More than a million Jeep Wrangler and Gladiator owners have been told to park their vehicles outside and away from structures after federal regulators tied a wiring defect in the electric hydraulic power steering pump to 51 fires. The recall, covering 1,076,999 vehicles from the 2021 through 2025 model years, addresses a flaw that can cause fires even when the ignition is off, a risk that turns garages and carports into potential hazards overnight.
Key-off fire risk in over a million Jeeps
The scale of this recall sets it apart from routine safety campaigns. At 1,076,999 affected vehicles, it spans five model years of two of Stellantis’s best-selling nameplates. The defect sits in the wiring or electrical connection of the electric hydraulic power steering pump, and the failure mode is especially alarming: fires can ignite when the vehicle is parked and the key is out. That means an owner who parks in an attached garage at night faces a structural fire risk with no warning from the vehicle’s dashboard or onboard systems.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration issued an urgent warning directing owners to keep their Jeeps outdoors and clear of buildings until the fix is applied. The agency’s tally of 51 fires linked to the defect gives the directive real weight. Each of those fires represents a vehicle that caught fire because of a wiring connection that overheated without any driver input, a failure pattern that standard pre-trip inspections would not catch.
Stellantis, the parent company of the Jeep brand, acknowledged the recall covering more than 1 million U.S. vehicles over the power steering defect, according to news reports. The fire count attributed to NHTSA in that reporting matches the agency’s own disclosure, confirming the 51-fire figure across independent sources and underscoring that this is not a theoretical risk, but one documented in dozens of real-world incidents.
Wiring defect evidence and the 51-fire count
The defect centers on the electrical connection serving the power steering pump, a component that, in some configurations, can remain energized for a period even after the driver shuts off the engine. When that connection degrades or develops excessive resistance, it generates heat. Enough heat, and the wiring or surrounding materials can ignite. The 51 fires NHTSA has documented are the confirmed cases; the actual number of thermal events, including those that smoldered without producing visible flames or that went unreported, could be higher, though the agency has not published a broader incident count.
NHTSA’s recall filing, cataloged through its Recall Management Division, assigns a formal campaign number and lists the remedy Stellantis must provide. Owners can check whether their specific vehicle is covered by entering their VIN on the agency’s recall lookup tool on the main NHTSA site. The 573 recall report filed with the agency contains the engineering description of the defect and the planned repair, though the full text of that document and the specific remedy timeline have not been widely detailed in public reporting so far.
What the available evidence does confirm is that the defect affects vehicles across a wide production window, from 2021 through 2025 model years. That breadth suggests the root cause is not a single bad batch of parts but a design or specification issue that persisted through multiple production cycles. Whether a supplier change mid-stream worsened the problem or simply expanded the population of vulnerable vehicles is a question the engineering assessment from Stellantis could answer, but that assessment has not been released publicly.
Data gaps and investigative possibilities
One open question is whether NHTSA complaint volume for steering-pump fires or unexplained under-hood smoke in these Jeeps spiked noticeably beginning in the second half of 2023, possibly concentrated in vehicles built after a mid-year supplier or production change. The agency’s Office of Defects Investigation maintains structured complaint data, and its datasets could reveal whether a manufacturing shift preceded the rise in fire reports. That pattern, if it exists, has not been described in available reporting, but the raw complaint narratives and early warning reporting records are accessible through public datasets for independent review by researchers, safety advocates, or owners.
Another unknown is how many of the 51 confirmed fires involved vehicles that had previously been seen by dealerships for electrical or steering-related issues. If owners raised concerns about burning smells, intermittent steering assist, or blown fuses and were sent home without a lasting fix, the recall would raise questions about how early warning signs were handled within dealer networks. Neither NHTSA’s press materials nor the limited public summaries of the recall filings address that history.
Similarly, the public record does not yet break out how many of the 51 fires resulted in injuries, hospitalizations, or significant property damage. Some incidents may have been contained to the engine bay, while others could have spread to nearby structures when vehicles were parked in garages or close to homes. Those details typically appear in individual consumer complaints and insurance files rather than in the high-level recall notice.
What owners know-and what they do not
Several gaps in the public record leave Wrangler and Gladiator owners without full clarity. Stellantis has not disclosed the specific repair it will perform, whether that involves replacing the wiring harness, the pump connector, or the entire steering pump assembly. The company is obligated under federal law to provide a remedy at no cost, but the precise technical steps remain undisclosed in public summaries.
The timeline for parts availability is also unclear. With more than a million vehicles in the recall population, even a well-stocked parts pipeline will take months to work through. Owners who rely on these Jeeps as daily drivers, or who lack off-street parking, face an indefinite period of inconvenience. For some, the instruction to park outside is straightforward; for others in dense urban areas, it may be difficult or impossible to comply fully with the recommendation.
There is also no public accounting of whether Stellantis will prioritize repairs based on risk factors such as vehicle age, mileage, or geographic region. In other large recalls, automakers have sometimes sequenced repairs to address the highest-risk vehicles first. Here, the absence of a detailed rollout plan in public materials leaves owners guessing when they might realistically receive a repair appointment and whether interim measures beyond outdoor parking are advisable.
Practical steps for Wrangler and Gladiator drivers
Despite these uncertainties, the core advice from regulators is unambiguous: until the recall repair is completed, affected vehicles should be parked outside and away from structures. That means avoiding attached garages, carports that share a roofline with a residence, and tight parking spots near building walls or combustible materials. Owners who must park on the street or in shared lots may want to choose spaces with some separation from other vehicles where possible.
Owners can confirm whether their Jeep is included in the recall by checking the vehicle identification number through NHTSA’s online recall tools or by contacting a Jeep dealer directly. Once the remedy is finalized and parts are available, Stellantis is expected to notify owners by mail and coordinate repairs through its dealer network. Until then, the park-outside instruction is the primary safeguard against further incidents.
For many Wrangler and Gladiator drivers, the recall also raises broader questions about transparency and the speed of defect investigations. The fact that fires can occur with the ignition off touches on a particularly unsettling scenario: a trusted vehicle sitting quietly at home becoming the source of a structure fire. How Stellantis and federal regulators communicate updates, share data, and handle the eventual repair campaign will shape owner confidence long after the last steering pump is fixed.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
