I'm beyond livid right now regarding my wife's 2022 Ford Explorer Limited.

Today my daughter was driving it through a busy parking lot and it just died. We tried to restart it and the engine was turning over but just wouldn't start.

Stuck in the middle of a busy area with cars, we figured okay, let's put this thing in neutral and push it out of the way.

It took us 20 minutes to figure out you need a screwdriver and dig down into the center console to access some white plastic bull**** to pull out back to override the emergency brake whatever system it has. Did that locking it in place, and thought okay, now I can move it into neutral.

Nope.

It kept popping up a message about the emergency brake, and honestly I was like WTF is the emergency brake. Oh it's a stupid hardware switch in the center console.

So I pushed the brake switch to disengage the "parking brake" and it would let me move the dial to neutral for about 2 seconds before it reengaged the parking brake and went back into park. It was basically impossible to put in neutral.

We called a tow truck who had to use sleds on the back tires to get it on the bed.

I'm going to ask the obvious question.

What kind of *************ing moron thought this was a good idea???

Are all new cars like this?

I would argue that the most important thing your car can do is go into neutral. It might be more important than the engine starting. How many cars break down in the middle of the street and need to be pushed out of the way? Are we really living in a new reality where software glitches prevent you from putting your ****ing car in neutral?

Sorry for the rant but it was a horrible experience.

My wife's last car was a Ford explorer, and it had a water leak that we couldn't figure out and ended up having to sell it. Now this bull**** with the explorer limited.

When she bought the car, my first thought was, this has way too much electronics and software, and knew **** like this would happen.

Sorry for the rant but I just can't believe the state of modern vehicles.

I hope this is exclusive to the explorer but I suspect it's not.

the 7 series I'm renting doesn't have a dedicated button for Park. you either hit the button to turn the car off, or you hit the button to engage the parking brakes. then you get park. they couldn't be bothered to give you a dedicated button or shifter option for it.

My pops used to floss one just like that but with Merc Sable badges

Buck Compton said:

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I had a long post typed up but deleted it.

Buy a Ford or don't buy a Ford. Your experience with things like this won't change.

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Please now, if you don't Fix Or Repair Daily you're gonna have a bad time and it'll end up Found On Road Dead

Well being about a week out from this incident, all I can say is, it's the nature of everything moving away from strictly mechanical to some combination of mechanical + software + controllers.

I was reading about some recall on the Explorers that will cause the car to slip out of park and roll down a hill after you park it and walk away. That is crazy.

I don't think it's isolated to Ford by any means.

Again, really wish the core of my car was 100% mechanical.

New tech helps sometimes, too, though. Not long ago, I was going down 45 and an ******* from the far left lane did a >45 angle lane change in a short period of time to make the NASA 1 exit. In the process, ******* cut in front of me so close it made me jump. He came out of nowhere.

I had my right hand on the center console and jerked it up and hit the column shifter. It went into reverse.

I quickly put it back in drive and just kept going. The safeguards are nice. 22 F150 XLT.

Thanks, I also found out the battery went dead. It was a 4 year old battery and during the chaos of trying to restart the car, jump it, get it to neutral, etc. I think it was too much for a battery that was on its last legs. So that was in play as well.

Here's a good example of a ****ty software fix for a mechanical issue. This feels like a lawyer's wet dream...

The original was Ford Recall 22S27 / NHTSA 22V255, covering certain 20202022 Ford Explorers. The rear axle horizontal mounting bolt could fracture. If that happened, the rear axle housing could move and the driveshaft or half-shafts could disconnect. Because drivetrain torque is part of what holds the vehicle stationary in Park, the Explorer could roll while the shifter says Park if the electronic parking brake wasn't applied.

Here's the particularly relevant part given what you've experienced: Ford's initial solution on many Explorers was not to replace the axle bolt. Ford updated the PCM software so that the electronic parking brake automatically engages whenever Park is commanded.

Then Ford issued a more substantial recall

Ford subsequently issued 23S55 / NHTSA 23V675 for certain 20202022 Explorers because the earlier software approach didn't address the actual possibility of the axle bolt breaking.

Under 23S55, Ford dealers replace the rear subframe bushing and rear axle bolt, inspect the axle cover around the bolt hole, and replace the cover if damaged all free of charge.

We had to replace the transmission in my wife's 2020 Explorer earlier this summer. It was down shifting hard from 3rd to 2nd. Then hard shifting from 2nd to 3rd.

Just before that, the A/C compressor blew up and scattered parts all through the A/C system.

We basically have a new Explorer at this point.

I'm hoping that with the new recall on transmissions that we'll get some kind of relief on the $10,000 bill for the transmission replacement, but I doubt it.

I've been driving Fords for over 20 years now and this is the only major failure I've had. They have their issues, but so does every brand.

Basically any car with an electronic shifter and your are ****ed if the battery dies. Took me an hour to reach the manual override bolt in the engine bay on my wife's Acura to be able to push it out of the garage so I could jump it.