Ford Takes Quality Milestone, Aims for Seamless New Vehicle Launches

DETROIT — Ford engine regularly presents itself as a cornerstone of American manufacturing, business and truck leadership with its best-selling F-Series pickup trucks, but it has also led the United States in an area it’s not so proud of: vehicle recalls and quality issues.

They have undermined the Detroit automaker’s profits, damaged customer confidence and damaged Ford’s reputation for much of the past decade. The automaker has issued 53 recalls for more than 12 million vehicles so far this year, following an industry record of 153 recalls covering 13 million cars and trucks in 2025.

But that period for Ford is coming to an end, CEO Jim Farley told CNBC in an exclusive interview, as the automaker hit a key quality milestone. He said Ford had learned from its past mistakes and would use that knowledge to try to seamlessly launch a litany of new products in the years to come.

“Our best days are ahead of us as we continue to deliver this quality turnaround for our investors, for our employees and for our customers,” Farley said in a telephone interview. “We’ll have all new vehicles across our entire North American lineup in a few years, and so this whole new lineup, we’ve got to launch them all perfectly.”

It will be a difficult task. New vehicle launches, especially those with emerging technologies such as software-defined systems and electrified powertrains, are complex, and one problem can have a ripple effect across an entire product line.

This is something Farley knows all too well. Such problems cost Ford billions of dollars in losses during his nearly six-year tenure at the helm of the company.

The automaker added to its 2026 recall total this week by recalling 741,195 F-150 SUVs and pickup trucks ranging in age between the 2018 and 2021 model years.

Investors are closely monitoring the issues, saying unnecessary warranty costs pose a risk to the company’s future directions and business plans. Warranty costs are expenses incurred by an automobile manufacturer to cover repairs, replacements and other costs related to defective parts or manufacturing for a certain period of time or miles driven after customers purchase a new vehicle.

Ford said it reduced warranty and materials costs by $1.5 billion in 2025, when adjusted for volume and mix, and is targeting further reductions in warranty and materials costs in 2026. This follows the company’s warranty costs peaking at $4.8 billion in 2023.

“While warranty costs have clearly weighed on profits in recent years, Ford appears to have ‘turned the corner,'” Barclays analyst Dan Levy said in a May 15 investor note, citing four consecutive quarters of year-over-year warranty benefits. “We believe the warranty improvement in the first quarter is encouraging, but we believe additional improvements will still be necessary.”

Last week, the company received outside validation of its years-long efforts to fix its product problems, with the Ford brand named the top consumer brand in the United States in JD Power’s initial quality rankings.

After the news was released on June 25, Ford stock rose 2%, making it the second-best trading day of the month for the company.

It’s the first time since 2010 that Ford has led major brands in the influential study, which rates the expected quality of new vehicles based on problems owners report during the first 90 days of ownership. Ford, which ranked 23rd in 2023, ranks third among all brands, behind luxury makers Porsche and Hyundai’s Genesis. It came in ahead of Toyota’s Lexus brand at No. 4.

Ford improved in almost every vehicle category measured by JD Power in terms of initial quality, including software, infotainment and powertrains.

The recognition comes as Farley has stepped up efforts to restructure Ford’s management, including its bonuses and incentives; focus on quality; and reorganize its processes as well as those of suppliers and other partners to more proactively identify potential problems.

“I’m very proud that an American automaker can beat the world in initial quality, but obviously none of us are satisfied,” said Farley, who worked at Toyota for nearly 19 years before Ford. “We have so much more to do to be the #1 quality brand across all attributes.”

Farley said Ford must continue to try to reduce its warranty costs and future recalls, as well as improve its overall reputation for quality, including long-term durability.

Ford and its luxury brand Lincoln ranked 18th and 19th, respectively, in JD Power’s U.S. Vehicle Dependability Study released in February, well below the industry average. This study focuses on vehicles over a longer period.

Farley declined to predict when Ford, which has led U.S. recalls since 2024, will no longer hold that position, saying it can’t control what happens in older vehicles as well as its competitors’ quality efforts. But he said whatever the company does will “absolutely lead to a massive reduction” in future recalls of current and future products.

“The ultimate measure of success is whether we get there over a five- or 10-year period, through launches, through all kinds of economic cycles,” he said. “Everyone wants a quick response, but when it comes to quality, time is the most important measure of success.”

Recalls are companies that correct errors that were not detected or known during the development or production of a vehicle. They can range from mundane issues like visor tags or software updates to serious, potentially life-threatening issues for consumers.

Ford’s most recent quality efforts have focused on catching any problems as quickly as possible in a vehicle’s development, which Farley said involved a structural reorganization of the company’s processes.

It has implemented a new organizational structure and hired 350 technical specialists since 2023, held more regular meetings, encouraged closer collaboration with suppliers and deployed more rigorous testing throughout the vehicle development process.

Ford also changed its bonus structure, tying executive pay more closely to quality metrics, including those of new executives at Whirlwind And Johnson Controls who provided additional quality expertise.

Ford still faced problems along the way. After deploying new artificial intelligence tools to detect problems, the company eventually had to bring in what it calls seasoned “graybeard” engineers to help guide younger staff members and better train its AI models.

“We found in the past that Ford had restructured the company to save money, but we found that we had laid off experienced people in supply chain, manufacturing and engineering,” he said. “By bringing these people back, it complements all of this AI technology.”

For many businesses, AI is increasingly showing that it can increase the productivity of many tasks, but might not be as effective if it is not properly trained and deployed to make the work of human employees easier.

Farley said that while Ford’s quality efforts are a never-ending journey, he believes the company is halfway through its most recent turnaround efforts under its Ford+ business plan, which is just beginning to show Ford’s future benefits.

“I know, after 40 years, how important quality and durability are, and how difficult it is to be the best, which we are now the first to do,” Farley said. “We can’t lose this momentum, it has to be a culture.”