NHTSA Complaint #11533386 — 2019 JEEP COMPASS

This situation has now happened twice in the past three months. In the first incident, I was driving around midnight (had only been in the car for about twenty minutes) and my car showed an "engine overheating" warning on my dash and immediately went into limp mode for approximately 5 seconds. After those few seconds, it resumed driving normally and the warning went away. I made it about 1000 feet to the next intersection to turn off into a parking lot, and my vehicle shut itself down entirely (in the middle of the intersection). I was unable to turn on my hazard lights, dome lights, or restart my car for about 3 minutes. Both my safety and the safety of others was put at risk due to the fact that it was midnight, I had no way of showing others that my vehicle was immobile in the intersection, and could have well caused an accident. After restarting my car, I was able to move it out of the intersection and look at the coolant level. The level was at the full line and my vehicle behaved normally the rest of the way home. After this incident, I took the vehicle to an auto-shop and they diagnosed the issue as a faulty thermostat. Therefore, the entire thermostat housing was replaced and the coolant system was pressure-tested to ensure everything was properly done and working. Ultimately, though, this did not resolve the issue as this morning on my way to work (about 1 month after replacing the thermostat housing and about 10 minutes into my commute), my car again flashed an overheating warning and immediately went into limp mode - shutting itself off at the next intersection (approximately 1200 feet). This time, though, it was during everyone's morning commute and I narrowly avoided being rear-ended multiple times. I took my vehicle to the auto-shop and they have been unable to recreate the issue thus far. When they had replaced my thermostat housing originally, they were unable to see an issue with it to begin with (not staying closed or staying open).