3.2 million US cars ordered to park outside due to fire risk

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17 park-outside fire recalls were issued in just seven months this year.

Roughly 3.2 million US vehicles now carry an open park-outside recall.

While engines are turned off, electronic circuits in new cars remain hot.

As cars have become more technologically advanced, they’re now loaded with complex electronics and batteries that never really turn off. This has contributed to a surge in recalls across the United States , where owners have been instructed to park their vehicles outside and away from structures because they could catch fire without warning.

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Read: Over 1.3 Million Jeeps Can Catch Fire Even When Parked And Switched Off

According to a report from The Washington Post citing data from NHTSA, in the first seven months of this year, there have been 17 recalls in which vehicle owners have been urged to park their cars outside due to a fire risk. This is significantly higher than the 10 issued across all of 2024 and the average of just 1 issued annually between 2015 and 2019. Eight of this year’s campaigns were announced in June and July alone.

Millions Of Cars, One Instruction

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Those 17 park-outside campaigns cover approximately 1.7 million vehicles. When factoring in outstanding campaigns from earlier years, Carfax estimates there are roughly 3.2 million vehicles across the country with an outstanding recall of this kind, with Forbes putting the figure higher at 3.4 million.

A slew of vehicles have been impacted by recalls of this sort. Kia called back more than 462,000 Tellurides in July under a park-outside notice. Late last year, over 320,000 Jeep Wranglers and Grand Cherokees were recalled for a fire risk, and Stellantis pushed that figure far higher in June with 1,076,999 Jeep Gladiators and Wranglers from the 2021 to 2025 model years. Owners were urged to park their vehicles outside and away from structures and other vehicles. Several fires have been reported.

Sarah Lammersen’s 2022 Jeep Wrangler plug-in hybrid was one of them, destroyed by fire days after she found out it had been recalled. Her daughter was behind the wheel at the time. Nobody was hurt, according to a lawsuit filed over the incident.

The Downside Of Tech

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Speaking with The Washington Post, experts say that all the new, complex electronics and batteries used in modern vehicles are behind the surge in these park-outside recalls. “The engine is off, but the circuits are still hot, and they stay hot all the time,” former NHTSA investigator Frank Borris said. “There is a lot more electronics in vehicles today, and that means more stuff can go wrong.”

Borris calls these “key-off fires,” and the suspects run from ordinary wiring and seat motors to starter relays and high-voltage batteries. Sean Kane, president of Safety Research and Strategies, points to a second problem. Today’s cars run hotter and squeeze more components into tighter spaces, so temperatures stay elevated long after the ignition is off.

Where The Park-Outside Label Came From

NHTSA created the park-outside designation in 2015 because it viewed an unexpected fire inside a building as “particularly severe.” In 2022, the agency added a dedicated warning box to its online recall listings, the idea being that a harder-to-miss notice might push more owners to actually book the repair.

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For many owners, recalls like this are hugely inconvenient, particularly if they don’t have a safe place to park their car. Speaking with the publication, Jeep Grand Cherokee 4xe owner Steve Hawley said it “was a huge hassle” after his SUV was subject to a park-outside campaign.