts we haven't confirmed.

Warning signs

Chrysler's filing notes that drivers may notice a loss of power steering assist or a stored power-steering diagnostic trouble code before a failure. If your steering suddenly feels heavy in one of these vehicles, treat it as related until a dealer says otherwise.

Dates

• Defect report received by NHTSA April 6, 2026; publicly announced June 9, 2026.
• VIN lookup live since June 11, 2026. Owner letters from July 9, 2026.

Only 4,653 vehicles are affected, which is why this one got a fraction of the coverage the million-vehicle campaigns did. Severity and volume are different things. A suspension component separating at speed is a different category of hazard from most of what NHTSA publishes in a given month.

Dates and contacts

• VINs searchable since May 29, 2026. Owner letters expected by June 5, 2026.
• Ford customer service: 1-866-436-7332. Reference 26S36.