What 94 owners told NHTSA about the 2023 Ford Escape Gas

As I was driving home with about 5 minutes to go, in my brand new (2 week old)2023 Ford Escape, I smelled something burning. I pulled over and saw smoke so I turned off the car and got out. As I got out of the car I looked under and saw fire. I got away from the car and as I did, the fire kept growing and growing from under the hood. The fire went high enough to hit the trees on the side of the roasd. The police and fire department came and were able to put out the fire but not before the car was distroyed. There were no warning lights or any other symtoms of a problem prior to smelling burning. The Ford company has not responded to me from the day my wife spoke to a representative on Monday, October 2nd. The car fire was on Saturday, September 30th. It's been 3 days. My insurance company was going to do an inspection. Ford wants nothing to do with us. We have a police report and a fire report. This clearly was a engine or electrical problem with this car. I was lucy this happened on a small street and not on the highway where pulling over would have been difficult. Lucky I could smell it so I knew to stop. Lucky I didn't have one or both of my toddler grandchildren in the back seat in their car seats! I would never have been able to get them out in time!

NHTSA ODI 11548405

engine light came on took it into dealership. they said it was evap system then fixed it. picked car up in a wednesday by the friday, light came on again. took back into dealership, they didn’t detect any leaks.. said they were going to put in a canister purge solenoid. found out about 23S27.. apparently my vehicle vin doesn’t fall under that recall.. but yet my vehicle has all the signs.

NHTSA ODI 11548274

At approximately 1,000 miles on 2 separate occasions while traveling on the interstate, roughly 10 minutes apart, an audible chime and visual alert within the speedometer cluster appeared “engine coolant over temperature” for approximately 10 seconds. The temperature gauge within the cluster indicated normal, midway within the span of the gauge. The following day prior to starting the vehicle, a cold start essentially, the coolant level was “full”. I ran a “check engine” check with no stored codes in temporary or permanent storage. My 2023 Ford Escape has the 1.5L EcoBoost engine. When the warnings appeared, there was no reduction in engine power(limp mode) and no signs of steam while looking in the rear view mirror.

NHTSA ODI 11539326