Ford Forced to Recall Another Batch of Vehicles. It’s at 7 Million This Year, a Record.

The front bumper of a Ford F-150. The auto maker is recalling some of the vehicles because an instrument panel display could malfunction. (Getty Images)

Ford Motor stock ended higher on Wednesday, recovering from slipping earlier in the session. The auto maker is recalling more vehicles, extending the narrative that quality has become a problem.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, or NHTSA, the agency that manages auto recalls, has posted a notice recalling 355,656 model year 2025 and 2026 F-series trucks. An instrument panel display might fail.

Ford stock rose 0.6% on Wednesday, closing at $11.91, while the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.2% and 0.3%, respectively.

The good news is that Ford can fix the problem with an over-the-air software update. That will keep the costs of fixing the recall down.

The bad news is that Ford has now recalled almost 7 million cars this year in 105 separate notices. The number of cars is a record for any year, according to Barron’s analysis of NHTSA’s recall database.

Typically, recalls don’t move car stocks much. They are part of doing business and how U.S. authorities ensure cars on the roads stay safe. The cost of Ford’s 2025 recalls, however, is starting to add up. Ford took a $600 million special charge in the second quarter related to a fuel injector recall.

Ford didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about the latest recall, but Chief Operating Officer Kumar Galhotra told The Wall Street Journal recently: “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.”

Improving quality is job one for Ford investors, who have been paying more attention to quality lately. Shares dipped 18.4% in late July 2024 after the company missed Wall Street’s second-quarter earnings expectations, partly because warranty expenses were up $800 million compared with the first quarter. That put the quarterly warranty expense at roughly $2 billion, or 4% of sales.

That’s high for a car company. Between 2011 and 2019, warranty expenses averaged about 1.6% of sales. Ford said at the time the extra costs were tied to model year 2021 vehicles and earlier.

Getting recalls and warranty expenses under control can unlock some earnings power at the auto maker. Now, investors need some evidence that things are headed in the right direction.

Coming into Wednesday trading, Ford stock was up 20% so far this year, but down about 15% since the warranty surprise in the second quarter of 2024.

Write to Al Root at allen.root@dowjones.com