NHTSA Complaint #11713018 — 2021 FORD EXPLORER

LED low beam headlight failures. Our 1st headlight failure occurred in January 2025 at 51,248 miles (Passengers Side), our 2nd failure occurred in December 2025 at 64,356 miles (Drivers Side). My claim is Ford decided to embrace LED technology with out properly performance testing it. LED headlights are new on the explorer platform since 2020, the platinum & ST trims are the only ones that utilizes LED's to my knowledge. The design intent was life of car which clearly is not occurring. Ford should have completed more testing and/or designed a serviceable headlight for all internal components. The cost of these lights is astronomical ($1600 a pop w/o labor or diagnosis fee). As reference we also own a 2006 Audi S4 & a 2012 F150 XLT. The Audi has ~170K miles on it and the F150 has ~130k miles on it. Both have the original headlights and bulbs within them. Both older technology and both still working as intended. The headlights in the 2021 car BOTH failed in terms of the low Beam LED components failing in under 4 years. Seems to be a common issue in over 50% of 6th Generation Platinum trim level explores on the market. Numerous others have experience similar issues. Asking for a recall for these. Again only on Platinum & ST trims so not nearly as many at the average XLT level trims.